Final Stop - August Destination Inspiration

Hi everyone and welcome! Jenny here reporting for duty. So here we are, arriving at our final stop for this month's Destination Inspiration and it's my turn to create with the contents of the travel bag this month.

Just as a reminder, this is what's in the suitcase:

Product - Paint

Substrate - Tag

Colour - Smoky Grey Blue (think Stormy Sky and Weathered Wood)

Technique - Resist (paint, embossing or mediums)

And here's the tag I came up with...

I started with a jumbo manilla tag, trimmed on each side to fit a DL card base. Smearing it with Weathered Wood Distress Paint using my finger gave a nice uneven coverage which acted as a resist to the Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink blended over the top.

A little 'spritz and flick' with water allowed the Distress Ink to do it's magic and I added a little Walnut Stain to the edges to create a more distinct edge.

One of my new Patchwork Pieces borders was ideal for creating a border around the tag. Simply remove the gold embossing powder from the corners where you overlap the design before heating and the joins are seamless!

The whole thing needed a little va-va-voom so I used Tumbled Glass Distress Paint on the larger of the Patchwork backgrounds and covered the entire tag.

From the same Patchwork set I used the smaller design on a piece of black card, stamping with Picket Fence Distress Paint.

I HAD to play with the new Distress Crayons that have just arrived in the craft room courtesy of Tim and Mario, and reached for my all time favourite, Tumbled Glass, to coordinate with the tag. If you add a little to the uncovered areas of the Wildflower stencil and blend through with your finger you get a fabulous translucent effect with a distinct opaque border.

With the two main layers created I combined them, using a strip of Textile Surfaces, Linen Ribbon, some Idea-Ology Ephemera and stitching. To make the Wildflower die cut less one dimensional I blended a little of the Frayed Burlap Distress Crayon with water and painted it on. And as this is going in my card stash a die cut sentiment provided the finishing touch.

Here are some close ups of the completed tag...

As this is our final stop on this month's Destination Inspiration journey, let's take a look back at the wonderful projects created by my fellow Creative Guides.

Anne

Deb

Alison

Once again a simple travel bag of ingredients has resulted in such varied and wonderful creations from my uber-talented fellow Creative Guides. They never fail to amaze and inspire me and I'm sure that's true for you too.

Thanks so much for travelling along with us this month. September will bring a new travel bag and another amazing Destination Inspiration journey. And remember, there are still a few days left to join in the fun with the August challenge 'Stencil It!'

Have a wonderful week and whatever you're up to, take care of yourselves.

Jenny xxx

Another wonderful Guest Creative Guide

Welcome to the fourth Friday of the month when we introduce a fantastic guest with her really beautiful project. I am sure you are going to love this stencil creation from Susan and it's over to her to tell you about herself and more about her design.

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Hello Everyone!  My name is Susan Mostek.  I was so honored to be asked to be A Vintage Journey Creative Guide this month for the Stencil-It theme!

I live in beautiful Boulder, Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountain with my husband.  I have two grown children, now 28 and 26.  Crafting has always been a big part of my life since a young age.  My mother said it was always hard to keep me in supplies!  I discovered paper crafting shortly after moving to Boulder almost 22 years ago and have never looked back.  I love to host (Compendium of Curiosities and now Creative Carte Blanche) and participate in art adventures and have been published in multiple magazines over the years.

As I am surrounded by incredible beauty here in Colorado, I took my inspiration from Nature for my stenciled piece along with one of my favorite quotes.

I began by stenciling clouds onto a piece of watercolor paper using an old cloud stencil and DecoArt paints in Primary Cyan and Titanium White mixed together.  I started with heavier color at the top, making it lighter as I worked down the paper.  I then went over the light areas with white gesso and a stipple brush to make the clouds look "puffier".

Just to show you that you can always change your mind when you do something you don't like, here is the photo of my original clouds.  I decided that the blue of the sky was way too bright, so I toned it down quite a bit.

Once dry, I used a stencil called "Art Is" from Crafter's Companion to add some words randomly over the top of the piece using Vintage photo Distress Ink.

