Destination Inspiration - Arriving At Terminal 2

Hello travellers, welcome aboard to Terminal 2. This is Tracy here to share the second leg of our Destination Inspiration journey for the month of March.

So what do we have in our bag to inspire you:

Product: Something Metal

Technique: Rust Effects (perhaps using rusting or embossing powders or rust coloured paints)

Colour: Lilac or Pale Purple

Substrate: Board (eg grey board, coaster board, cardboard)

I spent some time deciding what to use for my metal product and in the end opted for a used sardine tin.

I began by sanding the tin with sandpaper before applying any product. I then opted for Alcohol Inks Ginger and Rust to colour.

I applied the Ginger first and then followed with touches of the Rust Alcohol Inks.

Cogs were then die cut from recycled cardboard using the Tim Holtz Gadget Gears Die.

I adhered the cardboard gears one on top of the other and then applied DecoArt Media Texture Sand Paste to the top and edges of the stacked gears using a finger.

Once the Texture Sand was completely dry I then added DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic Paynes Grey and a touch of DecoArt Media Tinting Base to a non-stick craft sheet and blended together to give me a mid grey tone.

I painted the stacked gears with the grey and then dried with a heat tool.

Touches of DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic Carbon Black were added to the edges of the stacked gears and then dried with a heat tool.

Paynes Grey Fluid Acrylic was then diluted with water and a wash applied over the stacked gears.

The final layer was a coat of Quinacridone Gold Fluid Acrylic to give the rust effect.

I continued to apply the Quinacridone Gold until I was happy with the finish and then I dried with a heat tool. To remove the shine from the paint I also applied a coat of Ultra-Matte Varnish.

The next step was to die cut three flowers from white card using the Tim Holtz Tiny Tattered Florals Thinlits Die. I then painted each flower with a coat of Shaded Lilac Distress Paint and then touches of Dusty Concord to add as a second layer of colour.

I added the flowers to rusty wire stems and also added coils of rusty wire for added interest and texture.

A Tim Holtz Salvaged Doll, coloured with a touch of Dusty Concord Paint has been added standing on top of an Alpha Dice. A 'dreams' Chitchat stickers has been adhered to the stems of the flowers again coloured with Distress Paint.

I added splatters of Shaded Lilac and Dusty Concord Paint to the background of the tin and also added touches of the same paint to the outside of the tin.

The rusty stacked gears act as a pot for my flowers at the base of the tin.

Thank you for travelling along with me, I hope you enjoyed the journey! Please pop back next Monday to see the next creative step along our journey from our next Creative Guide.

Tracy Evans

xxxx

Industrial Challenge Winner & Pinworthies

Hello everybody Tracy here.  It's time to reveal the Winner and the Pinworthies for the Industrial Challenge (February 2016) hosted by me last month.  Thank you to all those who played along - as always there were so many fantastic entries, and we enjoyed visiting all of them.

Before we reveal our winners though, we're delighted to welcome Sara Emily of Sara's Closet back as a Guest Designer.  She earned this spot with her win in December, and we know you're going to love what she's created for our Birthday Challenge with the contents of her travel bag... but she can tell you all about that in her own words.
_____________________________

Hello, everyone!  I'm delighted to be invited back again as Guest Designer here at A Vintage Journey! My name is Sara Emily, otherwise known as sarascloset.   I live in the US with my husband, 17 year old boy and girl twins and my twin kitties.  I have a been keeping my hands busy with arts and crafts as long as I can remember, and started blogging in 2014.  I love to try new things, and will give any style a whirl, but my true love is Vintage Grunge.

When Alison told me I would be using rust as the technique in our travel bags, I was thrilled!  I have been working in my Closet with my mixed media products to see which products work the best to create different types of rust.  Today I have created a tag using three of the techniques that I've come up with.  I call this my Rusted Porcelain technique, although I've included some rusted steel and chicken wire, too!

I started by using my Tim Holtz Tag and Bookplate die to cut the cardboard (substrate) from a steno pad. I added some torn vintage book pages and gesso and colored it using Distress paints, Shaded Lilac and Wilted Violet (color), as well as Rusty Hinge in areas where I wanted to build up some rust (technique). A little crackle, stamping, some glass bead gel, more paint, and some Ground Expresso Distress ink finish the background.

To balance out all those hard surfaces, I added a little hand dyed vintage trim and seam binding.  The originally silver toned metal flower (product) and the Butterfly Duo die cuts were given the same rust treatment as the tag.

The rusted chicken wire (Tim Holtz Mixed Media Thinlit) is a piece left over from another project, and is rusted using embossing puffs and my own concoction of powders. The rusty nail (authentic rust) is from my stash. (Better here than in my tire!)

The rusted "steel" backing  (substrate) balances out the dark rust of the nail and the chicken wire.  Wait 'til you see what I used on that--a little hint--you'll find it in your kitchen!

If you would like to see more photos and read details on how this was created, please stop by my  blog.  I would like to thank the lovely and talented Creative Guides for inviting me to join them today!

Hugs and Blessings!

