A Vintage Journey: April 2014

Monday 28 April 2014

Our latest Guest Creative Guide……..

Today we have our fourth Guest Creative Guide at A Vintage Journey and we are so pleased to welcome the lovely….

Andrea Ockey Parr

Andrea is a self-proclaimed literary nerd and eternal librarian who can never get enough Ralph Waldo Emerson or Gesso. Her artsy style is whimsical and colorful with some grungy vintage elements mixed in. Though she failed to sew an A-worthy 90's floral vest in her junior high sewing class (patterns give her hives), she does love to incorporate fabric and stitching into her projects. In addition to fabric scraps, she enjoys working with paper, stamps, ink and paint. Her creations have been featured in several publications, including cover art, in such magazines as Cloth Paper Scissors, Stuffed, Somerset Studio, SEW Somerset, and The Stampers’ Sampler. She has also served on several prominent Design Teams and enjoys teaching local crafting classes. To see her work, visit snappingmonsters.blogspot.com.

When I heard the theme of "Spring Flowers," I immediately pictured some sort of forest nymph with flowers adorning her gown. And so my project was born! I made the body of this mixed media doll from a re-purposed jewelry hanger that came in the shape of a torso. I removed the jewelry hooks from her neck and arms and replaced them with a head and arms that I molded out of clay.

I made my girl a brand new wardrobe using Tim Holtz's fabulous "Dictionary" fabric for her dress. This is such a great fabric to use for a text-filled background on any project. I adhered scraps of colored fabric to my girl's dress and rubbed on some Tim Holtz Distress ink to give it more dimension. I also stamped some butterflies onto her dress using Tim Holtz's Papillon stamp set. Once the gown was finished, I adorned it with flowers.

The flowers I used started out white, but I gave them an ethereal-looking paint job using Tim Holtz Distress Inks and water. Since I wanted my girl to look like a nymph or fairy, I created some wings for her out of craft wire, scraps and string. Lastly, I gave her a head of gorgeous orange hair made from various yarns and fibers with one section tied back with another flower. This theme was so inspiring and it was a thrill to use Tim's products to welcome in Spring after a long, gray, slushy Winter!

Thanks Andrea for joining us for this leg of our journey as a Guest Creative Guide and for sharing this amazing project with us. It’s fabulous to see Tim’s fabric being used and in something so creative and inspirational.

To find out more about Andrea's fabulous work please pop over to her blog to see more of the amazing art she produces.

Don’t forget you have another four days to join in with our current challenge which is ‘Spring Flowers’ hosted by the lovely Jennie and please remember to TELL US IN YOUR POST WHAT THE STRONG INFLUENCE TO TIM HOLTZ IS SO THAT WE CAN FULLY UNDERSTAND YOUR THINKING and know the inspiration behind the project you have made.

I have to give a shout out to the amazing Creative Guides where 5 of us got an amazing accolade from Tim on his Springtime Blogworthy Links post last week. Thanks Tim for including us in your special mentions.

Before I finish – have you got your Compendium of Curiosities 3 yet? It’s packed full of Tim’s newest wonderful techniques and you can get your copy from Tim himself (who will sign it for you) or from Country View Crafts (sorry not signed by Tim although Susan said she would sign it for you if you wished lol. She also has CC1 and CC2 available if you want them too). Once you have your book you will be able to join in the CC3 Challenge at Linda Ledbetter's blog Studio L3 where she is the amazing host and leader of this wonderful challenge. She has also gathered a fabulous Curiosity Crew who have provided some incredible inspiration. Do go take a look at this weeks theme which is great technique from Tim.

Thanks again to Andrea for sharing her incredible project with us here at A Vintage Journey and to all of you who jump aboard to travel along with us.

Have a great week everyone.

hugs Brenda xx

Friday 25 April 2014

New Winners and a new Guest winner project

It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to Lys who won the last challenge and joins us as a Guest Designer this week. She also has a worthy place on our Pinterest Winner’s Board.

“I’m very happy and so honoured to be the guest designer for the 4^th Challenge on A Vintage Journey, such delighted and thankful to the so inspiring team! My name in blogland is Lys, and I live in a village in France.

As far back as I can remember, I have always loved creating. Any recovered object could become something else. Then I started with the world of miniature: display cases, 1900’s dollhouse, never finished ... I always decorated my photo albums but it became scrapbooking ten years ago.

My full-time job leaves me little free time, but since last year my children leave one after another the family nest, and after having scrapped many of their portraits, I refocused on what myself wish to express. I am a psychologist, and meeting children everyday, I am never far from creative, intensive and full of possibilities that is their world, feeling so lucky when they allow me to enter for a while.

Story, deepness, meaning and expression are what guide my crafting.

