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 28 September 2018

Creative Card Making with Brenda

Welcome everyone - Brenda here with you today.
Mixed media can mean different things to different people but basically it is about using various types of products (media) on the same piece of work and describes a genre of art work.
Here I have used paints, gesso, inks, paper and fabric to create my mixed media card.



1. Cut a piece of canvas to fit the size of my card (5 x 5).


2. With a palette knife and white gesso very lightly drag some across the canvas keeping the palette knife horizontal with the surface.


3. To add colour use cadmium red hue, titanium white, titan buf and burnt umber DecoArt media acrylics to make vintage pink and with very tiny amounts on a paint palette use a wetwipe and a water spritzer to rub colour on.
When dry  mix another shade of darker vintage pink, add some water so it is the consistency of single cream and spread it across your craft mat. Dip the canvas randomly and dry to get a mottled effect. Keep the leftovers.
Repeat the last step by mixing a very light vintage pink.
With the leftover dark pink stamp some text over the background. The paint sinks in and gives you a blurry text.
Mount on another piece of card or patterned paper and adhere to the card.


4. Use ephemera and patterned papers to cut and tear pieces to build a collage. As you have it layered up starting at the top take each piece and glue it to the piece underneath in your chosen design to create your layered collage piece.
Adhere this to the background.
Optional - Cover the focal image and add some splattering with slightly pink watery paint.


5. Find some simple embellishments - as this is pink and flowery I chose some little mini flowers, created a bow from paint dyed vintage style ribbon, added the circular piece for more interest and made a greeting from remnant rubs and ink splattered paper.
Adhere these to the card.


I always ink the edges of my papers with brown distress ink and also added some gesso and ink to the flowers.


Eh voila you have a beautifully layered card that (hopefully) is still thin enough to go in the post (I'm keeping my fingers crossed).


All the pieces have very similar tones leaving the focal ephemera piece to really stand out.


I hope you have enjoyed reading through and if you love collage like I do maybe it will inspire you to get out the paints, papers and ephemera to have a go for yourself.

We look forward to seeing you again next week when the October challenge begins.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx




Friday 21 September 2018

Back to Nature Wooden Hanging Tutorial

Hello fellow travellers, Jennie here again with you today sharing a step by step tutorial of how I created my Back to Nature challenge project.

This month we are challenging you to use natural elements in your project - either using real items such as twigs, dried flowers, shells or pebbles, or stamps and stencils depicting natural elements.


I decided to use some pieces of wood which I found in my husband's wood store (he's a woodturner and there are always "bits" lying around!).


I spent some time trying to work out how I would put the wood together as a hanging and decided to use some fine metal jewellery pins which wouldn't dominate the wood which I wanted to be the main focus.


On the reverse of the wood pieces I used a pencil to roughly find the point between the pieces where the pins would lie in a straight line and then measured and marked where I wanted the pins to go.


A number of years ago we invested in this small drill set (bought from Ebay) which has the tiniest of little drill pieces and a twist function to drill the hole. I have used it many times even on thick greyboard to create a fine hole.


I wanted the holes to be at an angle so the pins wouldn't fall out so angled the point and then gently twisted to create the hole. All very easy and no brute force required!




I then cut the eyelet from the top of the pin and then bent bent the wire slightly and "hooked" it into the hole adding a little PVA glue to hold it there. One pin was used from the bottom of one piece of wood to the top of the other. I had to wait for the glue on each pin to set before doing the next one.


As added security I adhered some buckram tape. Not very pretty but it works well!


For the top I used the eyelets on the top of the pin so I could add some string to hang my project.


This is what the hanging looked like before I started decorating. It's a bit wonky but I achieved what I wanted in that the wire does not dominate the wood pieces.


Every so often I make a huge pot of tea and soak various bits of lace, fabric, ribbon and woody bits. I love having a little tin of tea stained pieces that I can go to whenever I want.  I thought a combination of the tea stained elements and white muslin would work well with the wood.


The wood pieces were quite thin and I didn't want to hide some of the lovely spalting, so I kept the decoration to a minimum.


