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).

Monday, 15 June 2015

Destination Inspiration - June Recipe #2

Hello, Anne (Redanne) here to welcome you to the second in our series of Destination Inspiration posts for June, where one of our Creative Guides uses a 'recipe' chosen by four Creative Guides.

   The recipe for June is:  
                
Product : Any Tattered Die
Colour: Walnut Stain
Technique : Layering Stencil and Texture Paste
Substrate : Watercolour Paper

As there are a lot of birthdays coming up in July, I have made a card which can easily be replicated time and again:
The card was made using the wonderful Wallflower paper stack by Tim Holtz.
The base (at the top of the pic) is watercolour paper.  As it is the base I have just used a piece of watercolour paper from a fairly inexpensive paper pad.  Watercolour paper takes Distress Inks really well - I used Walnut Stain Distress Ink and then scuffed up the edges.

The remaining three pieces of Wallflower papers were scuffed up and then edged with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.
The butterflies were cut and embossed using Tim's Butterfly Duo set and Ranger's Distress Watercolour Cardstock.  This is excellent quality cardstock and I will keep the die cut scrap to use as a stencil, it is far too good to throw away!
I wanted to colour the embossing paste and I simply put some Walnut Stain Distress Ink on my glass mat and mixed in some of Wendy Vecchi's Crackle Texture Paste.  A re-inker would work well to colour the paste too but I did not have one in the colour I wanted.  As I wanted a more subtle look the Distress Ink was perfect.

The stencil is Tim's Flourish one and to avoid stencilling more than I wanted I masked some of the design off.  If you are very careful you don't need to mask the design but as I am a messy crafter it works much better this way for me!  Remember to clean your stencil straight away, after scraping off as much paste as possible (and put it back in the pot) I lay mine on a wet baby wipe and use another baby wipe to wipe off the surface.
I let the paste dry naturally and if you look closely you will see some lovely small cracks in the paste.  If you want larger cracks then just apply the paste more thickly.  I mounted the pasted sheet to one side of the card.
Using the Tattered Florals Thinlets die I cut some flowers.  I was a little worried about using this set of dies, because I have dexterity issues, but the quilling tool that comes with the dies made curling the flowers so easy that I carried on and made a whole set of flowers - they are just adorable dinky little flowers!
The butterfly was coloured using Twisted Citron Distress Ink (love that colour!) and Walnut Stain Distress Ink, I coloured both sides as I wanted the wings to be raised up.  The ribbon and the teeny, tiny flowers were coloured with Abandoned Coral Distress Spray Stain.  The flowers make up the body of the butterfly.
I layered all the pieces up and added 'with love' using Tim's Simple Sayings stamp set and Wendy Vecchi's Archival ink in Potting Soil.

Thanks so much for your visit, please visit again next Monday to see what the next Creative Guide does with the same recipe.

It would be lovely to see you join in our latest challenge too.  Sandy is our host and the theme is Celebrations.  Thanks again, Hugs, Anne xxx

Friday, 12 June 2015

Winners and new Guest Creative Guide

It's Friday winners and guest day and as always we are so lucky to have AVJ friends and participants who love guesting with us. This week we have Samra who was the winner of our Tim Birthday celebrations back in March and she has a wonderful project for us.



Hello, my name is Samra Leshinski and I live in Las Vegas, NV USA with my loving husband Don, son Tarik, and variety of pets. I work full time and card making is my pastime addiction. I ventured into actual blogging and participating in challenges since April of 2014.

If I had to pick my favorite style that would definitely be Shabby Chic, but I try to have variety in my work. It makes me so happy to see big smile on someone’s face when they receive my handmade card. I make my own flowers for card embellishing, from daisies to roses and am still learning a lot about all the different ways to create textures and details on a project. 

I am thrilled to be a Guest for a day at A Vintage Journey, simply dream come true!!!

When I found out that the theme of June Challenge was Celebration I immediately knew I was going to make a wedding gift for my dear blog friend who is getting married this summer. 


I altered a wooden box to fit the wedding theme and made a matching design card. I used Distress Crackle Resist technique as well as Heat Embossed Resist technique. 


I used a piece of water color paper and covered it with gesso. Once it was dry, I stamped Tim Holtz script stamp with Versamark to create a look of a book page, love story, I should say. Then I used clear embossing powder and heat embossed the stamped script.  I applied Picket Fence crackle paint here and there and then Broken China Distress Paint. I wiped it off the heat embossed area to uncover the text and crackle paint area to show the crackle… Shabby bow was hand died decorated with a key on a loop pin. 


