Our latest winner, Pinworthy mentions and welcome Nicola

Welcome everyone to our winner's post which is packed full of information for you. First up is our first winner guest designer project and what a stunner it is. But when you've had a good look at that please continue scrolling down to find our latest challenge winner and a new introduction of special awards.

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CHALLENGE 1 GUEST DESIGNER

Our guest today has the most wonderful vintage style and creates the most amazing projects so it is with great pleasure I introduce to you -

Nicola from Paper Profusion 

who was our Challenge 1 winner and who also has a worthy place on our Pinterest Winner’s Board.

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. From very young I was an avid knitter and always enjoyed learning crafts especially ones involving paper. 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 it gave me an outlet to a home based hobby that I could dabble in, at my own pace. I’m particularly drawn to the vintage / shabby chic genres usually adding lots of embellishments and ribbon.

I’ve visited Paris 4 times and absolutely love it as a city, most especially for its architecture. On my first visit to Paris (many moons ago) my friend and I took a day trip to the stunning Palace of Versailles with its incredible gilded opulence.

With these memories in mind, I’ve altered a Prima ornate metal frame using abundant gilding and including some of the main Parisian sights. I’ve tried to recreate the decadence that would have been on show to Parisians centuries ago.

I’ve used all my French themed Tim Holtz goodies (as well as other brands) in terms of stamps and embossing folders (and even cheated with one Tim stamp I didn't have and used a printout instead –  which ‘stamp’ is the fake do you think?).  Lots of stamping and stencilling (gilded of course) is in the background.

. I love the way Mona Lisa turned out (she is stamped on muslin) and the little chipboard carriage painted up a treat. 

Thank-you so much to all at A Vintage Journey for allowing me to feature as Guest Designer today. It is such a thrill to be the winner of your inaugural challenge and I’ve loved making up this little French scene.

Thank you Nicola, we have been transported back to another time and place with this stunning project and I am sure everyone is going to sit looking at these wonderful photos and the amazing details for quite some time, I know I did.

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This week Alison and the Creative Guides had the most difficult job of choosing a winner for the second challenge ‘Say it with Words’.

Here is what Alison has to say -

Thank you all so much for your fantastic entries to the Say It With Words challenge.  It was a delight to see what you came up with, and there were so many inventive, creative and beautiful projects.   Choosing just one winner was no easy task, but it had to be done so, 

without more ado...

the winner is…….

#12 "Mots" de Lys from ImpressionScrap.

From the artfully Distress Inked Kraft Resist paper forming the background, to all the Idea-ology bits and bobs and stickers, this is full of touches of Tim, and has a glorious vintage look.  Added to that, the whole project is composed around words.  There are words used as a decorative feature - both script and typescript - and things related to words - the glorious vintage books in the photograph, the shabby book pages, typewriter and pen nibs.  Not to mention that it's beautifully put together...  Do pay her a visit to see some great close-ups of the details, and thank you all again for playing along so brilliantly.

Thank you for sharing your fabulous project with us and for taking the time to make it specific to the challenge and congratulations on being the second 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 telling us a bit about yourself and your crafting talents.

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PINWORTHY MENTIONS

We have our own Pinterest page and have decided as we don’t do a Top 3 we would like to acknowledge other wonderful projects and artists who are joining us on our journey and will do this on a special Pinworthy Board and the special mentions are chosen by the host of that challenge.

From Challenge 1 my (Brenda) Pinworthy Mentions are -

#8 Minxy (Nicky) from The Altered Inker

#81 Sandy Diller from My Crafty Life

#89 Zuzu from Zuzu’s Petals, Altered Art and Stuff

From Challenge 2 Alison’s Pinworthy Mentions are -

#50 Jayne from Sooner Scrapper

#25 Lisa from Adventures in Paperland

#8 Rosie from Rosie’s Bastelwelt

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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 Astrid’s ‘A Little bit French’ challenge and we look forward to seeing you.

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Onto other information - I have had an email from some-one who says she can’t join in the challenges because she doesn’t have very many Tim Holtz products, please we do not ‘expect’ you to use all Tim's products for your projects – if you have them and you have used them so that they are your Tim focus then that’s great but there are other ways to join in too. Because we ask that your work is strongly influenced by Tim, then we want to see and read about his influence on your entry, that could be by ‘casing’ one of his projects but using other products that you own, using one of his techniques to create something similar to his makes or your own design or it could be that you’ve read his books, watched his videos/DVDs or completed Creative Chemistry 101 and 102 and have followed his processes to complete your design.
Just tell us what that strong influence is so that we can fully understand your thinking.
I have updated the Travelling Instructions with this info and I have also added a written guide for interpreting A Vintage Journey styles. I hope this makes it clearer as to what we are looking for.

Many thanks for all your support and wonderful comments on our posts and a big thank you to Alison who was the host of challenge 2.

See you Monday with another amazing Guest Creative Guide and a wonderful project for you to feast your eyes on.

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading right down here to the bottom.

Enjoy the journey.