February Melt It Challenge - Winner and Pinworthies!

Hello everyone! Julia here today to announce our lucky randomly chosen winner and three Pinworthies for our February Melt It challenge.  What wonderful and creative projects you all shared with us showing all the fun ways to 'Melt It'!  The Creative Guides had quite the chore to narrow down their choices!

First of all, we are pleased to announce our randomly chosen winner for the gift certificate generously provided by Country View Crafts.

That's #8 Two Mad Dahlias, who created these phenomenally cool Mason jars, complete with captured fairies! Do hop over and visit her blog to see all the meltingly brilliant details.

Congratulations! We'll be in touch soon with a winner's badge for your blog and details of how to claim your prize voucher from Country View Crafts.

And now on to our three Pinworthy choices (in no particular order).

Mona Pendleton

What a beautiful canvas created with die cut trees, stampings and background coloring - all covered with thick embossing powder and white splatter!

Jackie Neal

A wonderful Asian theme design using crackle glaze, stenciling and the beautiful Deep Sea Embossing powder - gorgeous melted edges as well!

Ann Barnes

Such a sweet Love triptych using beautiful floral papers and rolled roses - with a lovely embossed edge heart front and center!

Amazing creations one and all, we will be in touch shortly to present you with your Pinworthy badges and to invite you to join us as guest Creative Guides for one of our future challenges.

Thanks again to everyone who entered our February challenge and we hope that you will enter our current Birthday Treasure challenge, you have until April 5th to link up your projects, can't wait to see what you create!

To give you a bit more inspiration for our Birthday Treasure challenge, we'd like to share some projects with you that were created by our December Pinworthy Mentions; Christine of Crafty Endeavours, Nicola of Paper Profusion and Toni of Artistic Craft Dabbler.  Enjoy!

*******************************************

Christine

Hi my name is Christine but I’m known as Craftyfield in the crafting world and I live in the south of England. I started making my own cards some 15 years ago and very soon fell in love with all sorts of crafts, from card making and Scrapbooking to jewellery and home decor. Now a confirmed stamp-a-holic, I love trying new techniques to use my stamp collection in different ways. Style wise… I love and try everything from CAS to grungy, and have been making more Mixed media projects recently as I love using paint to up-cycle household items.

I am delighted to be featured on this fantastic blog as a Pinworthy guest and I hope you will be inspired by my treasure....

I approached this month's theme with excitement and dread in equal measure... using some of my Treasure!!! My precious...(think Lord of the Rings' Golem and you have the idea) but I am glad I have been pushed into using my beautiful resin frame by Prima.

I made this 12x12 canvas taking inspiration from Finnabair dark and dimensional projects. I applied black gesso as a base over stencilled texture paste and die-cuts, then used paints, both matte colours and shimmers all over the canvas.

I then added a bit of stamping, as I said, I am a stamp-a-holic...

For embellishments, apart from my Treasured item I used home made embellishments with bottle caps and Vintage images as well as glitter, sequins and other shiny bits...

I placed a pebble on top of the man image to magnify it. 

I used a transparent red embossing powder and the colour is different depending on what is underneath.

I hope you will like my canvas, do hop over to my blog for a step by step and a list of supplies. 

Thank you so much to A Vintage Journey for inviting me, it's an honour and a pleasure.

Nicola

Hi there. It's wonderful to be a Pinworthy guest for A Vintage Journey once more.

I’m Nicola a.k.a. ‘Paper Profusion’ living in Dublin, Ireland. I’ve loved handicrafts for as long as I can remember, probably inspired by my Mum who excelled at every single crafting technique out there. I’m now medically retired however during my ‘career / good health years’ my main creative hobby was photography especially travel/wildlife related. During a time of serious illness, I became hooked on paper crafting as a hobby to dabble in at my own pace. I’m particularly drawn to the vintage / shabby chic genres, usually adding lots of embellishments and ribbon. My favourite occasion to craft for is Christmas. I've been rather absent from crafting recently so it was a joy to dust off my crafty stash and make today's creation, especially for one of my very favourite blogs.

I was initially flummoxed what to choose for Brenda's 'Treasure' theme (way too much choice in my stash!). In the end I decided to use items I treasure amongst the ingredients, as well as 'Treasure' itself being the subject of my project (or at least something we should treasure more!). A few years ago I held on to some gold foil packaging that came with a perfume. I reckoned that the gold would look well diecut using Sizzix / Tim Holtz mini Globe die, and then a sort of protest scene unfolded whereby lots of Tim Holtz paper dolls are carrying banners with suggestions as to how to help reduce climate change and treasure our planet more. The globe, placards and letters are cut from the hoarded gold foil cardstock. The whole scene is set in an altered chipboard shadow box that I turned into a 'galaxy'. The dolls are decorated with treasures of real Swarovski crystals and pearls that I only ever select for 'good' occasions!

If you would like to see more of how I put this project together, plus details of all the ingredients, please pop over to my blog.

Huge thanks to the truly very talented team at AVJ for inviting me to be one of their Pinworthies today. Wishing Brenda and all the team Congratulations and very Happy Wishes on your 4th birthday! Nicola x

Toni

Hi my name's Toni otherwise know by my blog name, the 'Artistic Craft Dabbler'. I'm delighted and honoured, to be here, in such prestigious company, as a Pin Worthy Guest Designer. I'm a retired teacher and have been loving the last eighteen months of freedom! I've been putting my time to good use though, attending pottery classes, making mixed media art, blogging and more recently attending a creative textiles group. Yes, there are some benefits to getting older ! I was very excited to read the details of Brenda's fabulous 'Treasure' challenge, and was more than happy to take part, as it has provided me, with the ideal opportunity to use a few of my favourite 'found' treasures........

