Pinworthy Inspiration

I always feel so lucky and honoured to write up the guest posts and today we have another selection of fabulous pinworthy winners who have gone to town on their projects for us. Please read on to see who they are and what they have created.

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Hi everyone,

Jan Hill as Guest Designer, soooo excited to be here!

A little bit about me, I live in Coventry, heart of England, with my lovely husband, we were both teachers. Officially empty nesters now our son, Boomerang Boy, has moved out. I am very lucky to be retired and enjoy travelling and having fun, especially crafting! I spend a lot of time with my daughter, son in law and beautiful granddaughter and enjoy scrapping family pages. Art was always my favourite subject at school, college and my hobby. From making dolls houses I moved into scrap booking and mixed media which is currently my passion. I love all products Tim and was lucky enough to attend a workshop taught by him and totally inspired!

Initially, I was so excited to get this invite but when I found out it was Art Journal Tim style I panicked!

White page syndrome?

Art Journal is about experimenting and trying out new things?

So ..... I decided to explore layers but rather than building up, delve down and reveal layers. I was inspired by book sculptures I have seen recently.

Once I got out my Tim stamps, DI and die cuts I really enjoyed the challenge, this is what I created.

I used watercolour paper to build up 4 layers on the right hand page. I wanted to experiment with the Framelet/stamp and Thinlet sets.

Layer 1 The butterfly and Creativity (600189) were stamped and die cut to reveal the Journal Page. An area top left was DI* ready for layer 2. Hickory Smoke was inked around the edges.

The butterfly and creativity were stamped ( through layer 1) with black Archival, clear heat embossed then inked with DI blend* ( Abandoned Coral, Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Fossilised Amber) on the Journal Page.

Photo showing layers 1 and 2 in progress.

Layer 2 Creativity and Beautiful (Adventure Thinlet set) were die cut. Ground Expresso was inked around the edges. An area was inked * for Life in the next layer.

Layer 3 Aperture windows were painted with a waterbrush then gently ripped out (love the textured edge) for the butterfly, creativity and beautiful then Life die cut. Hickory Smoke inked round the edges.

Photo shows layer 3 and masterboard in progress.

Layer 4 I created a masterboard using DI, (Peacock Feathers, Cracked Pistachio, Fossilized Amber, Mustard Seed and Mermaid Lagoon ) then used Papillon, Perspective and 660189 Framelets with Stamps, inked with Ground Expresso. More apertures were ripped out and the edge ripped and inked with Vintage Photo.

Left Page I used the masterboard then built some layers as contrast. Creativity and beautiful cut outs were inked * and used. I dry embossed ( French Script Texture Fade) on watercolour paper to create 2 pockets. I dry brushed on Vintage Photo to enhance the lettering. The tags, kraft paper and masterboard were stamped with Papillon small butterflies then heat embossed but too pretty to be hidden! I dyed silk ribbon using Distress Markers to match the tags.

I finished by sewing the pockets on the left page and the pages together on the right.

If you would like more details check out scrapintheattic.com

Phew, complicated but fun to create, hope you enjoy looking at my journal which now has covers and 4 pages!

I hope it inspires you to have a go with your journal, Tim style.

Hugs

Jan x

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Welcome everyone!

It' s an honour to be invited here and I'm very happy about this opportunity.

My name is Kerstin - Inga Peters, aka Kerstin F. and I come from Germany. 

I have been creating for many years now, always in search for new techniques and yet unexplored territory in craftland .

My big passion are colours and textures, also I'm a big Vintagestyle fan and love

the things that are old and nobody wants anymore, because they have a

history! That's also the reason because I love the industrial, grungy style of Tim Holtz. He combines nostalgia, vintage and the idea of using future technology in a  brave new world!

With Scrapbooking, Mixed Media Style and Art Journaling I have found "my"

perfect favourite genre - as it combines words and pictures, thoughts and

feelings, application of various innovative techniques and the idea of

telling stories .To discover myself and a new world, let the ideas flow to

marvel at the end itself, which has been incurred for me to be creative

means.

  

 I started by embossing a piece of craft paper, I used the dry embossing technique with the folder Clocks.