Then I laid down the pieces I wanted to incorporate into my project for placement and added this lovely quote from B Line Designs.  I stamped the quote onto tissue paper using black Archival ink and then split it in half and adhered it with matte medium, leaving room to place a Woodland Branch die cut from memory Box.

At this point I stenciled Tim's Wildflowers using Vintage Photo Distress Ink along the bottom and into the center of the paper.  I love that there is a coordinating Wildflower die now as I knew the dies would be perfect to place over the top of the stencil.  They add so much depth to the piece.

To finish it off, I adhered the branch along with some flowers die cut from patterned paper scraps using Tim Holtz's Sizzix Alterations Tattered Flower Garland die.    The birds are from Tim's Sizzix Alterations Birds in Flight die cut from dark brown scrap card stock.

I Initially thought I would alter a frame for this piece, however, I found a Shabby Chic frame at my local hobby store that I felt was perfect to accent my finished art and wouldn't take away from it.  I love it!

Thanks again to the lovely ladies at A Vintage Journey.  I am loving all the wonderful stencil art I have seen this month!

For more information, please visit my blog paperskiesandhazeleyes.  I would love to see you there!

Susan

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Thank you so much Susan for being such a fabulous guest and sharing this beautiful frame with us with it's wonderful neutral tones and perfect sentiment. The clouds and the sky look so authentic in the background and those sweet little flowers adding just a pop of dimension is perfect.


So you have till Wednesday to add your creation to the linky to join the wonderful collection of entries that has been gathering this month. and maybe you will be the winner of the £"0 gift voucher from Country View Crafts.

Have a great weekend and thanks for joining us.

hugs Brenda and the AVJ Guides. xxx

Destination Inspiration, Terminal 3 - Alison

Hello all, it's Alison here arriving at Terminal 3 of Destination Inspiration.  We've already stopped for wonderful projects at Terminal 1 with Anne and at Terminal 2 with Deb, and now it's my turn to create with the contents of the travel bag this month.
Just as a reminder, this is what's in the suitcase:

Product - Paint

Substrate - Tag

Colour - Smoky Grey Blue (think Stormy Sky and Weathered Wood)

Technique - Resist (paint, embossing or mediums)

And here's the tag I came up with...

I started by putting a coat of PaperArtsy Chalk Fresco Paint onto a plain manila tag, and then stamping Tim Holtz's Cracks background in Versamark and clear-embossing it.

So that was my paint and my resist - now for something for it to resist!  I used Distress Stains in Stormy Sky, Weathered Wood and Hickory Smoke to create the almost stained glass look.

Having the coat of paint underneath means the Stains don't soak into the tag in the same way - they sit on the surface a little and create lovely effects as you dry them.  You can see the grain of the paint brush strokes too, which I really like.

By now I'd covered all the travel bag contents requirements, so I was free to go in any direction with what to put over my background.  Whatever I did next, I would still have my lovely light-catching resist mosaic.

The gorgeous Bird Silhouette is a favourite die of mine so I cut him from some Tim Holtz paper and inked the edges with Ground Espresso DI.

Some more paper scraps provide the "ground" for him to stand on.  He's mounted on padded tape, by the way, to give that extra touch of dimension.

I was in a gentle frame of mind, so I cut some soft off-white Wildflower die-cuts to go behind him (also inked with Ground Espresso)...

... and I added some actual dried Wildflower stems to the mix.  I love the fragile dimensionality - not one for sending through the post, this!

Adding the lower parts of the stems was an afterthought.  They're just tucked in, but I think they're positioned about right to create the illusion that they're all attached somewhere behind his back.

Obviously I needed some words - Small Talk stickers to the rescue, as so often.  I can't think what I did before these little phrases were released.

So that's my Destination Inspiration tag for you.  I hope you like it.

Do drop in next Monday to see who's at Terminal 4 and, in the meantime, we'd love you to come and play in Amanda's fantastic Stencil It challenge - there's still plenty of time.  Thanks so much for stopping at Destination Inspiration with me today.  See you again soon.