The substrate for my treasure assemblage, is a Tim Holtz Vignette box. I chose the largest box in the set and applied a coat of Deco Art Crackle paste, to the outside, followed by of Cobalt Turquoise and Prussian Blue Media Fluid Acrylic paint to highlight the gorgeous crackles. To add further interest and frame the contents of the box, I painted the edges with black and white stripes.

The 'treasures' assembled here, are the bottom of a rusty tin can, a piece of sea glass, a spiral car spring, and a lovely flying goose brooch I found in a charity shop. I love collecting interesting bits and bobs, so it was a real pleasure to be able to use some of them.

I used a 'double' embossing technique to decorate the background panel. This gave me an opportunity to use another little treasure, in the shape of one of the new Emerald Creek & Seth Apter's Baked Texture, embossing powders. The Chunky Rust was perfect for creating the 'brick wall'. The half cog added to the top of the Vignette box was also given the Chunky Rust treatment. If you'd like to know more about any of the processes I've used, there are further details over on my Artistic Craft Dabbler blog. I hope you'll have chance to hop by. Finally, I'd just like to say a big thank you to the AVJ team for inviting me today. It's been great fun putting this project for such a fabulous challenge! xx
*******************************************

Amazing projects as always from our Pinworthy Guest Creative Guides, thank you for sharing your wonderful work with us all!
We invite everyone to join us for the March -  4th AVJ Birthday - Treasure Challenge!

Julia and the Creative Guides

A Vintage Journey - February Challenge - Melt It!!

Welcome everyone to the February A Vintage Journey Challenge!   Julia here as your host this month and we are so happy you have stopped by today! 

This month we're asking everyone to MELT IT!  

(and if you live where there is still snow you are probably ready for this!!?)

Here is the challenge description:

Get out the UTEE (ultra thick embossing enamel), beeswax, encaustic wax, embossing powders or good old wax crayons and a heat tool and get melting to create something in a vintage; shabby; mixed media; art journaling; industrial, timeworn or steampunk style.

And here is your "Melt It" inspiration from the Creative Guides!

Julia

 I was so excited to host this challenge as it gave me the opportunity to get out my Encaustic Art Kit (that I've had for eons but hardly used!) and take some time to learn how to create with it! I made this scene using wax melted on a craft iron pressed over a glossy card!
(I can't believe it either!)
You will find several more scenes I created and links to Encaustic kits and a YouTube technique video on my blog post here.

Brenda

For Julia's great challenge this month I have used a large wooden tag with mixed media and stamped layers and finished up with a layer of pitted UTEE. I didn't get quite as much pitting as I would have liked but it added a fabulous texture and sepia look to it by the time I had finished with it. I have some process steps and more photos over at Bumblebees and Butterflies if you would like to see how this came together.

Deb

For Julia's 'Melt It!' challenge I decided to play around with a faux encaustic technique on my mixed media canvas, layer upon layer of UTEE, embossing powders and ephemera on this one, hope you can pop by my blog for the how to!

Astrid

This being February, I decided to create a Velentine card for Julia's Melt It challenge. I used my long neglected UTEE to create the heart in the centre of my card. If you want to see how it all came together, - come and visit me

Alison

I had lots of fun with this once I finally got going!  My rusty bubbles are full of melted UTEE, creating a curious-looking strange land for this tiny chap to visit.  If you'd like to find out more about how I made this tag, do come and visit Words and Pictures.

Sara Emily

I've melted 4 embossing powders, gel medium and Distress crayons to create my rust and patina. I welcome you to visit my blog, sarascloset, to learn how I made this canvas inspired by Seth Apter and my mixed media supplies.

Nikki

For Julia's challenge I decided to use lots of colours and layers of embossing powder. For more details please visit Addicted to Art.

Jennie

My Gelli Plate and I have been on a roll just lately (it is rather addictive!) and so I decided to cut an ATC from some experimental background paper before using embossing powders and UTEE on its decoration! Who knew that old book paper could be made to look so fabulous! Join me over at Live the Dream if you would like to find out more!

Anne

I was so lucky to see Seth Apter demo his new Baked Texture Embossing Powders at Creativation this year, and when I got home I could not wait to play with them!  I used four on this project.  Please visit my Blog if you would like to see more.

 Annie

Hi everyone...I have to say I had such fun playing along with Julia's challenge. As a lover of all things Egyptian I decided to use  some of my Egyptian Rubber stamps on Shrink Plastic, UTEE and I really enjoyed using my Melt Pot, silicone molds as well as stamping. For more details of the recipe you can visit my blog HERE

S@ndy

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear "Melt It" is embossing powder so I used it two different ways for my tag.  To see all the details of this tag please join me at my blog 

My "Crafty" Life on the Internet.

Wow!  You can see from all the lovely projects above - there are MANY ways to MELT IT!

 

Our gracious sponsor this month is Country View Crafts  who is offering a  £20 Voucher to one lucky randomly chosen winner.  The Creative Guides will also choose three Pinworthy winners who will have their projects pinned to our Pinterest board and who will be offered a guest spot here at A Vintage Journey for one of our future challenges.

So please join us!  You have until Thursday, March 1, 2018 6 pm (Great Britain time) to link up your projects below. 
We can't wait to see how YOU "Melt It"!

Julia and the Creative Guides

An InLinkz Link-up