When I saw the theme of this new challenge, I immediately thought “shabby”, and light colours as pink and cream. I also had a look on the Japanese cherry-tree we planted in our garden, which gives us a fabulous white and pink blooming in April.

I always wished to make an altered book, so I thought it was the opportunity… and a real challenge for me! I wished an old book but the kind I will never read again, not a precious and antique one… I used gesso to make the writing lighter, and to thicken the pages that I folded and tore here and there to give them life.

I also wanted to make my own flowers, inspired by Tim Holtz’s videos … I tried and tried again… until it looked like flowers!

I used distress inks, mostly “tattered rose”, “antique linen” and “peeled paint”. The picture is from our cherry-tree, based on a piece of fabric. Other pictures and papers are gathered from my drawers (I especially love “Maja Design” papers and “Madame Payraud’s” collection).

The medallion is a rub-on on a piece of fabric, circled by a ring and covered with “crackle accents”.

I wanted movement. That’s why most of the things are on one side. The page strangely crumpled was a lucky accident, as I found it stuck with gesso, and left it like that… I hope you can imagine that move, as if the flowers, no matter the story told in the book, were strongly following their own way, towards the Spring sun.”

Lys

Impression Scrap

This week Astrid and the Creative Guides had the most difficult job of choosing a winner for the third challenge ‘A Little Bit French’ here is what Astrid had to say -

“Thank you all so much for your amazing contributions to our third challenge with the theme " A little bit French"! What a talented group of travellers you are! From the streets of Paris to the countryside of Provence, all of your contributions were amazing and we want to thank you for sharing them with us. It was the hardest task to choose an overall winner and a top 3 who will all be "pinworthies" and will be added to our Pinterest boards, which at the moment of writing have nearly 3000 followers!

But needs must, so here goes:

Our overall winner for this round was: no: 26 Jools Robertson, with an amazing altered box and set of playing cards!

Jools used many products that were not Tim Holtz, but yet the overall effect was totally Tim Holtz inspired and all the Creative Guides just loved it!!

And now for the 3 pinworthies, in no particular order:

no 2 Kerstin F

no 15 Louise Zuzu Crosbie

no 28 Lerusho aka Ruth

Thanks Jools for sharing your fabulous projects with us and congratulations on being our next Traveller to gain the Winner’s badge. You will soon receive notification of your prize which is a £10 voucher to spend in-store at Country View Crafts. We hope you will join us for the next challenge as a Guest Designer and create something to share and tell us a bit about yourself and your crafting talents.

A big thank you to everyone else who joined us for this leg of the journey, as always it is such a pleasure to come and visit your blogs and look at your art work in more detail. Don’t forget you have one more week to join in Jennie’s ‘Spring Flowers’ challenge and we look forward to seeing you aboard.

Enjoy the journey.

hugs Brenda

xxx

Monday 21 April 2014

Destination Inspiration – Pastel floral shadow box

I've been given the honour of having my second excursion ticket today for Destination Inspiration and decided to keep to our floral theme with this pastel shadow box:

The glass fronted frame is made of a smooth, natural wood so I started with a layer of Picket fence DP rather than Gesso:

Next came Milled lavender and Shaded lilac DPs painted in rough patches all around the frame. When dry, Picket fence DP was stippled all over the block colours with a stippling brush:

So far:

Turning to the inside, I cut a square smaller that the size of the box frame and misted it all over with water then sponged on the lavendar and lilac DPs with a fine sponge. Before it dried I added sploshes of Milled lavender DS with a pipette which I then blew about around with the spritz tool to get a marbled effect:

Using Tim's Bubble layering stencil and some Dusty concord DI I added some inky texture:

Then another stencil (Splatters) and Picket fence DP before adding some random stamping (Tim's Curiosities set - CMS 104):

The edges were inked with Antique linen DI before being mounted on a piece of block colour card:

I tore a strip of white paper diagonally and stained it all over with Milled lavender DS dabbing Dusty concord DS randomly over it before it was completely dry. Once it had dried, it was torn into 3 pieces and edged with Antique linen DI then rolled and glued into tubes:

Now it's time for the flowers and, of course, it has to be Tim's Tattered floral die (standard Bigz) cut from thin white card and book pages. The larger shape has been smear stained with Shaded lilac DI and then misted whereas the medium and small shapes were stained with Milled lavender and Victorian velvet DSs. The larger shape was then debossed using a spotty embossing folder rubbed with DI:

I made the smaller flower by reducing the petals on the medium shape and just adding a fringed centre:

Stained tissue tape was added to the background before mounting it on it's final white base:

Leaves for the flowers were cut from mount board using Tim's Regal crest Bigz die then painted white. The silver tone butterfly was painted lilac and some chit chat stickers edged with Dusty concord: