This is a unique challenge blog where we are inspired by and focus on the Vintage; shabby; mixed-media; art journaling; industrial, timeworn and steampunk genres and encompass the talent, flair, expertise and ideas of many artists that we are inspired by. We welcome all types of projects - cards, journaling, assemblage, layouts, albums, atcs, altered art in fact whatever you want to share (as long as it is in good taste).

Friday, 25 May 2018

Creative Card Making Tutorial - Time Flies

Hi Vintage Journey fans,

It's S@ndy here to share a card with you that is made in that wonderful vintage, steampunk style that we all love.  I hope you enjoy -

It seems that I'm always looking for a masculine card and they are a little difficult but I think this one fits the bill so let's get started.

First thing we need are some butterflies.  Two solid and two detailed butterflies were cut out using the Butterfly Apeture die from Elizabeth Craft Designs (ECD).  They were then cut in half and the patterns were mixed and attached to each other just at the body portion leaving the wings free.

The finished size of this card is 6" X 6" so start with a 6" X 12" piece of cardstock that is scored in the middle, wood grain paper was used here.  Using the Weathered Clock die from Tim Holtz - cut two clocks from black.  An extra clock was cut for the upper right corner of the card, not shown.  Using the ECD Take Time For You die set - cut one pocket watch and chain from tan cardstock and the hands from black.

Next using the Tim Holtz Clockwork Stencil - stencil some clocks on the front of the card, copper metallic ink was used here with a blending tool.

Add clock to lower left corner and trim off the excess.

  Using double sided foam tape, add  to butterfly and then add to card.  Add the pocket watch next using the same method with the foam tape.  Attach the chain piece to make the pocket watch appear to be flying.

Cut out all words and letters from black and attach as shown below.  Add one small piece of the Weathered Clock to the top right hand side of card.  Word Set 1 and Lower Case Alphabet were used here - both from ECD.

Use a corner rounder to round out the two bottom corners.  Edge all around the card with ink.  Distress Oxide Ink, Vintage Photo, was used here.

 For the inside - a woodgrain mat was cut 5.75" square and then bottom corners were rounded.
Stencil lightly with the same stencil as above and add ink around the edges of the panel.

For the finishing touch on the inside add any sentiment that you need.


Thanks for stopping by today - I hope you have been inspired.
S@ndy

If you would like more information on the items I used please stop by my blog HERE.

Thursday, 24 May 2018

AVJ Privacy Policy

In response to the new General Data Protection Regulation and in wanting to be transparent and clear about our data protection responsibilities, we have written a new Privacy Policy which can be found HERE.

We would like to make it clear that we have not and will not ever share any personal information with third parties. 

We love what we do, setting challenges, providing inspirational projects and teaching posts and of course seeing the wonderful work you link with us. We are all volunteers and receive no recompense for the work we put into this blog. We look forward to continuing the Vintage Journey with you and sharing our talents, experience and expertise. Thank you for taking the time to join us, reading our posts, leaving lovely comments and participating in the challenges.

If you have any questions please contact us through the link in the sidebar and we will get back to you as soon as possible. 

hugs Brenda and the whole team of Creative Guides. xxx

Friday, 18 May 2018

A little extra musical inspiration...

Hello all!  It's Alison here, your tuneful host of this month's Words and Music challenge.  Our new itinerary means that in the third week of our challenge month we stop off for a while with the host for some extra inspiration.  It might be a tutorial for their challenge project, or a whole new creation.

I pretty much shot the bolt with my step-by-step for Under the Greenwood Tree over at Words and Pictures, so I'm here with a fresh bit of musical inspiration for you... a quick tag full of melodies and musical thoughts.


For my main project - Under the Greenwood Tree - I went for some song lyrics as the inspiration, so this time I've taken the other approach to the theme and used both music paper and some words about music on my tag.


I started by gluing down some vintage music paper onto a standard #8 tag.


I applied Versamark ink through the Tim Holtz Harlequin stencil and then a couple of coats of Seth Apter's fabulous Vintage Beeswax powder.  Just look at that glossy dimension, and the warm honey-coloured tone.  It's lovely.


I spritzed some Pumice Stone Distress Spray, followed by Broken China, and then flicked water droplets over the top, and sanded the edges for a more distressed look.


I added a wash of white paint, wiped back, and then splattered tiny droplets, and used a lid to add some circle shapes in a couple of places.