Alison x

Pinworthy Inspiration Day

Hi everyone, Nikki here to introduce our guest designers who were selected from a previous challenge as the Creative Guide favourites - our Pinworthies! Today we welcome Mo and Hazel to share a project on this month's challenge theme - Stencil It.

Mo Stokes

Hi Everyone, My name is Mo and I live in a beautiful part of Norfolk, England near the coast with my hubby Alan and our gorgeous rescue dog 'Georgie'. I have always enjoyed making things since I was a little girl, my style tends to lean towards the Vintage/Shabby Chic side of things and I love experimenting with mixed media. I don't usually plan my projects in advance, I just like to go with the flow and see where my imagination takes me.

I am so excited and honoured to be asked by the team at AVJ once again to do a guest design piece for their latest challenge 'Stencil It' hosted by Amanda

My Wanderlust Journal cover was in desperate need of some tlc as it was just a rather drab Kraft cover, far from inspiring so I thought this was a perfect opportunity get out my stencils paint and texture pastes to brighten it up.

I lost count of quite how many stencils I used on my cover, but there were quite a few. I just took a paint colour and stencil, then changed the paint colour and used a different stencil building up the layers. Next came texture paste, again I used different stencils and different colours of paste. As you can see I kept the back cover a little less decorative but still matching the front up to the finishing touches.

To make Mr Umbrella Man pop and also to ground him, I used contrasting paint colours brayered onto card and then used texture paste through a stencil. You can still see all the layers of stencilled paint under the texture paste

I used a wash of paint colours over the crackle paste and as you can see it settled nicely into the cracks. I used Distress Rock Candy crackle paste all over the Journal to seal the Artwork and to give it a good hard protective coat.

Here also you can see some of the inked and stamped vintage ribbon on the spine along with organza ribbon used off the peg.

To see how my Journal cover came together step by step, please visit my blog post http://almocraft.blogspot.com/2016/08/avj-stencil-it-guest-design.html

Mo xx

Hazel Agnew

Hi, I'm Hazel Agnew, and I am thrilled to be asked to add my contribution as a guest designer here on  "A Vintage Journey".

I have been crafting since I retired from work around 8 years ago, and have wandered through just about every medium on the planet. I love to draw and have grown in confidence with lots of practice.

I particularly enjoy messy crafting and work spontaneously...never quite knowing where my creations will take me.

Here is my piece for the project entitled 'Stencil It".

I confess to this being my second effort as I tried too hard on the first one!

Step One:- I selected a page in my ancient Girls Annual and gessoed the page. I added some Deco Art crackle paste through a small stencil by Thats Crafty and pasted a little manuscript.

Step two:- Next, I applied some Paperatsy frescos, Sky and Taupe, using my fingers, and before they were dry I rubbed off some circles of paint through the same circles stencil. I then added some contrast circles by stencilling the same circles with a foam pad and archival inks in Coffee and Cornflower Blue. 

Step three:- I darkened the crackle paste circles by rubbing over with a vintage photo ink pad and added more interest by adding Treasure Gold in Sapphire and White Fire. 

Step four:- My last injection of the circular stencil was to draw circles through it onto patterned paper. I cut them out and arranged them onto my composition. I also added a photo chosen from Tim Holtz Photo Booth and a poem selected from a poetry book bought at the local charity shop.

In my story, the girl is very young and flirtatious and she dabbles in waters that are dangerous for her. A young man is smitten and is tormented by the fact that she is beautiful and too young for him.....he is noble and gallant and decides that sense will prevail over his feelings, hence, the photo and poem about "Love without hope". 

A little love token just finishes off the sad love story that never was!

I hope that you have enjoyed my post and seen that there are many ways to use a stencil. Thanks to A Vintage Journey for asking me to contribute and if you want to see more, my blog is "Mellifluous Meanderings". 

And just for the record, here is my first effort that was overworked. Thanks for looking! 

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Thank you Mo and Hazel for creating these fabulous projects for us today.

Our Stencil It challenge is open until the end of August - do come and join in.

