Destination Inspiration Arriving at Terminal 3

I'm so pleased that you've arrived at Terminal 3 with me today!  Autumn from SewPaperPaint with you to guide you along with the contents of our travel bag yet again:

Product - any ink or acrylic paint

Technique - brayering

Color - pale blue

Substrate - book

I was in the mood to work with my new PaperArtsy stamp set, and with its hefty size I grabbed a Prima greyboard tag as my substrate, adding the layer of "book" in the pages I adhered with Mod Podge.  I dipped my panel in Vintage Photo Distress Oxide to get an earthy base for my pale blues.

Next I brayered three similar blue hues onto my substrate, drying each layer lightly before adding the next.  The moisture from the paint seemed to pull up the DOX and blend it into my layers - what an amazing effect!  I toned things down a tad with a light brayering of white gesso.  

I added some DecoArt texture sand paste through a dotty stencil and it also pulled up the DOX - I was thrilled!

I had recently won a giveaway from Shoregirl's Creations.  She included these amazing molded caulk lace bits from her tutorial HERE.  Do check it out, as these are flexible and dimensional - a must have for the mixed media artist!  Thank you Esther!  I inked up my butterfly panel with DI, and layered over a section of the silicone lace.  

I stamped my sentiment on a leftover panel and did a wrap around on my tag.  I added a gessoed flower from my tutorial HERE.  Finally, I added a butterfly wing left over from the Mini Album I made for Creativation this year.  You can find the details on that process HERE.

Our Creative Guide's have offered such amazing inspiration this May...

Arriving at Terminal 1 we had S@ndy's fabulous journal spread.

And our last stop at Terminal 2, with Amanda's fabulous book.

All in all, what a winning lineup of inspiration this month!  I hope you've been inspired to play along with our current challenge, Use a Quote.  Perhaps you will be the lucky winner of the That's Crafty gift voucher!  Until next time, Autumn <3

Something different - A spotlight on .........

Welcome everyone to what is normally our usual guest post but today we are adding something new and different into the mix - we are introducing a 'Spotlight' post and beginning today with one of our newest Creative Guides. Sara Emily is a very talented artist who loves being on the blogging circuit enjoying making many wonderful and varied projects and joining in challenges. When she joined us here at A Vintage Journey she sent over her bio and this is what she said.

I am delighted to be joining this talented group of Creative Guides! I have been crafting on and off most of my life starting with the dried macaroni, paper and homemade glue my Mom would entertain us with as toddlers. As a small child I remember spending countless hours drawing "rooms" with grand architecture full of fancy furniture. My love of art grew in high school where I took every art class I could fit in my schedule and spent hours before and after school in the art room. It's there where I befriended identical twins Mike and Doug Starn. While they went the path of becoming world renown photographers and artists (always doing their works jointly), I pursued a career in Physical Therapy, which I have taken an early retirement from. My love for all things vintage and discovering Distress products leads me to where I am now...happily creating in my little Closet! Occasionally, I venture out to the garage to refurbish furniture and other finds or to the garden to pull weeds.

I am going to hand over to her now to tell us a little more about herself and for her to share one of her AVJ projects.

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What a sweet and generous intro, Brenda! I love being on this wonderful team! One of my favorite thing to do when I craft is to make something from nothing, and I often use "trash" in my makes. You'll see how I used my "trash" on this tag.

 Besides crafting, I love gardening and just being outdoors. A little known fact you might not know about me is I worked as a professional gardener when I started blogging, and this is where most of my crafting inspiration comes from. I'm sharing a photo of the private garden I worked in--it's on the Intracoastal Waterway. If you look hard you might see the water in the background--yuck--it was low tide! One of my jobs was to feed the swans--lucky me! The less grand garden is my own, but it keeps me busy.  Well, that and my husband and two 18 year old kids.

Ever since the 12 Tags factory shut down over at Tim's blog, I've not made many tags, so I was super excited to make this one!

For the background, I painted gesso on a Ranger manila tag.  I blended DOX Broken China around edges and dried with my heat tool.  Next I spritzed a script stamp with water and made an impression over the top and bottom of the tag and again dried with the heat tool. Originally I had plans to add something to the center, but changed my mind and embossed with my Tim Holtz doily (yet unused) Texture Fade. I first inked the raised portion of the folder with DOX Broken China directly from the pad. I spritzed lightly with water to activate the ink and ran it through my Big Kick. I allowed the ink to puddle in the recesses by moving the tag around and then drying. I blended Frayed Burlap ink around the edges and over the raised doily. I very lightly dipped the tag into beads of activated Wilted Violet DOX , just enough to pick up the beads of color. I dried and then splattered with Blueprint Sketch Distress ink and watered down DecoArt  Everlasting Chalky paint .