I just kept experimenting to see what worked.  Once everything was stuck down I dry brushed gesso over the metal to tone it down and also over the wooden embellishments and flowers. I love the way the gesso unifies everything.

Here are some close ups of the finished project:








Thank you so much for joining me for this mid challenge tutorial. You still have plenty of time to join in our challenge and you can get all the details HERE along with some fabulous inspiration from the Creative Guides. You have until the 4 October to link your project and we always look forward to seeing what you create.

Happy Crafting!

Jennie x




Friday 14 September 2018

How Can You Resist Pinworthy Winners

Hello Everyone 

Amanda here to share with you our 3 chosen Pinworthy winners for our 'How Can You Resist' Challenge and our Tag Winner for August's Tag Friday.

We had some wonderful submissions for both the challenge and tags and we thank you all for joining us and sharing your creativity. 
The Creative Guides really enjoyed viewing your creations and selecting their favourites wasn't easy. We always have difficulty narrowing our choices down to just 3 Pinworthy winners and 1 Tag Friday Winner but after much deliberation here are our choices.

In no particular order our Pinworthy Winners are:

Ann







and our Tag Friday Winner is


Congratulations to you all!
We will be in touch shortly with your badges and your creations will be pinned to our Pinterest boards.

Thanks again to everyone who joined us in this Challenge. 
We hope you will join us this month for Jennie's fabulous challenge: 'Back to Nature'
All the Challenge details and an inspirational gallery of projects created by some of the Creative Guides can be located here.

Thanks for stopping by today .
Hope you all have a lovely weekend
Take care
Amanda
x

Friday 7 September 2018

September Challenge : Back to Nature

Hello fellow travellers and welcome to another month and another challenge here at A Vintage Journey. Jennie here with you this month from Live The Dream as your host for a new challenge:

BACK TO NATURE

We want you to celebrate natural elements in your project. 
Think real nature in terms of twigs, dried flowers, shells or pebbles, or perhaps stamps 
and stencils depicting these wonderful elements. 

Immerse yourself in colours of the seasons whether they be bright or muted and 
create a project in our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, 
art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

I hope you will love what the Creative Guides have created for your delight and inspiration and that you will enjoy playing along with us.

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Despite no trees to speak of here in Shetland I have made a wooden hanging of three pieces of wood which I found in my husband's wood store. They have been decorated with some of my coffee stained textiles and altered floral metal. Do join me over on my blog if you would like to see more or later in the month when I will be sharing a tutorial on how it was created.


I decided to pull out some of my Tim Holtz goodies, (going back to our roots), 😘 and  created a large layered card. If you want to see more, please come and visit me.



I thought I might take one more stroll on the beach, now that the summer crowds are packing up and returning home. And since there's no one there to see me, I can wear this suit again tomorrow! I hope you'll take a few minutes to come see the details over at my blog.



I loved Jennie's theme.  I'm always happy to go Back to Nature - in fact, I'm never very far away crafting-wise!  I've used some real dried flowers, some Tim Holtz papers, and some of my favourite meadow grass stamps to create this trio of tags.  Do come over to Words and Pictures to see more.


I'm not ready to get into an Autumnal mode yet so I've kept my colours more summery in a vintage style. With the heatwave of a summer we've had I found some dried natural elements in the garden and added these with some worn wallpaper and embellishments that fit the theme. For more information on my project do pop over to Bumblebees and Butterflies and catch all the details and more photos.


Hi everyone x If you would like to see what is behind the green shutters then do pop over to my blog by clicking HERE.  I had such a great time creating this project for Jennie's fabulous "Back to Nature" theme using stamps, dies, crackle, paint, punches and inks. 
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How can you NOT be inspired by so many wonderfully different projects! So please do join us for this challenge and we all look forward to seeing your fabulous projects.

We are always bowled over by your creativity and interpretations of the theme each month. The Creative Guides select three Pinworthies at the end of each challenge which are featured in a post the following month. If you are one of our chosen entries you will receive a badge of honour and your projects are pinned to our Pinterest boards.

So ...... happy crafting!

Jennie x