These Sizzix Coffee Marks die-cuts had been hanging around on the table for a while after being rejected from some other project, but I decided their time had come.


I stamped the quote from my PaperArtsy EAB03 Music and Silence stamp set, cut it into sections, and doodled around the edges with a fine black pen.


The wonderful Paper Doll dancer was also asking to come and dance amidst the music.


And just down by her feet, you find out who wrote those words.


I mounted the tag on some white card, just to echo all the white accents going on, and doodled some more fine black lines around the edges of the tag.


The whole thing is topped off with some Distress Ink-dyed crinkle ribbon and curly paper string.


I don't use black very much, but it was already there in the printed music, so I went with it - but to me this doesn't look very "me"... what do you think?  It's always good to experiment though, right?


I hope this has given you an extra nudge to come and get musical with us this month at A Vintage Journey.  Check out the details of the Words and Music challenge as well as the fabulous inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides and then come and join us on the journey.  We'd love to see you there.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Alison xx

Friday, 11 May 2018

Rusty and Crusty Winners and Pinworthies

What an amazing and diverse array of projects you entered in our April Rusty and Crusty Challenge!  Thanks to each and every one who participated or visited.  It was a difficult task indeed to narrow down to only three Pinworthy entries.  Somehow we managed! These are listed in order of entry.  Congratulations to...









Your fabulous projects will be pinned to our Vintage Journey Pinterest Board.
Thank you for taking the time to share your talents and creativity in our challenges, we hope everyone who entered will join us again for our current theme and challenge hosted by our own Alison, who has chosen the theme 'Words and Music'. You can see the details and fabulous inspiration from the Creative Guides - HERE.


We are honored to have our three February Pinworthies joining us today to share the incredible projects that they made for our current Words and Music challenge.  Please join us in welcoming Ann of aksbarchitect Creates, Jackie of Creating Without Crayons and Mona of Cupcake's Creations.



Hi, I am Ann from aksbarchitect CREATES. I live in Pennsylvania with my wonderful children and husband. Having always had a passion for art and design, I became an architect; and when motherhood took precedence over my profession, I began crafting with my children. My passion for creating has evolved, and currently I enjoy working with paper, fibers, and mixed media. I am so excited to share the project I created for A Vintage Journey's Words and Music challenge.


Coming off a winter season that has seemed to be never-ending this year, I knew in my heart that spring was on its way, the morning I awoke to the glorious sounds of birds singing. It brought joy to my heart and peace to my soul. This was the inspiration behind my "words and music" piece. I have created a panel covered with vintage sheet music that has been coated with vintage beeswax embossing powder to create a faux encaustic appearance. I fussy cut an image of birds on a branch and replaced the printed branch with a clipping from a real pussy willow.


I embedded a scrap of burlap along the left side of the panel, envisioning the birds gathering bits and fibers to create their nests for spring. Another clipping of pussy willow that has catkins, was attached on top of the burlap scrap. I added letters to form the words SING OF SPRING at the top along with a "DISCOVERIES" word band at the bottom.


I am so thankful for this opportunity to be a Pinworthy Guest for A Vintage Journey. If you are interested in seeing more details about this piece, please stop by my blog. I hope that you are inspired to create something for this month's challenge.


Hello everyone! I am thrilled and honored to be here today as a Pinworthy Guest!


My name is Jackie P Neal and I am the owner of Creatingwithoutcrayons-JackiePNeal.com blog.  My blog is where I can share my art, engage with so many other like minded art souls around the world and share a bit of my everyday life.

A bit about me, I am a huge fan of recycling, especially finding "discards" to use in my artwork. Along with being a recycler, I am also a hoarder of vintage and art supplies, as I am sure many of you are as well! My husband and I and our dog Chum live on a small farmette in Upstate NewYork, sharing the same passions and living and loving life! Thank you Vintage Journey gang for having me here!

I was thrilled to learn this month's challenge was music, picked by Alison Bomber! Huge music fan here! I started out using a piece of packing board from stickers I had purchased, nothing goes to waste! This became my substrate and held up extremely well for the amount of layers of product I applied to it.


Learning to Fly, you may know there are two different songs with this title..I chose the one written and sung by Pink Floyd, one of my all time favorite bands. If you are not familiar with the song- here is the link

Again going to my stash of "discarded materials"I used this frame that I scored from a "free" box at a garage sale, no picture or glass, but I knew one day I would find the perfect project for this! 



