Shabby Vintage Shadow Box Tutorial

Brenda here with another project for you during our 6th Birthday celebrations using more of the shabby hearts I made sometime ago for my daughter's wedding.

Process Steps

I started with the background and used a 23x23cm piece of watercolour paper and my trusty DecoArt paints and mediums.

1. Take the piece of watercolour paper, raw umber and titan buff media acrylics with a brayer to create the first layers. 

2. Dip, drip and dry with burnt sienna.

3. Use the Tim Holtz ledger script stamp and coffee archival ink to add some text stamping.

4. Take the brayer again and titanium white and roll over to lighten the background a bit.

5. Next use a stencil brush, more titanium white and a harlequin stencil to randomly add another layer. (Note the  bottom left is the part to notice as I nearly forgot to photograph this step and had started the dirty glaze in the top right corner).

6. Paint a wash or glaze of colour all over using soft touch varnish, paynes grey, burnt umber and titanium white mixed with a little water. Then stamp more text using white chalky finish paint.

7. Take the inner frame that comes with the shadow box and cut it down to 19cm square. Brayer over the brown and white paints again and stamp some text using a beige chalky finish paint to echo the background. Distress the edges with brown distress ink.

8.  I found a rusty key and tied it to one of the hearts with rusty wire.

9. Find some words or a quote.

10. Start to place everything where you want it and make any additions and or changes to the original design. So I decided to add some stars that I painted gold, then to add to the gold I found a little crown to sit on the base of the shadowbox. I also experimented with some gold foil on a heart.

11. Assemble together ....

.... and put the crown and wire in the bottom of the frame.

I hope this gives you some shabby vintage inspiration and mounting and keeping your work in a shadow box adds another dimension, especially if you sell your work.

We'd love to see your celebration projects over on the challenge post,  just show us what you are celebrating in your art and craft work at the moment. The doors are wide open for this challenge so please come and join the party.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com

Creative Card Making With Sara Emily

Welcome to the first Creative Card Making post of 2020! It's Sara Emily here, and I'm sharing a pair of simple cards that are suitable for winter birthdays/just because or they may be added to my 2020 Christmas card stash. Because they are in the vintage style, I think they fit in nicely with Alison's challenge theme, We're All Getting Older!.

First, I'll share some close-ups, and then I'll finish up with my tutorial. To see the holographic effect of this snowflake, one has to turn the card in the light.

The colors look a little different in my craft room light, but this blurry photo shows off the textures of the flakes.

Here's how the cards came together; it wasn't a clear path, but I've tried to simplify my process. I have just a few process photos, but you should be able to get the idea as I talk my way through.

Not at all feeling creative, but having a couple hours to play, I started by having a go with one of my yet unopened Oxide sprays. I made  a bunch of backgrounds on water color paper using Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire Distress Spray stain. I die cut Icy Flake from one of the backgrounds.

I applied Crackle paint from a brand new jar to the flake, but didn't get the best crackle. I later read the directions, which calls for a shake, which I didn't do. Could that be the reason? It's so thick, I don't think it could be shaken; perhaps stirred.

When dry, I scribbled with Distress Crayon to help accentuate what little crackle there was.

I cut a second flake from white card, and heat embossed with Holographic powder. Initially, I planned to reinsert this into the deep blue background over a background from my stash (pictured below).

But I wasn't feeling it, so I stamped a piece of white card I cut into a suitably sized card blank with Distress ink and one of Tim Holtz Flurry & Pine stamps. I wanted to leave a white border, so I used washi tape to mask the edges before stamping. I used the remaining ink on the stamp after each impression by stamping on the stash background I ended up not using.

I removed the tape, and a bit of the card tore. To cover my boo-boo and to make the card more vintage, I decided to blend with Frayed Burlap and splash with a little water.

I decided I liked the snowy background for my crackled snowflake, so I stamped another white card blank.

This time I used Tim Holtz Design tape, thinking it might not pull at the card. Wrong! Two of the strips really stuck onto the card, even with gentle application. You can see the devastation in the close-up photo below. Perhaps I need to use a better quality of card.

Not one to give up easily, I tried several scenarios to rescue the beautiful snowy card, including the ink and splash distressing used above, but ended up applying more of the Design tape back over the torn up edges. This is a trick I picked up from Zoe Hillman who makes the best vintage cards. I used foam adhesive to give dimension to the layers.

To finish the card, I used this heat embossed snowflake from the Snowflake & Wreath die set by Tim Holtz and a gum drop I colored with Alcohol Pearls and ink. The chippie is from my stash. I decided not to use the glittery snowflake on this card; it just didn't go with the design tape edge.

    

Using the original snow flurry stamped card, I ended up layering the two snowflake die cuts, offsetting them and topping with a gum drop for a second card. You can see in the close-up below, to  age the snowflake a bit, I tapped it with Distress ink.

So now I have two cards for my stash, ready to send out if I need them or a good start on my Christmas card stash for 2020!

 Thank you for taking this tortuous creative journey with me today; I hope you didn't get lost along the way! Perhaps I've given you some ideas to try when things don't go the right way right away! There's still plenty of time to join in with our current  challenge, We're All Getting Older! Please come and join us on this first leg of our 2020 Creative journey. Happy crafting! Sara Emily

Creative Card Making with Alison

Hello all, it's Alison here with this month's Creative Card Making post.  Regulars over at Words and Pictures will know I almost never make cards.  For some reason I find them very difficult to get going with.  But a Creative Card Making post requires a card, so here it is...

For this, I borrowed my inspiration from a tag I made in which I borrowed inspiration from one of my fellow Creative Guides, the lovely Jennie of Live the Dream.  And at three removes of inspiration, I found that it wasn't so hard to make a card after all!

I started with a pre-cut kraft card and envelope, 6x6 inches, and gave it a rough coat of gesso as a base.

Over that, I added some Idea-ology Tissue Tape and Design Tape strips and then smeared some DecoArt Crackle Paint in places.  (I know I took photos as I was going, but my camera seems to be playing up, and decided not to keep them.)

Over the dried crackle, I added dribbles of Distress Stain in Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky...

... and I smeared some Peeled Paint DI and Shabby Shutters DOxide onto my craft mat, spritzed with water, and added that to the mix too.

I chose those colours to go with the tag I cut the Tim Holtz flower out of.

This one is from the Wildflower Stems #2 set.

I'd done some wrinkle-free distressing with those colours onto the tag, and had just enough to be able to cut the strips of paper lace too.

This is one of the two designs from the Lace Thinlits set released a couple of years ago.

Most of my butterfly Design Tape had become invisible under the crackle, so I added some more of that...

... as well as some actual lace from Tim's Idea-ology Lace Trimmings.

There's a bit of script stamping done in Stormy Sky Oxide.

And I used the leftover blobs from cutting the lace to add some extra detailing.

A few ivory sequins dotted around catch the light rather nicely.

And the Idea-ology Quote Chip gives me the necessary words to finish things off.

In the end, I really like this mixed-media card.  And it's flat enough to go through the post without extra charges!

I hope that's given you some card-making inspiration.  Thanks so much for pausing in your journey with me today.  There's still plenty of time to join in with our current Book It! challenge so do come and join us.  Have fun on your crafting travels.

Alison x