The two purple strips started out baby blue. I found the strip on my worktop, and I have no idea where it came from. (Closet Fairy)  It looks to be some sort of packing material. I needed a vertical element, and I thought it would be perfect. I colored the strip with Wilted Violet DOX  and Blueprint Sketch Distress ink to pick up some of the colors on the butterfly wings and from my splattering. I cut it in half vertically, offsetting the strips. I think it gives a fun contrast to the otherwise vintage look of my tag. Tags are like journal pages, right? Just for fun! The die cut clock (Momenta)was also on my worktop; I inked the edges with Frayed Burlap DI.  The butterflies and sentiment (Tim Holtz  Botanical Layers and Clippings Stickers) were Mother's Day gifts from my sweet daughter. I scuffed the butterflies up a little to take some of the shine off them and inked them with Frayed Burlap and just a bit of Wilted Violet DOX around the edges. I matted the clippings  sticker with card to give it stability, and mounted it on a scrap of thin chipboard to elevate it a little. To finish off the tag, I cut a backing out of chipboard from Roger's canned cat food box and edged it in Everlasting paint. I used Tim's Linen ribbon for the topper.

What a fun time I had making this little tag and it took no time at all!

Thanks for looking!

Hugs and Blessings!

Sara Emily

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How lovely to learn a little more about Sara Emily and to find out she was a professional gardener and what beautiful gardens she creates; I often find that artists and crafters have a natural affinity with nature in some form or another. It's also great to see a tag from her too, she's right we do seem to see fewer of them these days but they are the perfect size for creating small pieces of art. Thank you Sara Emily for sharing your post and gorgeous tag with us today and for bringing this wonderful combination of the natural world and the artistic world together.

Have a wonderful weekend and if you are reading this from the UK have a great Bank Holiday Monday and we'll see you for a new Destination Inspiration post on Monday and a new challenge next Friday when we will be in the month of June - Really?

Hugs Brenda and Sara Emily xxx

More Pinworthy Inspiration

Hello and thank you for stopping by. We are excited to introduce our talented Pinworthy winners from February's challenge: Jan from Scrapbooking From The Attic, Kasia from Papierowy Wymiar and Zelda from Out Of Africa Creations. They have all made wonderful projects for our current 'Use A Quote' challenge, enjoy!

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Jan

Hi, so excited to be here! I seem to have been crafting forever, I enjoyed art at school and college but was always more interested in sculpture and 3D work. I am easily bored and look for new ways to use my stash. The best thing about crafting is the amazing people you meet and the inspiration you get from their enthusiasm. I am inspired by colour, texture and shape in the natural world and architecture.

The theme of Quotes, chosen by Jenny was interesting. I have a small jar full of quotes so I chose a
couple and the one that appealed to me was:

" You are the only one who can make your dreams come true"



I wanted to make a journal cover for experimental creations and trying out new techniques, so the quote fitted well. I chose the colours from a photo I had taken of Spring blossom. I used the journal to find acrylic colours which would match my palette.



The colours reflected the dream like feel I wanted to create and linked to my Pinworthy hanging.I used stamps, stencils and added machine sewing to add more texture and interest.




Thank you to AVJ for this opportunity to join in the May Challenge. I hope you get an impression of my work, details are on my blog scrapintheattic.com.


Kasia

Hello, I'm Kasia from Poland and I am so excited to be a Pinworthy Guest at A Vintage Journey.



I love creating LO and albums and my son is my greatest inspiration :) I wanted to keep memories for my family and this is the reason why I started scrapbooking. Now, it is a part of my life. I often incorporate stitching on my pages and I'm always looking for elements in everyday life.

This month's theme ‘Use A Quote' inspired me to create a vintage card with quote in its inside.



I used here old laces, crochet napkin and some beads. I dyed all these elements by coffee. There is broken pendant in the center, it's metal purse and I put there some flowers.



The quote is from 'Norwegian wood' by Haruki Murakami: "All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don’t live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors."

I hope you like it.

All my scrapwork can be found here on my blog: Papierowy wymiar



Zelda

Hello everyone! I'm thrilled to be back at A Vintage Journey as a Pinworthy Guest and excited to share my 'Use A Quote' project with you.



I've always enjoyed creating but only discovered blogland and online challenges a few years ago. I love trying new techniques and different styles and I find participating in challenges encourages me to do just that.

Today's project is an altered box which I made for my daughter's birthday and I found the perfect inspirational quote.



I had a box which was the exact size needed, but it required altering as I wanted a hinged lid. I also reinforced the inside with chipboard to make it very sturdy. I then selected the color scheme, matching patterned papers and all the embellishments I wanted to add to my project.

Here is the inside:



I distressed and inked all the edges and added lace to finish it off.

The inside of the hinged lid.



Once again all the edges were distressed and inked. I inserted a panel covered with satin material, added some lace and the two triangles of patterned paper which create a pocket. A lace die cut border and pearls finished it off.

For more details please visit my blog Out of Africa Creations.  Thank you so much to A Vintage Journey for inviting me.  Have a wonderful day!