The same technique was used to decorate the wooden box. I created the antique plate from several layers of heavy cardstock, added pearls, painted is with Broken China Distress Paint, then Picket Fence Crackle Paint and heat embossed stamped LOVE sentiment.


The hinges, the key and the keyhole are Tim Holtz Idea-ology products treated with several layers of gesso.


You can see the Distress Crackle Resist really nicely in this photo. I wanted to make this box look like antiquity and I think that my mission was accomplished. J


I cannot thank Brenda and A Vintage Journey DT enough for giving me this opportunity to share some of my crafting passion with them. I hope you will stop by my little blog PaperTalk with Samra and say hi…



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


The winner of my Spring Colours challenge has been chosen by Random Otg and is .......


Monica from Mistletoe Home Decoration with a very pretty Spring canvas using Tim Holtz products.


Congratulations Monica, this is a beautiful canvas, the blossoms and butterflies are gorgeous. We hope you will be a guest with us at AVJ and your voucher and winners badge will be winging it's way to you soon.


And now for our pin worthies of this month, with so many wonderful projects, to choose just three was not an easy task, but, as ours is a Tim inspired challenge, the three projects we chose demonstrated to perfection some of the innovative ways both Tim's products and techniques can be used. So, in no particular order, our three pinworthies are:

No 4 Joan,

 I just loved the wonderful way she used the cone flowers, and such a stunning back ground too!

No 44 Amanda Pink

Such a clever way to use dies to build a home for one of the crazy birds!


A super mixed media card incorporated some great Tim techniques.

Well done ladies, your blog badges and invitations  will be on the way to you very soon!

Thank you to everyone who takes part in our challenges, we love looking at your wonderful projects. We hope you'll join us again on Monday for another of our monthly detours where we take a new route to a destination inspiration, come and see what next weeks Creative Guide has in store for you. The current challenge started last week with the lovely Sandy so please join us in our Celebrations theme.

Have a great weekend.

Astrid xxx



Monday, 8 June 2015

Destination Inspiration June Recipe #1 : Live Your Dream

Hello Everyone and welcome to a brand new Destination Inspiration Recipe!

Jennie here as your "starter" for the month and without further ado I will share the June recipe chosen by the four Creative Guides who will be sharing their inspiration with you this month:

Tool:  Any Tattered Die
Colour: Walnut Stain
Technique: Layering Stencil and Texture Paste
Substrate:  Watercolour Paper

And so this is what I put together with these fabulous ingredients.



 I started with the Watercolour Paper die cutting a tag but using the reverse (smooth side) of the paper and prepped it by giving it a coat of white gesso.



I added texture paste using the Harlequinn stencil and then added a Walnut Stain Distress Ink here and there, spritzing with water to create a lighter effect. When this was dry I splattered more Walnut Stain and also Black Soot Distress Ink over the tag and added a little light stamping with those fabulous Correspondence stamps.


You can see how giving the tag a coat of gesso allows the ink to sit on the top of the paper, otherwise it would have soaked through into the paper.


My apologies for more of the coneflower stamp! I just LOVE it! This time I used the rough side of the watercolour paper, stamping the flower with Black Arcival and then painting the flower with Walnut Stain. I found a piece of scrap cardstock from the French Industrial Paperstack and for the final layer a piece of cream cardstock stamped with Black Arcival and then inked with Walnut Stain.


Sadly the Walnut Stain didn't stain the ribbon very well (it just looked muddy) so I had to resort to Vintage Photo for the ribbon but the Walnut Stain Distress Ink worked well on the handmade flower using the Tattered Florals Die.


Finally I stamped this wonderful sentiment (perfect for me!) again on the watercolour paper and painted the DREAM with Walnut Stain. 


And then it was time to put it all together.


Having the embellishments "overhanging" the tag makes a change from keeping everything inside the tag area.


Thank you for joining me today and do visit again next Monday to see how these same ingredients can be used in a completely different way.  And of course we all hope to see your entries in our challenge this month which is CELEBRATIONS! 

Have a great week.

Jennie x




Friday, 5 June 2015

Celebrations

Hi Vintage Journey travelers and welcome to a new challenge.
It's S@ndy here as your host for our theme Celebrations.  June is a month for so many wonderful events calling for a celebration.  It can be as simple as the last day of school, a wedding, an anniversary, a graduation, Father's Day or, as I have chosen, a birthday. If I have forgotten anything, please add it.