 The rand was distressed and then glued to the Art Journal Page.

Distress crackle paint picket fence + Distress inkpad Walnut stain + Ink blending tool

 pieces of old book pages, white gesso and stencil for the background

 the script was printed on linen paper

to work with his beautiful distress inks like black soon, walnut stain and vintage phote together with a little bit water in the mini misters is one of my favourite usages

and indispensable for such old shabby chic projects

I hope you like my little inspiration for this beautiful month theme!

 Happy crafting!!


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Hi Everyone

I’m Amanda, a.k.a. Ink-A-Pink and its a pleasure and a thrill to be invited back this month as a Guest Designer here at A Vintage Journey .I would like to say 'Thank you so much' to all the super talented Creative Guides here at AVJ for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I am, as always, truly grateful and incredibly humbled to be here today.

Having shared a little bit about myself the other month (if you missed it you can find it here) I thought I’d tell you about my Art journalling background instead.
Art journalling is something I had always considered doing from way back in my pencil sketching and painting days but never really got any further than the thought itself until last year that is when I bought a journal and began to dabble. I had the idea that I would create a page every month at the very least. Needless to say, and much to my regret, that hasn’t happened and I have only a few entries to date. The pages I have created so far are all hand drawn and painted – both images and text – few stamps and techniques involved, just simple pencil, paint and ink work .

So when I found out Alison had chosen 'Art journalling with Tim' as this months theme I thought 'Great, this is an opportunity for my old journal and I to get reacquainted!!' Hahaha! Oh yes, that was the thought!!
However, with the journal open I hit a wall!! How do I journal Tim style? What was I going to do? Where was I going to start? What if I made a mistake when I’m creating a page for a Guest Design Spot .......I guess you could say I had 'Creative Fright!'
After a long hard chat with myself, my perfectionist demons and my self doubt I decided to be brave and just go for it, get some ink on the pages then maybe it would all come together from there and it did indeed do just that!

I added colour to the journal pages using Tim's Wrinkle Free Distress technique and several colours of distress inks. Once the pages were dry I added more colour using Distress inks and a blending tool.

I then added detail using a few of Tim's layering stencils and Distress Inks,mostly Tim's stamps and Archival Inks and finished off with a spritz of perfect pearls.

The Vintage Globe stand is painted in Black Soot Distress Paint and heat embossed using clear embossing powder. The land mass is covered with sand texture paste and painted with Crushed Oive Distress Paint with touches of Ground Espresso Distress Paint to pick up the texture . 

The Crazies are painted using Tim's watercolour technique. One of the dies from Tim's Scribbles and Splats Thinlit dies created an ideal perch for two of the Crazies. The other would sit on the globe . 

I gave each of my Crazies a tweet bubble which I have translated for you just in case your not familiar with ‘tweet’!

Finally I added my chosen quotes to my pages and here is my take on 'Art Journalling with Tim'

My pages are all about having the courage to be yourself in this crazy world, to be brave, to take risks, to step outside your comfort zone and even when in doubt or being doubted by others , do it anyway - who knows you may just amaze yourself and those around you and it may just make you feel like you're on top of the World!

If you would like you are very welcome to pop by my blog where there is a little more info and a few more photos of my journal pages.
Thank you for stopping by today and again I offer my huge thanks to all the lovely AVJ ladies for inviting me to share my creativity with you all . 

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Wow, thank you ladies for your fabulous contributions to our Tim journalling theme, you did a great job with all your makes, we really appreciate your time and effort in creating such original pieces and all are very different.

Thank you to the lovely journallers who have already entered the challenge, we hope to see a few more before the end of this leg of the journey and if one of them is you who knows you might be chosen by Random Org as our winner or you might be chosen by Alison and the Creative Guides for a pinworthy mention. We look forward to seeing you.

Thanks for joining us today, have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda and the AVJ Team xxx

Destination Inspiration October Terminal 2

Hello fellow Vintage Journey travellers, Astrid here with another project to hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for your own Tim style journey.
This month we have some wonderful essential ingredients in our travel bag, - here is a list of what they are:

Product: Distress Stain Spray

Technique:Layering Stencil embossing ( from page 50 of a Compendium of Curiosities Volume III

Colour: Hickory Smoke

Substrate: Tag

I have to say, with those ingredients in my travel bag, I could not wait to get started, because they all belong to my absolute favourites.

