A Final Double Pinworthy Feast and Farewell

Hello all, we are here to say farewell and thank you, as well as to celebrate the fabulous creativity of all our participants over the years with a double helping of Pinworthy projects.  So let's start right there... 

First of all, here are the Pinworthy projects from November's Pairs, Trios and Sets challenge.  It was a really wonderful collection of entries, making it very hard to select just three for our Pinworthy board (which will stay active so that you can continue to be inspired), but in the end these are the three projects we decided to feature...

#3 Makena MB a.k.a. @avant_card

#8 Cassie a.k.a. @mk_knits

#11 Monika a.k.a. @mixmedart

And here are the choices from December's Merry Little Christmas and Farewell ATCs challenge.  Again there were some lovely projects, though not everyone spotted we were really looking for ATCs... so here are the projects we ended up deciding to honour... 

#16 Sara Emily a.k.a. sarascloset

#17 Christine a.k.a. Craftyfield

#22 Lyla a.k.a. A Chief's Wife

I hope you'll agree that's a fabulous finale of creations - and thank you to all those who participated.  As always, the Creative Guides had a great time visiting your projects.

Sadly, it can't be put off any longer... it's time for the farewells.  We'd like to thank you all for your support and participation, and especially for the lovely messages we've received since announcing we'd be ending the journey at the end of this strangest and most extraordinary of years.  All the Creative Guides send their love and thanks.  Let's hear from some of them (along with their "vintage" photos from simpler times!)

Julia of Create With Me

I have so enjoyed my 5 years as a Creative Guide at AVJ.  Learning SO MUCH, not only from the team, but also from all of you who joined us each month in sharing your artistic talents and creative ideas!  Julia xx

Jennie of Live the Dream and @atkinsonjennie

How can I sum up my time with A Vintage Journey? Seven (almost!) wonderful years of creativity, learning new skills and techniques, gaining confidence in my work and teaching abilities but above all else the friendships made both here in the UK and wider afield, many of whom I have met and spent time crafting with. AVJ will be a huge miss but I have wonderful memories of an amazing time.  Jennie x

Alison of Words and Pictures and @w0rdsandp1ctures

I've been here from the beginning so this is a definitely a wrench, but I'm sure it's the right decision as we all find ways to cope with this strange new world.  It was so exciting to be invited by Brenda to be a part of this wonderful Vintage Journey, and I've forged firm and lasting friendships en route.  Of course, it's sad that this stage of the journey is over, but I've no doubt we will all continue to meet one another somewhere along the road. 

Love and thanks to all the Creative Guides I've enjoyed working alongside and learning from, and to all the amazing participants over the years.  It's been a wonderful ride.

Astrid of Astrid's Artistic Efforts and @astridchristinemaclean

Nearly 7 years and what an amazing journey it has been! There have been many Highs, and perhaps a few Lows too, but overall it has been a time of so much creativity, joy and friendship. I have learnt so much during these years, both from my fellow creative guides, both past and present but also from our fabulous visitors and challenge participants.

So as this strange year draws to a close and our blog journey here comes to an end, - the overriding sentiment I feel is one of Gratitude! So Thank You all so very much and may the new year bring you all health, happiness, creativity and peace! Astrid xx

Jo of Let's Art Journal and @letsartjournal

I have plenty of happy AVJ memories to smile about; from taking part in the challenges to becoming a Creative Guide which was always a dream of mine. I have made some wonderful friendships along the way and I would like to thank the other Creative Guides for being so welcoming and supportive, as well as everyone who has participated in our challenges – you are such an inspiration!

Being part of this team has been very special to me and has pushed me creatively out of my “Art Journaling” comfort zone. This included creating some winter wonderland decorations for the “Mini Marvels” challenge which I still put up every year, tags for Tag Friday leading my to create a Tag Journal of memories, cards as part of our Creative Card Making tutorials and of course my very first ATCs. I have to say that I have loved every moment and I feel very blessed that you were part of my creative journey - thank you so much! Love & hugs, Jo x

Nikki of Addicted to Art and @nikki_act

Well it's time to say goodbye to A Vintage Journey. My first design team post was nearly at the beginning, but not quite - it has been a wonderful 6.5 years of craft and friendship. Thank you to all the amazing people I met along this journey, you are an inspiration. With love to you all.