So I attached my substrate to the frame and continued to add more product and completed the backside as a bit of a shadowbox vignette, using the clear plastic sheet that came in the stickers pack as well. For a list of materials and products as well as more detail, visit my blog. And again,thank you everyone!

Mona


Hi! My name is Mona Pendleton and I’m honored to be here today as a guest joining along with the talented A Vintage Journey design team! You can find my creativity on my blog: Cupcake’s Creations: (http://cupcakescreations.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/aint-no-sunshineguest-designing.html).


 I’m a girl who loves to be creative whenever I get the chance! Today I have a shabby style card to share featuring pretty music sheet patterned paper along with a stamped sentiment that reminds me of the song title, “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone”.

I added lots of layers and distressed all the edges, to create a shabby vibe:


Please let me know if you have any questions :) 
Thanks for the awesome opportunity!

***************

Fabulous projects one and all, thank you so much for sharing them with us!  We hope that all of you have also been inspired to join our  Words and Music challenge.  We can't wait to see what you create!

Autumn, Deb and the rest of the Creative Guides

Friday, 4 May 2018

May Challenge - Words and Music

Hello all, Alison here to welcome you to a new challenge theme here at A Vintage Journey.   We loved seeing all your rusty, crusty creations last month and this month I'm hoping you'll all burst into song, because we're looking for Words and Music.

For this challenge we would love to see projects that are inspired by a favourite song, or that incorporate musical lyrics, sheet music, or musical signs and symbols in their design.  Just remember to create your project in our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journalling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

As always, the Creative Guides have pulled out all the stops (bonus musical reference: it's about organ stops - if you pull them all out, you get the maximum volume from the organ) to provide you with some inspiration to get the creative wheels turning.  We hope you'll take a trip around to the individual blogs to see these amazing projects in detail.


Alison


I created a page spread in my Dina Wakley journal inspired by the lyrics of William Shakespeare's Under the Greenwood Tree.  It's not necessarily my favourite song ever, but it is by my favourite writer! Come over to Words and Pictures to find out how I ended up gazing at the sky through the tree branches.



For Alison's challenge - I made a Victorian Shadow Box creating a little dimensional scene of a couple dancing in a magical, musical forest!  I cheated a little bit - and used a music quote (from one of our Alison's sets!) instead of words from a song, along with a stamped on vellum strip of sheet music in the background!   If you'd like to see more photos and details please waltz over to my blog!




For this challenge I was quite literal in my make.  I used this fabulous paper in my stash to make my card, it has both Words and Music so it was perfect.  I hope to see you over at my blog HERE for more details.



As you can see,  I created a little shadowbox for Alison's fabulous theme, using one of Tim's Vignette boxes. If you want to find out more about how this came together, just click HERE




A very musical friend has a birthday shortly so I decided to use Alison's fabulous challenge theme to make a card for her and using one of my favourite quotes from Alison's recent stamp sets. There are more details on my blog, so do please join me there if you would like to see how this came together.




I focused on a 'favourite song' for Alison's challenge though choosing a favourite wasn't easy.  Narrowing my choice down to one proved near on impossible but in the end I decided that it had to be a song by my all time favourite band U2 and with that I thought this would be an ideal opportunity for me to share an 'older' piece of creativity that I made a while ago - a T-shirt, hand painted with the sleeve cover of the U2 song 'With or Without You.'  You are welcome to pop by my blog for more details 




I had great fun using old music score from a favourite musical of mine and creating this mixed media board. Perhaps you'll recognise the words -
Softly, deftly
Music shall possess you.
Hear it, feel it,
Secretly possess you.
More photos and information is available over at Bumblebees and Butterflies if you'd like to pop over.
______________________________

Wow!  I think you'll agree that's more than enough to get you humming with inspiration.  We can't wait to see your musical creations this month, and we're all looking forward to singing along with all the lyrics which inspire you.

Remember, there have been some changes to the roadmap here at A Vintage Journey - if you haven't caught up with the new format or want a reminder of what's different, you can check out all the details here.  We're now a "just for fun" challenge, so there's no main prizewinner, but we will still be honouring three Pinworthies each month, so there are badges of honour to be won!

We hope you'll have lots of musical fun this month, and that we'll see you on the journey somewhere down the road.  Happy Crafting all!

Alison and the Creative Guides xx