So this is where my journey took me:

I decided to use a size #10 tag, to give me a bit more space to play on. Below are some of the stages of the journey that got me there.....

I used the Shattered stencil and Hickory Smoke and Ground Espresso following Tim's Embossed Layering Stencil technique.

Given the time of year I decided I wanted to give my tag a Halloween/Autumnal feel, so chose Dried Marigold, Persimmon and Rusty Hinge as additional colours and used both the inks and sprays to create the rest of my background, using the Crackle Layering Stencil in the other corner of my tag.

Using the sprays made for a lovely drippy droppy background, but I lost some of the details. In addition it also got a bit dark, so I added a couple more layers of background stamping with Rusty Hinge Distress Paint and Jet Black Archival, some more stencilling with the Crackle stencil and finally added some more interest using both black and white remnant rubs from the Apothecary collection.

Now the Shattered Stencil always reminds me of a spiderweb, and so I put a spider from the Remnant Rubs in the centre. The new(ish) Remnant Rubs Tool is a godsend for this, thanks so much Anne for gifting it to me!!!

Now, even though I had chosen to go with a Halloween theme, I am not really a fan of the whole skeleton, zombie and skull scene, so I decided to keep more to the Autumn Harvest side of Halloween, and created an autumnal cluster using a variety of die-cut leaves, berries, some beech nuts and of course a pumpkin.

Though I own a little pumpkin die, it was not the right size for my cluster, so I made one using three oval die-cuts, an idea I saw somewhere on Pinterest. Here is a close up:

I used the same colours of Distress Inks to colour the pumpkin, added some Rock Candy Crackle Paint and when dry added a few spritzes of Ground Espresso Distress Spray to bring out the cracks.

I created a ticket with a stamp from the Odds and Ends set, adhered it all to my background, added a bit of the Ideaology Trimming Black and Natural to the top and my tag was done.

Well, thank you for joining me for the next leg of our journey this month, hope you enjoyed my project and remember, there is still plenty of time to play along with our latest challenge, Art Journalling with Tim. Hope to see you there and don't forget to come back here next Monday, when there will be another Inspiration post for you to enjoy.

Happy travels!!

Astrid

Home Sweet Home Winner, Pinworthies and Guest Day

Hello Fellow Travellers and Welcome on this special day of the month when we announce our winner and Pinworthies for the Home Sweet Home Challenge. Thank you all so much for joining me in my challenge and I had a great time visiting all your wonderful creations. However, before I make the big announcement we are thrilled to have Ana K with us as our Guest Designer today. Anna has created a stunning art journal project based on our current challenge and you cannot fail to be inspired!

Hello everyone... I'm really honoured to be here with you again. My name is Ana Kavcic and I am from beautiful Slovenia. Creating came into my life by accident, but quickly I became addicted...I love everything old or old looking and that you can find in my creations...

I thought that this month challenge theme Art Journaling with Tim is perfect to make covers for my new journal book...

I started creating background with Gessoing paper. I torn and glued pieces of Melange tissue paper. Then I continue with heat embossing resist techniques, which Tim used few times on his famous tags...I used stamp from Steampunk set and clear embossing powder. When background cooled, I decided to add more stamped images; I used stamps from School Desk and Curiosity sets. Then I mixed Distress stain – Broken China with water and painted surface. I didn’t like it, as I thought I will so I painted over with coffee.

Blue colour was still visible in few places around embossed images and I added also some green with Crushed Olive Distress ink.

Satisfied with beautiful, dynamic background I decided to embellish the front cover. As this is my fourth journal I chose to cut out four kids (sorry for the little boy, he have to go) from Found Relatives Cards. Edges were distressed with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and added Remnant Rubs - Botanical. I glued kids to the background and added pieces of vintage paper, lace and leaves cut with Spring Greenery Sizzlits Strip. Journal book cover wouldn’t be perfect without some inspiring words, so I added Small Talk sticker. 