Barbara of yaya scrap & more and @barbarayaya

I have been a Creative Guide for a short time but it is not quantity that matters in things, what matters is quality! The time I spent with the other Creative Guides was splendid and I can say that the AVJ team is without a doubt a wonderful and supportive group in times of difficulty, full of fantastic artists! For this, I thank all the Creative Guides and all of you who have followed us! I am happy to have been part of it!  Stay strong, hugs, Barbara

Annie of CuriousnCrafty Treasures and @mcmacannie

I really can't find the words to let you know how much being part of this team has meant to me. I have enjoyed every minute and thank all of the Creative Guides, both past and present, for their kindness, support and inspiration throughout this amazing journey.

I would also like to thank our lovely followers for their positive comments and inspiring entries to our challenges. Wherever your next creative journey takes you I wish you all the best. Lots of love & hugs Annie xxxx

Amanda of Ink-a-Pink and @p1nkart

I have loved every minute journeying with my fellow Creative Guides that have become valued friends who I love, respect and admire greatly. You all have a very special place in my heart.  A Vintage Journey has allowed me to grow both creativity and personally and I feel truly blessed and so very grateful to have been an AVJ Creative Guide for 5 years.

Since knowing A Vintage Journey was reaching its final destination my heart has been heavy but it has also been full, full of all the many ‘happy’s’ I now have to treasure. Thank you AVJ it really has been the best journey ever, an amazing ride to remember always. 

Toni of artistic craft dabbler and @toniajao

It has been such an honour to be a Creative Guide on A Vintage Journey. I remember when the blog first launched and it was a joy to see the wonderful projects, in the styles I so loved. I was in awe of the skills and imagination of the Creative Guides and I can honestly say that the AVJ blog was instrumental in spurring me on to develop my own work. I am so happy that I got to share at least some of the journey. Of course, all of this would not have been possible without the fantastic support of our loyal followers. Thank you all for helping to make my dream come true. Toni x

Ann of Ann Chuang Crafts and @annchuangcrafts

I have been a Creative Guide for a short time but it is a wonderful time in my life! The time I spent with the other Creative Guides was splendid and I can say that the AVJ team is a wonderful and supportive group! For this, I thank all the Creative Guides and all of you who have followed us! I am happy to have been part of it!

Stay safe, hugs

Ann

... and last (but the opposite of least!) the founder of A Vintage Journey, Brenda Brown, without whom none of the journey would have taken place at all...

Brenda of Bumblebees and Butterflies

Starting and being a part of A Vintage Journey opened up so many opportunities for me both to learn from so many talented artists and to share my love of all things art and craft. Each new destination allowed me to stop, take stock of what I was doing, to think, research and to experiment with new ideas. I have been able to develop many new skills and combine them with the ones I bought with me and in doing so I have 'met' so many wonderful people from all around the world and made so many new friends.

I would like to thank each one of the Creative Guides and each one of you, our readers and participants, for the fellowship, support and love you've shared over the 6+ years we've been together. My best wishes to you all. Yes it's been just one incredible journey and one amazing expedition.

I think you can tell how much we've enjoyed ourselves here, and A Vintage Journey will still be here for you to enjoy.  You can still drop in if you'd like to browse the nearly seven years of inspiration from the Creative Guides, special Guest Creative Guides, and of course from everyone who has joined us on the journey for one of our challenges.  We know we'll continue to meet you along the way via our blogs and yours, as well as on other social media platforms.

From all of us to all of you... thank you, stay safe, stay creative and good luck wherever your future journeys take you.  Happy New Year and happy onward travels, everyone!