Sara Emily
___________________________

Thank you so much for sharing your brilliant work with us here, Sara Emily.

Now, without further ado, here is the randomly selected winner of the voucher sponsored by Country View Crafts...

That's Aisha of Enter into the Magic with this fabulous layout.  Do follow the link to take a closer look.

Congratulations, Aisha!  Your badge and voucher will be with you shortly, and we hope you will join us as a Guest Designer here in the months to come.

_____________________________

And now for the Pinworthies, selected by myself and the Creative Guides.  Here they are, in no particular order...

#1 Suzz Stamping Spot

#25 Lys Scrap

#28 That Crazy Chick

_____________________________

Fantastic work all round, congratulations.  Your badges will be on their way to you shortly, along with an invitation to join us as guests here at A Vintage Journey soon.

Thank you again to all who played along.  We hope you're enjoying our Birthday Celebration Challenge this month and that you are inspired by our Travel Bag - there are already some amazing entries, and we're looking forward to seeing lots more.

See you somewhere along the road!

Tracy and the Creative Guides x

Destination Inspiration - Arriving at March Terminal one

Here we are alighting at terminal 1 for the month of March and as you will have seen on the birthday post last Friday we are using our travel bag and it's contents for the challenge theme. You may have seen my piece of wall art I made for Friday's post and I have re-created the background for a second piece. So let's undo the travel bag again to remind ourselves what is in there.

Product: Something Metal
Technique: Rust Effects (perhaps using rusting or embossing powders or rust coloured paints)
Colour: Lilac or Pale Purple
Substrate: Board (eg grey board, coaster board, cardboard)

Now let your imagination flow and follow me on a discrete track and find out how I made my weathered boards background using DecoArt medial fluid acrylics.

I began with a piece of greyboard and a piece of manila card both cut to the same size (4 1/2 x 8 ins) and took the card to work on.

Weathered Wooden Boards

If you don't have a purple in your colour range of acrylic paints and I don't, mix quinacridone magenta and prussian blue together to create this gorgeous mauve and paint the surface of your card with it and dry.

Use a stiff paint brush to ‘paint’ on Vaseline or petroleum jelly in the direction of the boards you will finish with ie for me that's longways. Then paint over with titanium white, keep gently swiping the brush in the same direction and slowly some of the paint will be rubbed away by the brush.

Gently heat and wipe with a dry paper towel (again in the same direction) to remove a little more of the paint.

Repeat the previous two steps using titan buff.

There is still lots of vaseline on the card so paint again with titanium white (without adding more vaseline) heat quickly and rub with the paper towel before the paint is dry.
 

Mix a very small amount of your mauve again and add to some titanium white and water to create a pastel lilac coloured wash. Paint again and spritz with some more water whilst it is still wet to create the mottled effects and rub gently with the kitchen towel before it is completely dry.
 

Use a distressing brush tool to scratch some marks into the ‘wood’ ....

... and score lines to create the ‘boards’, distress the lines with a sanding block and rub in a brown distress ink. Adhere to the backing board and distress and ink the edges.

Now gather all the elements to embellish your board - die-cut circles, rusty butterfly, small canvas to create height, a wordband and some natural fibres and foliage.

I promised a step out for the industrial butterfly I made for last months challenge and you can find that over on my blog today. It has a base of foil tape on card.

The mini canvas was changed from an original stamped effect I had on it which was far too busy for underneath the butterfly so I gessoed it all over a couple of times then made up some of the lilac watery wash using the quinacridone magenta, prussian blue and titanium white paints. After a few dips and dries it was just what I needed.

Now to put it together ....

 .... with some natural fibres and foliage ....

.... some remnant rubs ....

 .... an altered wordband ....

.... the rusty butterfly alighted on the mini canvas ....

.... and a rusty wire hanger for displaying.

We have completed our time at Terminal 1, I hope you have enjoyed the stop and the project I made with the contents of our travel bag. We are looking forward to seeing what you make with them - don't forget there are no restrictions on what products you use, just jump aboard the travel bag challenge and have fun.

We will see you again on Friday with the winner and pinworthies from last months challenge.

Enjoy the week.

hugs Brenda xxx

The new A Vintage Journey and our Birthday Celebration Challenge

Welcome to a very special AVJ Birthday challenge. Today sees us changing things round a bit and introducing new ideas. We are very pleased to announce that we are extending and broadening our challenge themes and also the influences on our styles. Please take time to look at our 'Travelling Instructions' and 'Guide to interpreting our preferred genres' to get a clear understanding of what we try to achieve in our challenge projects and what we hope to see in your entries. You can get a quick feel by reading the explanation under the new blog banner above. 

 Image courtesy of the Graphics Fairy

Just before we move onto the new challenge we sadly have to say goodbye to one of our original Creative Guides, our dear friend Annie. We will miss her talent, her friendship and her wonderful personality as part of the team but wish her well in new ventures and as we say farewell to one inspirational artist we welcome another Julia Stratford-Wright from Julia's Stuff. Julia is a fabulous mixed media artist who loves bright colours and has a wealth of knowledge at her fingertips. If you haven't seen Julia's work before I can say that a visit to her blog will be a wonderful inspirational experience.