Happy with results I glued covers to the cardstock and made holes for binding. I chose simple ribbon binding, which is perfect because allow me to take pages out when needed.

I hope you like my book covers and hope I give you some inspiration to join Alison’s challenge….

Hugs and kisses from Slovenia

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Your vintage book covers are absolutely stunning Ana - thank you so much for sharing them with us today. 

And now onto our Winner and Pinworthies - drum roll please!

First up is our randomly chosen Winner who will receive our monthly voucher from Country View Crafts. And the winner is ………

Cuka - RetosCreativosScrap

Congratulations Cuka! I loved your wonderful little house and the beautiful scene through the window.

And now our three Pinworthies chosen by our Creative Guides. As always it is a difficult job as there are always so many beautiful and worthy entries. But these are the three which caught the eye of all of us. And so in no particular order here is our round of applause for the Home Sweet Home Challenge:

#8 Cazzy

#8 Kerstin

#15 Sarascloset

Congratulations to all three of you - your projects were each amazingly unique, full of Tim goodness and fabulous interpretations of the challenge. Your blog badges and invitations will be on their way to you soon.

We do hope you will join us in our current challenge hosted by Alison - Art Journalling with Tim - and also pop back on Monday for our Destination Inspiration to see what one of our Creative Guides has created with the current travelling bag of goodies!

Happy Creating!

Jennie and the AVJ Creative Guides

Destination Inspiration October Terminal 1

Hello Everyone and welcome to a new month and a new journey and of course a whole new set of essential items in our travel bag. Jennie here as your travel companion at Terminal 1 - the first leg of our weekly journey with four Creative Guides through the month.

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

Product: Distress Spray Stain

Technique: Layering Stencil Embossing 

(Compendium of Curiosities III p.50)

Colour: Hickory Smoke

Substrate: A Tag

So with this bag of possibilities I had fun creating this tag:

I had this rather lovely idea in my head of a subtle yellow toning with the Hickory Smoke, but hey ho I reached for Fossilised Amber instead of Scattered Straw!

I blended a combination of  both Hickory Smoke and Fossilised Amber Distress Inks through the Harlequin Layering Stencil and then embossed with clear embossing powder. I wasn't too sure where I was going next so decided to spray my Hickory Smoke here and there and got some gorgeous different tones where it was sprayed over the embossing.

I used a large text background stamp and Hickory Smoke Distress Ink to  fill the blank areas of the tag. All a bit hit and miss but I do quite like this effect! I also blended Hickory Smoke around the edges of the tag.

I sprayed a piece of Ranger manilla cardstock with both Hickory Smoke and Fossilised Amber Distress Spray Stain and cut out lots of leaves using the new Framelits set. I had the idea of also using flowers at this stage, but changed my mind later!

This was my master board paper. I do find Framelits get the most out of any piece of cardstock as it really is easy to cut just about everywhere!

The leaves got a coating of Rock Candy Distress Crackle.

Then it was time to put everything together on the tag. I found the small flowers were just too tiny for the tag and one large cream coloured Tattered Floral Rose worked better. I also found the strong colours needed more cream to set them off and so used some paper string and stamens (sadly these got stuck down in a clump by mistake !!) and die cut a Stylised Label (remember those !) which I overstamped and spritzed with Hickory Smoke.

And so there you have it - my completed tag. Do travel back next Monday for the next stage of our journey where another Creative Guide will be waiting for you at Terminal 2 with a completely new project using the essential items in our travel bag for this month.

Thank you for joining me at Terminal 1.

Jennie x

Live The Dream

Art Journalling With Tim

Hello all, Alison here, and I'm delighted to be hosting the next leg of the Vintage Journey.  My theme for you this month is

Art Journalling with Tim

"Art Journalling with Tim?" I hear you cry... "But Tim Holtz doesn't do much art journalling".  You're right, he doesn't (or if he does, he keeps it to himself!), so what I'm looking for is how you incorporate Tim's techniques, style and products into your own art journalling.

Remember that we are always a Tim Holtz inspired challenge so we do want to see that your project is inspired by one of of his wonderful techniques that he so freely shares, and/or by his style, and/or by the amazing array of products he has created for us all to play with.  We love visiting to see your work, and it's really helpful to us when you mention in your post exactly what it is in your project that is Tim-inspired.