With love from all of us at A Vintage Journey xx

Cogs, Gears and Textures Pinworthies

Hi everyone, 

Ann here to announce our Pinworthy winners for September's 

Cogs, Gears and Textures challenge. As usual we had many fabulous entries and we want to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to enter our challenge. It is so hard to narrow our winners down to just three, but needs must, so after due consideration, these are the entries the creative guides have chosen in no particular order:

3. When a Wave Comes

5. Wanda Hentges

9. Mixed Media Dream Catcher

So once again, thank you to all of you who entered our challenge and shared your creativity and congratulations to our winners. 

I will send you your pinworthy badges shortly. Our latest challenge Numbers is in full swing at the moment, so we hope you will all join us for that one too, and all the challenge details and an inspirational gallery of projects created by some of our talented Creative Guides can be located here. Can't wait to see what you create. Of course don't forget to come back next week to see Annie's tutorial for her entry to that challenge!

Meanwhile, happy crafting and thank you for joining us here today! 

Ann and the Creative Guides 

Watercolour Wonders Pinworthies

 Hello everyone, Deb here to announce our Pinworthy winners for July's Watercolour Wonders challenge.  As usual we had many fabulous entries and we want to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to enter our challenge.  But we had to narrow it down to our three favourites so without further ado here are our choices.

#8 - Cassandra

We loved Cassandra's use of the vintage elements in her background along with her lovely watercoloured flowers and textural elements.

# 15 - Tracey

Tracey's faux ceramic tiles are amazing!  We loved the dimension and texture combined with the gouache, background stamping and triple embossing, simply lovely.

#20 - Christine

And what's not to love about Christine's lovely Christmas In July card.  The soft watercolour washed sky in the background combined with that wonderful watercolour pencil stamped bird made for a delightful wintery scene.

Thanks again to everyone who joined in our July Watercolour Wonders challenge and we hope that you will also be able to join us for our current challenge, Tag Your It!  Can't wait to see what you create,

Deb and the Creative Guides

It's Gelli Time Pinworthies

Julia here today to announce the Creative Guide's Pinworthy choices for last month's challenge,   We greatly appreciate all of our AVJ friends taking the time to join in our challenges with us. 

We hope you are all safe and well during this incredible pandemic crisis.

Without further ado, here are our three Pinworthy Mentions for our It's Gelli Time Challenge.

#1 Titbelsoeur

What a delightful and colorful book Titbelsoeur created using many techniques with her Gel Plate for her cover and several of the pages!

#2  Karen

Karen created a beautiful blue Gel Plate background for her lovely silhouette stampings!

#3  Christine

We all loved Christine's sweet little robin perched on a log with her beautiful background of Gel Plate print and stampings.

I will be sending you your Pinworthy badge to display on your blogs shortly and we will be pinning your fabulous entries to the A Vintage Journey Pinworthies board on Pinterest.

There is still plenty of time to enter our current challenge which is Beautiful Blooms. You can find all the details here along with some fabulous inspiration from the Creative Guides.

As always thank you for joining us in our challenge and we look forward to seeing what you create this month!

Julia and all the Creative Guides  xx

Pinworthy Winners for our March Celebration challenge.

Hello Everyone.
We really enjoyed looking through all the birthday celebration winners projects, thank you to everyone who joined in we so appreciate the entries you all make. Thank you also for all birthday wishes you left for us on your posts.

So onto the three Pinworthy projects chosen by the Creative Guides and myself and you certainly made it difficult to narrow it down to just three. But after long deliberations (both from the CGs and me too) these three came out top of the lists and in numerical order they are -

#4  Lynn - Experiments in Paper

Wow what a way to celebrate nature and your brother's love of entymology but yes of course finishing the marathon line of finishing this beautiful set of albums. Well done Lynn.

#5 Shraddha - Creatif Edges

Shraddha your altered art candle stand is a wonderful celebration of mixed media, it's beautiful.

#10 Tracey - New Beginnings

Tracey I definitely think this is a celebration of the little things we have and hold so dear in our supplies. It's gorgeous.

Thank you ladies for sharing your wonderful projects with us they are amazing and have helped us celebrate our 6th birthday in style. Congratulations on being chosen the winners for March and we will be in touch very soon with your very well deserved Pinworthy Badges very soon. 