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Thank you so much to Jan, Kasia and Zelda for sharing their lovely creations with us all and I hope that you have been inspired to enter our 'Use A Quote' challenge, you have a chance to win a generous gift voucher from our sponsor That's Crafty and to be chosen as one of our Pinworthies.  Can't wait to see what you link up, happy creating!

Deb xo

Destination Inspiration : Arriving at Terminal 2

Hello Everyone and Welcome

Amanda here today, ready to greet you at Terminal #2 , the second leg of this months Destination Inspiration. Lets begin by taking a quick look inside the travel bag to remind ourselves of the contents:

Product: Any Ink or Paint
Technique: Brayering
Colour: Pale Blue
Substrate: Book

Ready to see what I have created? Here it is - a little piece of Art .



When having a good 'sort out' a few months ago now I came across a book I had made back in School (6th form- eek that shows my age). It was great to 'find' it and I put it to one side thinking at some point I would alter the cover. This was that point! However instead of just altering the cover I stripped the book covering off and then broke the book down so I had 2 panels and 4 hand sewn signatures to work with. (my name and form/class scribed in pencil is still visible after all those years- not that old after all! )



I decided to put the signatures to one side and use pages with text on instead. At this stage my thoughts were to have some of the text showing through my painty layers.



With my books sorted I was all set to start creating .I cut the 2 book covers into 4 smaller panels and primed with gesso.



I selected my choice of paints



and applied a layer of the required pale blue to 2 of the panels using my brayer. I then adhered torn pieces of the text book pages to the panels with Tim Holtz collage medium



before continuing to brayer the other colours of paint layer by layer. At some points in the process I brayered over either a wet wipe or a dry kitchen towel to remove some of the paint. I followed no golden rules just went with what felt right at the time and enjoyed the process.



With all the layers of colour the text on the torn pages soon became unnoticeable but though it wasn't what I intended I decided it still looked ok especially when I added a touch of drama with black acrylic paint and some stamping using Jet Black Archival ink and a couple of Seth Apter stamps- Dot Matrix and Word Chain. 



At this point I decided to work on just one of the panels - the one on the left. Here's a closer look



Now for the various elements and embellishments.



The two strips are off cuts from the book covers. They were primed with gesso then the wider one was coloured using my brayer with the pale blue paint before delicately rubbing distress inks over the surface using my finger, whilst the thinner one was covered with Tim Holtz Grit paste and then painted, again using my finger, with the distress paints.

The butterfly is one of the beauties from Tim Holtz Flutter stamp set, heat embossed with Archival Ink and clear embossing powder



and coloured using Distress inks



The circle is created using Seth Apters 'Ring Around' die- just the larger one, die cut from black card stock.



With all my 'pieces' complete it was just a case of 'placing' all the elements onto the panel and adding a few finishing touches - yes you guessed it-hex nuts topped with black gem dots.

Here's a few close ups



The text on the torn pages may not show but the pages create some lovely texture









and one more to finish

Thank you for accompanying me on the 2nd leg of  this months Destination Inspiration. I hope both I and Sandy (Terminal #1)  have inspired you so far but be sure to pop back next Monday when a fellow Creative Guide will be ready to greet you at Terminal #3 to continue the journey.

We hope you will be able to join us in our current challenge 'Use a Quote'. 

There's still plenty of time to enter as the challenge is open until June 1st 2017. 

We always love to see what you create and appreciate each and every one of your entries .

Wishing you all a great week

Happy Crafting 

Amanda 

xxx

Winners Post for April's Challenge

Hello everyone and welcome to our Winners and Pinworthies day here at A Vintage Journey for the April "Magic of Three" Challenge.

There were so many wonderful entries showcasing your your Magic  Of Three that selecting the winners has been very difficult but as always we, the Creative Guides, really enjoy seeing your wonderful projects and every entry was special and a winner in its own way.

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To start us off today, here is today's winner drawn by the Random Generator...

That's Iris of Whimsy Touches, who offered up this charming springtime canvas with three eggs carefully nestled in the nest.

Congratulations, Iris.  Your prize details will be with you shortly, and we hope that you'll join us as a guest here at A Vintage Journey in the future.

Now on to our Pinworthy Creations who are as follows:

#7 Lucy

#8 Nate

#39 Barbaraya

I do hope you will take the time to visit the individual blogs to see more details of

these wonderful projects.

Congratulations to all three of you! Your Pinworthy Badges will be on their way to you shortly and we hope you will join us here as Guest Creative Guides at some point in the future.

Many thanks again to all of you who joined in with the April challenge and for sharing your amazing creativity. I hope you are enjoying Jenny's Use A Quote Challenge this month and of course don't forget our Destination Inspiration each Monday -  as always there are some amazing goodies/techniques in the travel bag this month.

Happy Crafting Travels!

Annie and the Creative Guides

xxx