CVC Challenge February 2025 #1 - Romance and Friendship

 PRETTY GRUNGE AND MORE

I thought I'd make all of my three grandchildren a Valentine gift, which would also be a bit of a keepsake. (Well it will be if they like them lol). So here are three small shadowboxes.

The heart was made using layers of Americana Decor chalk paints, metallics, PaperArtsy Fresco Finish and Distress Spritz. I just painted, sponged, waxed, rubbed and sanded it until I was happy with the results. 

Ella is the eldest and at university training to be a teacher, she is the pink girl. I found a background already made and distressed, cut it to size and attached it to the back of the inner white frame. I also found a piece of card embossed with Eileen Hull's lace folder and again in the pink tones. I cut strips to cover the inner frame, splattered with a mix of picked raspberry distress stain and worn lipstick Spritz mixed together and also with white acrylic paint. Once finished I rubbed the white paint over the raised areas of the texture to bring the pattern back to life.

I collected elements together to build the design, painted and rubbed down some metal bits and as I built the project and as I got further into it more pieces were gathered, altered/distressed and added.

Close-ups of the elements.

The distressed heart.

A shabby bow coloured with distress inks.

Snippets to create interest in the background.

The largest of the two bottles, both were painted with collage medium, left to dry and then painted with crackle paste I filled this one with pretty coloured beads, painted and distressed the cork and tied pink thread around it.

Three little flowers were tucked into the corner.

The smallest bottle was coloured up with alcohol pearl and a snippet cut down to fit. On top is a small pink eyelet.

Here is a small frame with a distressed metal button, an altered key and a glittery heart.

I also added a metal plaquette, small metal snowflake and beads, Ella's name and rub-ons to distress the frame.

xx

Supplies

TH- Distress Spray Stain - Picked Raspberry, Spun Sugar, Seedless

TH - Distres Spritz - Worn Lipstick, Villainous Potion

TH - Collage Medium, Crackle Paste

TH - Rock Candy Glitter

TH - Snippets

TH - Gumdrop Hearts

TH - Metal Plaquettes, Gumdrop Hearts,  

Ranger - Patina - Cinnabar, Rust

Ranger - Alcohol Pearl - Deception

Ranger Archival Ink - Hydrangea

Americana Chalky Finish - Innocence

All & Create Rub Ons - Acid Blends

Eileen Hull - Lace embossing folder

Snowflake Tinsel

Welcome to my blog and today I am sharing my second DT contribution to the Country View Challenges theme for November which is 'The colour Blue'.

My backgrounds started with the card being dipped into a blue mix of distress inks and brushos and dried. I took the gorgeous shabby snowflakes from Tim's Weathered Winter stamp set and covered them with blue distress inks direct from the pads. Don't forget to always start with your lighter blues and then the darker ones so you don't contaminate the lighter colours. I spritzed water into the air and wafted the snowflakes through it and then stamped onto the background, in most cases this gave me an even more distressed look as the snowflake edges bled into the background a bit. You can see no two look the same.

When perfectly dry I brayered over a thin layer of white gesso to make it look more like a snowy background.

I wanted a strong image as the focal point so I die-cut Tim's layered snowflake in a light blue card, and lightly brayered gesso again over the raised parts, dried it off and dipped it into broken china DI and dried then into faded jeans and dried it again.

I brayered over with the gesso again being careful to just touch the high points and sprinkled over some snowflake tinsel embossing powder. Once heated this gave me a beautiful sparkly effect and to make the snowflake pop and stand out more I blended ground espresso DI round the edges.

I adhered the snowflake onto the background with some natural fibre beneath it ........

.... added the words die-cut from Tim's holiday words script 2 set .......

... and then mounted onto some dark blue paper before adhering to the card.

I have prepped 9 of these with just the one completed but when I finds some time there will be quite a few more to add to my box and plenty of handmade cards to send to family and friends.

I hope your week is going well. Enjoy the run up to the weekend and I hope you find some quiet time for you in it somewhere.

hugs Brenda xxx

Mixed media snowflake canvas

Happy Sunday everyone and welcome to November, I really think that time has speeded up again as the days, weeks, months and years seem to be just whizzing past before my very eyes.

Using DecoArt paints and mediums and Tim Holtz dies I am sharing a cold, wintry, blue snowflake canvas today which is my contribution to the new challenge at Country View Challenges.

This canvas has been getting little bits of attention over many days and at last it is finished for Christmas. I didn't get to take too many photos of the process but hopefully you will get the idea of the steps involved.

I began with a coat of gesso then painted decoart 'vintage' chalk paint over (if you don't have this try Fresco Finish chalk paint). When dry I used a snowflake mask and decoart sand paste which created a beautiful gritty texture. For the next layer I rubbed in a little victorian velvet and broken china distress paints to create some colour tone both on the canvas and the snowflakes.  I wanted to create the look of snow on the snowflakes so I dragged gesso across the top of the textured areas which got caught in cracks and on the tops of the highest points leaving a random white snowy effect.

A stencil and gesso added more interest in the gaps and I also stamped with white pigment ink.

After brushing on a little watery vintage photo distress ink I achieved some glistening effects by rubbing some glue over the snowflakes and sprinkled on glamour dust.

 I also added some gold foil randomly around the edges.

The next step was to die-cut some of  Tim's snowflakes using a variety of dies, punches and some wooden shapes shabbying them using gesso, cobalt blue and cerulean blue fluid acrylic paint and making them twinkle using rock candy distress glitter.

The pieces were layered up to create one large and several smaller snowflakes ....

.... creating varying heights and dimension ....

.... and so it all came together with some smaller white punched snowflakes to fill the gaps and create a snowy day feel to it.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by, I love to see the page visits I get on the stats and there are so many of you who obviously take the trouble to share in what I am making, thank you so much.

I hope to see some of you over at Country View Challenges this month, but in the meantime have a spooktacular weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

These are the supplies I mainly used and that are available at the Country View Crafts shop. Please be aware that I have substituted some products for similar ones that will still create the same look.

DecoArt Mixed Media - Texture Sand Paste DecoArt Mixed Media - White Gesso PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics 50ml - Lake Wanaka Decorative Strip Die - Snowflake Rosette By Tim Holtz Tim Holtz Layered Snowflake Tim Holtz Paper Snowflakes Thinlits dies Tim Holtz Decorative strip die - Mini snowflake rosettes Wooden laser cut ornaments - Snowflakes Tim Holtz Layering Stencil - Snowflakes Tim Holtz Distress paint dabber - Broken china Tim Holtz Distress paint - Victorian velvet Tim Holtz Layering Stencil - Latticework Distress ink pad - Vintage photo DecoArt Mediums 29.5g - Glamour Dust Crystal Ranger Foil Transfer Sheets - Holiday DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Cerulean Blue DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic 1oz - Cobalt Blue Hue Tim Holtz Distress glitter - Rock candy Tim Holtz Sizzix Thinlits - Holiday greens

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