Before I go I would like to link back to our challenge post for April and ask you to share a gelli plate project. It's a great opportunity to have some fun with the plates and produce something to share with us all. If you pop to the post you will also see some fabulous and inspirational projects from the Creative Guides and a linky for you to add your project to. We hope you will join us and have a go at winning one of our Pinworthy badges for 2020.

Here in the southern part of the UK we have had a fabulous sunny week with some really high summer temperatures, however we do hope that wherever you are in the world with the Easter weekend and extra holiday days you will still observe the rules your country have set for dealing with, managing and hopefully ending this pandemic of the coronavirus. Apart from dropping some shopping over to my daughter's door step that I had delivered with my shopping delivery this week and going out to the front of the house to clap for the NHS and all other fantastic workers helping us to keep safe and alive I have not ventured outside of my house and garden for 3 weeks and I know many of you have been on lockdown for longer than that.
Please stay safe, stay home, protect all the front line people working hard for us and save lives.

hugs Brenda and the Creative Guides. xxx

Against the Grain Pinworthy Winners

Hello! Thank you for traveling along with us with our Against the Grain challenge! We enjoyed visiting each one of your wood inspired entries.

Even though we didn't have many entries, they were all exceptional making narrowing it down to just three favorites a very difficult task. But without further ado, here are the Creative Guide's three Pinworthy choices:

#1 Ann Sullivan Barnes

#5 Lys at Impression Scrap

The 'wood planks' on Lys's 'fence' are so realistic you would think you were sitting in your back yard! Be sure to check out her blog, because she's got some great close up shots and a brief tutorial.

#11 Elle of Empire of the Cat

Elle actually had two great projects linked up, and it was hard to choose between the two. We loved how she embraced the challenge and used wood grain in so many creative ways on her fun project. Be sure to visit her blog, as she takes you through her creative process.

I will be sending you your Pinworthy badge to display on your blogs shortly, and we will be pinning your gorgeous entries to the A Vintage Journey Pinworthies board on Pinterest.

There is still plenty of time to enter our current challenge,  Celebration Time Come On, and you can find all the details HERE along with some fabulous celebratory inspiration from the Creative Guides.

Thank you for traveling along with us on our creative journey, and we can't wait to see what you create this month! It's time to get crafty!

Sara Emily and the Creative Guides

We're All Getting Older Pinworthy Winners

Hello all, and a huge thank you for sharing your aged, weathered, distressed, antiqued projects in last month's We're All Getting Older challenge.

The Creative Guides had a great time visiting all your new-made-old creations and it was really hard to whittle the selection down to three Pinworthies.  It was a very close run thing!  But a team's gotta do what a team's gotta do, so here, without more ado and in no particular order, are our Pinworthy choices.

#7 Empire of the Cat

What a great mixed media technique to create that background, which looks like aged, mottled mercury glass - like a mirror which Marie Antoinette herself might have looked in!  And the gilding is perfect for the historical period look too.  You can see how it was done over at the Empire of the Cat blog.

#27 Henriette

A real labour of love this one - there's such attention to detail with the parchment scrolls, each of the glass bottles and jars aged and weathered in different ways, and every individual label distressed for an antique look.  There are lots of close-ups at Henriette's blog... it's well worth a visit to see all the effects.

#29 Susanne

Again, there are so many ageing effects and techniques here, but we particularly liked the scratched "metal" lettering and the crackled edging added to so many elements, really making them look as though they're being eaten away by time.  See how it was done over at Susanne's blog.

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Congratulations to all three Pinworthies.  You'll be receiving your badges shortly, and your projects will appear on our Pinterest board.

We're so grateful for all the amazing entries... honestly, there were so many which were entirely worthy of pinning, and I'm sure more than one of us has pinned them independently!  Thank you to everyone who played along.

We hope you'll be inspired to come and join us on the Vintage Journey again this month, with Sara Emily's Against The Grain theme.  Check out all the inspiration from the Creative Guides, and then let the woody creativity begin.  Happy crafting all!