 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 will have our Pinworthy blog badges awarded to the Top 3, who will be chosen by the Creative Guides.  Don't forget that we are a Tim Holtz inspired challenge but you do not have to use his products, just let us know how you have been inspired by one of his techniques or colors.  To check out all the rules (not too many) simply click here. 

It would be lovely if you could join us this month - the Creative Guides love seeing how you interrupte the theme. You have until June 30, at 6:00 pm

 
For my birthday celebration card I choose Tim's Birthday Blueprint Stamp Set.  Tim always says he is most comfortable with, you guessed it, brown - but I felt bright colors were called for here.  I invite you to hop on over to my blog,  My "Crafty" Life On The Internet, for more photos and details.

  
 
 Who said there was only one day a year to celebrate Love?  And why wait until October to celebrate the things that go bump in the night--like Zombies?  S@ndy's challenge theme of Celebrations carried me to several places at once!  I'm using Tim's techniques and goodies to create this Zombie-licious jumbo tag to celebrate Amour-Zombie style! 

Julia

 
Today I am celebrating LOVE - using some of Tim's brand new stamps and dies.  Please stop by my blog to see just how I put this together.

I have used the fabulous Runway stamps on my celebration card with three different embossing techniques. For all the details do hop over to Addicted to Art.

 
I love these crazy bird stamps and the antics everyone gets them up to. With Sandy's theme and it being Spring Time I thought it apt for these little birds to have some babies, so we could celebrate their new arrivals. Would love you to pop over to my Blog HERE


 I made a simple tag card to celebrate the great man himself! Celebrating Tim Holtz my favourite crafting hero. If you want to see more details all you need to do is click

  
Sandy could not have chosen a better challenge theme than "Celebrations" for this wonderful month of June! It just so happens to be my Hubby's 60th birthday. I have Crackle, Embossing and Eroded Metallics going on and for all the details, please visit my BLOG.

I have made a celebratory card for my inspiration piece this week. It's an 11th wedding anniversary card for my son and daughter-in-law made in the mixed-media genre with lots of layers. Tim's thinlits dies came in very handy with the perfect sentiment and I added an 11 to go with it.

I decided to make a Baby Card for my challenge project as there is nothing nicer to celebrate than the birth of a new baby.
Tim's Blue Print Stamp Set was perfect for this and I was delighted to maintain a vintage style whilst keeping it pink. For more details and to view the inside you can visit my blog by clicking HERE.

Looking forward to viewing your entries xx

Chris


I'm celerating love, for anyone, any occasion, with my little trinket box.  My inspiration is just 2 Tim products to prove that you don't have to own much to be able to join in with us!  As usual, there are more pics and a step x step on my blog.  Have fun!!  Chris xxx
My wonderful hubby celebrates another birthday at the end of the month so I thought I would grab the opportunity to make him a celebratory card based on this month's Tim Holtz 12 Tags of 2015,  Not being a big coffee drinker (hubby is more of a tea urn!) I grabbed the Sizzix Bigz Die 'Packages and Bows' and got to work with lots of surfaces. See more over on my blog.

Thank you team - for such great inspiration.  Now we want to see your celebrations.

Monday, 1 June 2015

Destination Inspiration - Route #5 - Remnants

Hello and welcome to the 5th and final instalment of our Destination Inspiration for May. Terry here today and this is what I cooked up, following the May concoction of:
Product: Any of Tim's Dies with the word "Vintage" in the Title
Colour: Stormy Sky
Technique: Tissue Wrap Collage from Compendium of Curiosities II, Page 38
Substrate: Card
I stamped an image from Tim's Classic #3 in Black Archival and then heat set to dry. Next I applied some Stormy Sky Distress Ink directly to the Craft Mat and using a wet paint brush coloured in the design areas and inked over the edges. I looked through my stash of Grungy shapes and went with Butterflies and Hearts also coloured with Stormy Sky.
 Following the instructions on page 38 of Compendium of Curiosities II, I glued down my grungy pieces and applied the Tissue Wrap and used a stylus to press down the TW around the images.
Final steps were to apply the paints of Stormy Sky and Vintage Photo as directed. I also rubbed a little Vintage Photo Distress Inky over the grungy objects and gave a spray of sealer to keep the inks in place. Added the Remnants Word Band and Finished off with Tim's Vintage Lace Die for trim, which was shaded.

Week 1 - Sandy

Week 2 - Julia

Week 3 - Nikki

Week 4 - Annie

Week 5 - Terry
I hope you have enjoyed all the wonderful DT Inspiration for May and be sure to stop by on Friday for the all new Monthly Challenge chosen by that fabulous Sandy! Have a wonderful week and thank you for visiting today!