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

March Challenge 
Destination Inspiration Travel Bag

Hi everyone, Nikki here, and it is my great pleasure to host the first challenge of our new year and new challenges. For our birthday celebration and new style we have a slightly different challenge this month.

In March 2015 we introduced our new look Destination Inspiration posts. Each month, four Creative Guides play with the same ‘travel bag’ as each other, and create very individual creations which have hopefully inspired you.  The travel bag always consists of one substrate, one colour, one technique and one product. 

We have enjoyed this so much we thought it would make for an exciting challenge this month! So our challenge theme for March is to use the Destination Inspiration Travel Bag for this month which consists of: 

Substrate – Board (eg - grey board, coaster board, cardboard, chipboard) 

Main Colour – Lilac or pale purple 

Technique – Rust Effects (perhaps using rusting or embossing powders or rust coloured paints) 

Product – Something metal 

Of course other products and colours can be used but the project should be focussed around these four areas. Please do visit any of our Destination Inspiration posts from the last year (every Monday) to see how the Creative Guides have utilised the travel bag contents in the past. 

We have a fabulous sponsor for this challenge -  
Andy Skinner.
Andy's mixed media creations are sensational - if you are not familiar with his work do check out his website. Andy has kindly donated a fabulous package to this month's lucky winner which will be made up of his brand new stencils and stamps.

As usual we will have the lucky random winner (who wins our sponsor's prize) and our three pinworthies selected by the creative guides who will be invited to rejoin us as guest creative guides for a future challenge. 

Let's see how the Creative Guides have used the travel bag.

Nikki

To celebrate our new style I have combined my love of Tim Holtz and Andy Skinner's styles to create this industrial style canvas. I have more details over at Addicted to Art today.

Julia A.

I made an Adirondack chair for the Easter Bunny using the March Travel Bag Supplies.  I embossed the chair, die cut out of matboard, in purple, added embossed metal flowers to the chair and used the Eroded Metallic Technique on the matboard die cut bunny.  

If you'd like to see more photos and a brief 'how to' - please visit my blog post here.

Jennie

Having recently been converted to drinking tea I thought I would celebrate by using the Travel Bag goodies to make a hanging with all things tea related, including this gorgeous little spoon. If you would like to find out more  (including the brew which has made me a sudden convert!) then please hop on over to my blog where I will share all.

Deb

Happy birthday AVJ!  I wanted to do something extra special for our birthday celebration this month so decided to make my very first ATB (artist's trading block).  With Spring in the air here in British Columbia, the prompt of lilac's in Nikki's challenge theme and some newly purchased Tim Holtz Idea-ology that I was itching to use as inspiration, I ended up making this Lilac Spring ATB.  Come on over to my blog for a closer look.

Brenda

Any shade of purple/mauve/lilac is not usually part of my colour palette so it was really outside my comfort zone to use it, but I have to say when I had finished the project I really was quite pleased with the effects I had achieved - with some deep purple, lilac and pink I think I made it work for me. I also used distress embossing powder for my rusted effects and the bow and chain is made from metal. All travel bag contents present and correct!! Now as I had to do it all a second time I hope you will pop back on Monday to see my Destination Inspiration post. Have a wonderful weekend. xx

Julia S-W

Purple is a colour I usually shy away from for one main  reason - it can be difficult to photograph! I love the grungy, crackled look and I was pleased with the finished piece. I love to rust anything really but I have to confess that the gorgeous heart was bought ready rusted. I'm so excited to be here on AVJ's birthday post with my introductory piece. I look forward to many more challenges!

Astrid

I loved the idea of Nikki's challenge theme, but in the end found it quite a challenge, rusting technique and pale lilac are not two things I would normally combine. But a challenge is a challenge and so this is what I came up with, a large card that uses board for the central layer. If you want to see how this came together, you can check it out HERE

 Amanda

 I'm sure you all know by now that I love 'wall art' , especially if it has meaning so for this months Challenge theme I have created a wall hanging using the contents of the Destination Inspiration Travel bag. A typed token provides the message for the rusty old heart to 'never, never give up!' 

If you would to see more you are more than welcome to stop  by my blog

S@ndy

This challenge came at just the right time for me, I've been opening my travel bag from CHA.  I just received some of the new items that were introduced and had a small chance to play.  I'm showing my first go at the new Distress Crayons.  What fun they are to use, I hope you will come over to my blog - My "Crafty" Life on the Internet - to see more.

Julie

I thoroughly enjoyed making my project for Nikki's challenge, as this certainly took me out of my comfort zone creating with Purple shades. Close up photos and info on techniques can all be seen on my blog HERE. Love to have you stop by.

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

You can see how the travel bag can be interpreted in so many ways. We look forward to seeing your creations. This challenge is open until Thursday March 31st and we will announce the winner of our fabulous prize and pinworthies on April 8th.

Do pop back on Monday for more inspiration from one of the team.

Nikki, Brenda and the Creative Guides

xxxx

An InLinkz Link-up