Alison and the Creative Guides xx

Holly Jolly Christmas Pinworthy Winners

Hello Vintage Travelers,

All of us here at A Vintage Journey hope you and your family had a most joyous holiday season.  

We were so impressed with the entries we had for this challenge - it was difficult to choose just three.  Thanks to all our wonderful followers who played along - here are the "Holly Jolly Christmas" Pinworthy winners.

Karen

Mac Mable

Zowie Dixon

Karen, Mac Mable and Zowie, we will be sending you your Pinworthy Mention badges to display on your blog or website soon and will pin your projects to our Pinworthy board on Pinterest.  Thanks so much again for participating in our challenge and we hope that all of our followers will join in our current challenge, We're All Getting Older, can't wait to see what you create!

Happy New Year and Happy Crafting,
S@ndy and the Creative Guides

Window On Your World And Tag Friday Pinworthy Winners

Hello everyone, it's time to announce our Pinworthy winners for November's 'Window On Your World' challenge as well as for our Tag Friday link up!  So many lovely entries, the Creative Guides want to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to join in our challenges, we love seeing your creations.

First up here are the three Pinworthy Mentions for our November 'Window On Your World' challenge:

Cathy

Nancy

Irina

And now for our November Tag Friday link up winner:

Kerstin

Amazing creations one and all, don't you think?  Cathy, Nancy, Irina and Kerstin, we will be sending you your Pinworthy Mention badges to display on your blog or website soon and will pin your projects to our Pinworthy board on Pinterest.  Thanks so much again for participating in our November challenge and we hope that all of our followers will also join in our current Holly Jolly Christmas challenge, can't wait to see what you create!

Deb and the Creative Guides

Inky Wings Pinworthies

Hi everyone x Annie here with details of the Pinworthy mentions for our Inky Wings challenge theme. As always it is very hard to choose three projects and we would like to thank everyone for joining in with us. We love to visit and view your entries so keep them coming xx.

So without further ado here are the team's Pinworthy choices: 

#6 Kerstin 

Such a wonderful home decor piece by Kerstin. Fabulous details to look at, which look  even more amazing when lit.

#4 Helen

 A wonderful Halloween card by Helen with inky bats and background as well as the great city scape.

#16 Lisa

 

Another great home decor piece by Lisa, showing bats and ghosts around her little house. Love the idea of the bats flying overhead. 

We will be sending you your Pinworthy badge to display on your blogs shortly and we will be pinning your fabulous entries to the "A Vintage Journey Pinworthies Board" on Pinterest.

There is still plenty of time to enter our current challenge which is "Window on Your World"  and you can find all the details HERE along with some fabulous inspiration from the Creative Guides.

As always  we would like to say "Thank You" for joining us in our challenges and we look forward to seeing what you create this month!

Happy Crafting
Annie xx

Box It Up Pinworthies!

Julia here today to announce the Creative Guide's Pinworthy choices for last month's challenge, Box It Up.  It is always difficult to narrow down the field to just three entries.  We greatly appreciate all of you taking time to join in our challenges with us.

Without further ado, here are our three Pinworthy Mentions for the Box It Up Challenge.

#3  Judy McKay

We loved her music theme with the transformed violin and the musical notes mounted on little boxes inside the bigger box frame.  Lovely distress and crackle throughout.

#4  Glenda

Such a clever and beautiful design with her box inside her card.  The papers she used are beautiful as well as her layered flowers, lace and pearls.  A lovely shabby vintage look here.

#7  Marty

What a wonderful little village for Halloween with the 3 box houses each attended by it's resident witch standing outside - 2 of the houses being shakers (so fun!).  The surrounding fence and leaf bare trees add to the spookiness of this creative decoration.

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I will be sending you your Pinworthy badge to display on your blogs shortly and we will be pinning your fabulous entries to the A Vintage Journey Pinworthies board on Pinterest.

There is still plenty of time to enter our current challenge which is Inky Wings and you can find all the details HERE along with some fabulous inspiration from the Creative Guides.

As always thank you for joining us in our challenge and we look forward to seeing what you create this month!