So for this month it's Tim-inspired art journalling, please - any size, any format - as long as it clearly follows our Travelling Instructions.

Our challenge is a monthly one and a randomly chosen winner will receive a £20 gift voucher from our very generous sponsor, Country View Crafts. We also award our Pinworthy badges to the Top 3, chosen by the Creative Guides.

And now without further ado it is time to unveil the art journalling pages created by our Creative Guides to inspire you.

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Alison 

For my journalling I've turned to the things I fell in love with when I first encountered Tim Holtz and his work - stamping and Distress Inks (including the new Wilted Violet and Ground Espresso), and a favourite Tim technique, wrinkle-free distress.  I'm in a strange transitional mood at the moment - enjoying the gentle melancholy of autumn, but also with many new adventures being lined up for the future.  I think all of that arrived in my pages.  If you'd like to see more, do come and visit Words and Pictures.

Astrid

I love journalling so when Alison chose this theme for our latest challenge I was delighted. I did feel a little challenged too though, because art journalling with Tim? Not something the great man himself does very often..... So though I have certainly used plenty of his products, I'm not sure that this is totally journalling Tim style. If you want to find out for yourself, just click HERE.

Jennie

I am still fairly new to Art Journalling but I had great fun with Alison's fabulous challenge using many of my favourite Tim products, dies and stamps. My new Wilted Violet Distress Spray Stain and Distress Ink Pad had literally just been delivered by the postman so I just dived in with this fabulous new colour and paired it with Ground Espresso. I absolutely loved the varying degrees of mauves and pinks I managed to achieve. Please hop on over to my blog if you would like to see some more details.

S@ndy

Alison's wonderful challenge this month is just perfect for me, I have put an end to my journaling procrastination.  I had so much fun with this page and enjoyed all the steps along the way.  I packed it full of Tim's products and techniques.  I hope you will drop by my blog to see how I did it.

Julia

I joined in with Alison's challenge this month because I needed the push to make myself play.  I have not been happy with the few attempts I've made in the past to journal and so I really tried to focus on what looks pleasing to me when I see someone elses pages.  I'm finding "Less is More" and some sort of symmetry work for me!    Here I have embossed, sponged, stenciled and added Idea-ology pieces.   Thank you, Alison, for challenging me to try journaling again!   You are certainly one of the masters at it!   You'll find more details on my blog post here.

Anne

It was with some trepidation that I joined in Alison's wonderful challenge as I am very new to journalling but it was the push I needed.  Staying within my comfort zone I used my all time favourite dies by Tim along with techniques from his July 2014 tag to create my page.  There are more details over on my blog.

Julie

I have only ever made one Journalling page prior to this Challenge that Alison gave us, so I was keen to join in to have another go, although I feel rather apprehensive as this is truly out of my comfort zone. Tim's Botanical paper pad and his flower stamps have inspired me to up-cycle a book into an Edwardian Style Ladies Journal. Over at my blog Juliz Design Post you will also see my next set of pages in it and how I decorated my cover. 

Brenda

When deciding what to do for my journal pages autumn, harvest and halloween all came to mind, so not sure on where I would go I wrote myself a list of layering techniques for making the background. Having chosen my starting colours I was off and as ideas came to mind I gathered together the found relatives and dies that I could use. There's lots of Tim in these pages, I even finished with some photo tinting.

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What an amazing array of journalling inspiration!  And I'm so grateful that some of the Creative Guides have dared to jump outside their comfort zones for this theme... I think the results are fantastic.  I hope you'll be inspired to do the same.  If you think journalling is not your thing, maybe you'll find you're wrong!

Do come and try some Art Journalling with Tim - you have a whole month to play, so why not explore some new paths?  As always there's a randomly drawn prize voucher from our generous sponsors Country View Crafts on offer, as well as our three Pinworthy spots chosen by the Creative Guides.

Bon Voyage!

Alison xx

Just a quick reminder... we are seeking two new Creative Guides

If you would like more information and details please email Brenda at brenda_brown25@hotmail.com by Monday 5th October.

An InLinkz Link-up