Nikki
xxx

Destination Inspiration August: Arriving At Terminal Two

Hello everyone, it's Deb here today to guide you through the second stop on our Destination Inspiration journey for August (click here to see Anne's lovely creation from last week!)  Our carry on bags are packed with some fun products and techniques this month, here's a review of the contents.

Product: Paint

Technique: Resist (paint, embossing or mediums)

Colour: Smoky grey/blue (think Stormy Sky and Weathered Wood Distress)

Substrate: Tag

I'm taking Tim Holtz's Summer of Creative Chemistry online course and we have just revisited Tim's Shabby Chic paint resist technique. It was the perfect technique to incorporate into my Destination Inspiration project so that became the starting point for my Papillon mixed media tag.

I coloured a piece of manila cardstock with Walnut Stain Distress paint and then stamped the script stamp from Tim Holtz's Papillon stamp set with Distress embossing ink and clear embossed it.

The tag was die cut and then coloured entirely with Weathered Wood Distress paint.  I waited until the paint was slightly tacky and then gently rubbed it off the embossed areas with a slightly dampened cloth.  The embossed areas resisted the top coat of paint and easily wiped away to reveal that lovely script!

A piece of cold press watercolour paper was torn into a strip about 2 1/2" x 5".  I coloured the stacked butterflies stamp from the Papillon set with several shades of yellow and grey/blue Distress inks and markers, spritzed the stamp slightly with water and stamped it onto the watercolour paper.

For a second resist technique, I covered the watercolour stamped butterflies with Distress Micro Glaze and, after buffing off the excess, gave the watercolour paper strip a wash of diluted Weathered Wood Distress ink.  The glaze resisted the Weathered Wood wash and kept the butterflies colours bright and beautiful.  Before adding this strip to my tag, I spattered it with some diluted black acrylic paint and aged the edges with Walnut Stain Distress ink.

A Stitched Oval frame was die cut from brown Neutral Coredinations cardstock and gently sanded to reveal the kraft core.

At the same time, I die cut the frame from black fun foam and adhered it behind the Coredinations frame to give it some dimension as you can see in the photo above.

A small scalloped tag was die cut from manila cardstock with a Tag Collection die and stamped with the 'make art' sentiment and a couple of hearts from Wendy Vecchi's Just Say It Background stamp.  The sentiment was stamped with Black Soot Distress Archival ink and clear embossed.

The small tag was then coloured with Stormy Sky and Weathered Wood Distress inks using the wrinkle free distress technique and edged with more Walnut Stain DI.  I attached it to a small rusty safety pin with a jump ring.

Butterflies were added to the top left and bottom right corners of the #8 tag from Tim Holtz's Elements Remnant Rubs.  It was only after I started to add them that I realized that they were the same butterflies as the stamps!

More manila card was coloured with Distress inks in two colour ways, one piece in shades of yellow and one piece in shades of grey/blue.  The grey/blue card was then stamped with a fine script stamp and Vintage Photo Distress Archival ink and clear embossed to echo the shabby chic paint resist background on the tag.

The EK Success Layered Butterfly punch was then used to cut two butterflies from the coloured card and they were layered and adhered to the stitched oval frame.  I wanted just a peek of yellow and orange through the grey/blue butterfly's wings to reflect the colouring of the stamped watercolour butterflies beside it.

The strip of watercolour paper was adhered to the tag background and the stitched oval frame was centered on top.

I added a brad to each corner of the watercolour paper.

It's difficult to see but I also added just a touch of Stardust Stickles glitter glue along the top edges of each of the watercoloured butterfly's wings.

And as a finishing touch, I coloured some Crinkle Ribbon with Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky and Walnut Stain DI's and tied it to the top of the tag, along with a bit of black and brown yarn, with a piece of jute twine.  The small scalloped tag was then pinned in place.

I hope that you have enjoyed seeing how I utilized the contents of my carry on bag to make my Papillon mixed media tag.

 

Be sure to stop by again next Monday when Alison will be here to show us what she created for our Destination Inspiration journey and also don't forget to join in our August challenge Stencil It!  Thanks again for stopping by today and as always, happy creating!

Deb xo