A few of my favourite things...

Hello all!  Alison (butterfly) here to share another journalling page with you.  This one centres around a vintage photo and one of my favourite Katy Leitch flower stamps.  Cups of coffee at the ready?  Let's dive in...

I started by layering torn book pages and heavy gesso into a kraft-paper journal (still working through the pages carved out of my candle niche!).

The next step was some stamping... the Encyclopedia Botanica flower and one of my favourite Calligraphy Mats, number #4, stamped in Sepia, and with clear-embossing for the flower to give extra definition.

I then started playing around with ephemera and embellishments and it all came together without me really thinking very hard.

This wonderful young woman from the Darkroom Door Photobooth sheets was really the catalyst.  (Since I'm having to be patient about getting my hands on the new Tim Holtz Photobooth release, I'm playing with these for now!)

The determined set of her mouth and the humorous gleam in her eyes drew me to her at once.  Here's someone setting out into the world with her head screwed on straight and ready to pursue her desires.

She's layered up over some Tim Holtz ephemera, some shabby lace and some stained calico from when I did my last rusting session (a long time ago... there needs to be another one very soon).

The journey she takes will undoubtedly be full of twists and turns, but you can bet your bottom dollar she'll grit her teeth and come out smiling in the end.  This word from Journalling Words #2 seemed the right one for her.  The layers here include some more of the rusty calico as well as some tea and coffee-stained tissue paper.

You'll recognise the book page Frameworks Trellis pieces (they put in an appearance on my New Leaf tag as well as my Russian Love Is In The Air hanging)... 

Here they've had lots of shading (with Inktense pencils and a water brush) to embed them in the page.

I found when I was looking at some of the photos that I couldn't make my eyes see them properly - they kept either sinking in to the page or sticking out - a sign that the shading for dimension is doing its job, I suppose.

It was while I was creating the shadows around the Frameworks and the other ephemera - with various blue and grey Inktense pencils - that I decided the flowers might look good with some "sky" around them.

I'm really pleased with how it makes the image pop.

The other elements which made an early appearance in the plans were the wooden butterflies.

I already like them in "naked" wood, but for this page I decided they should be crackled.

I used the Croco Crackling in White again (as on my last journalling page here).

And then added splodges of Black Soot, Gathered Twigs and Vintage Photo Distress Stains, wiping back and adding more until I was happy with the grungy look.

The little wooden buttons I did leave naked - though they did get caught in the splatter fire!

You'll have spotted the metal accents - some Idea-ology pieces that worked with my young woman... business-like cogs and paper clips, and the Muse Token which is definitely hers by rights.  I sanded it back to give it an extra burnished glow.

So that's today's bit of fun.  The journalling does seem to have taken hold, and I'm enjoying the freedom it's giving me to play.  I'm hoping you're still enjoying the results!

Thanks so much for stopping by today - it's always lovely to hear what you think.  Oh, and there's still almost a week to come and play in our New Beginnings challenge... hope to see you there.

Ingredients used:

Artistic Stamper stamps: Katy Leitch - Encyclopedia Botanica, Journalling Words #2, Calligraphy Mat #4

Archival Ink - Sepia

Distress Stains - Black Soot, Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs

Idea-ology Findings - Muse Tokens and Gears

Viva Decor Croco Crackling Colour - White

From my stash: gesso, wooden butterflies and buttons, book pages, rusty calico, tissue paper (plus tea and coffee), lace, Sizzix Frameworks Trellis, Tim Holtz Ephemera (but there are similar things here), Inktense pencils

Measured Time Part Two Time Flies

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well I have for you today the second part 

of my original tag that went towards making Measured Time, (please
see 10th september post on this blog)

and now Time Flies.  

The instructions on how to make the base tag are on the post

Time Measured.

Here's a few photo's below of the original tag, The paste I used to 

put through the artistic stamper stencil Splats and was a crackle paste.

I enhanced the top with fired brick distress ink 

blended on with a blending tool.

Water colour paints and distress inks were used to colour the original 

tag and The Artistic Stamper Stamps were Numerical plate ,

Emphemera plate and graph paper stamp.

I triple embossed black card with gold embossing powder and stamped

 the artistic stamper post mark from the Katy Leitch carte postal plate.

I used grunge board for the clock and used the Tim Holtz 

clock die. I coloured the clock and embossed it to

 look like old rusted metal.

I used Viva Ferro Graphite I put it on the top 

of the tag with a palette knife.

I stamped the dragon fly from the Artistic Stamper insects and butterflies plate,

onto a piece of card. I coloured the card with metallic

 paints. I used Versafine Onyx Black and then used

 clear embossing powder over & heat set.

I cut out the wings and used beads from my stash to make up the body 

for the end of the tail I used Ranger gold Stickles.

I attached the dragonfly to the clock from the Tick Tock 

plate which had been embossed onto whites card

that had been coloured with broken china 

and spiced marmalade distress ink.

I assembled it all together and attached the postal marks

over the graphite which had been enhanced with 

Gilding wax.

That's it for today, I hope you have all enjoyed this two part 

project. Thank you for stopping by and please feel free to 

let me know what you think.

Cheers Dee x

Measured Time.

Hi Everyone Dee here again with my passion clocks, this is actually 

a two piece blog as it started out as a tag and I wasn't 

happy with it but loved the colours, So it developed

 into two pieces. So here it is

 Part 1

I love paint splats and had seen a lovely tag that just had paint or ink 

splats on it & was very effective. So I started by flicking 

water colour paint across the tag.

I wasn't happy with this so I got my distress inks out and blended 

spiced marmalade and broken china across the tag.

I stamped the numbers from the Numerical plate in fired brick distress ink,

down one side and at the bottom of the Tag. 

I stamped the Tape measure from the Ephemera Plate down the bottom in 

black versa fine and clear embossed, I also stamped it on the opposite

 side to the numbers and gold embossed it. 

The centre was stamped with the Clock of the Tick Tock plate and 

gold embossed. I stamped the graph  paper stamp in dove grey 

so it only hinted that it was there.

Texture crackle paste was put through the Artistic stamper mask The large

splat & swirl at the top and the bottle top at the bottom.

I then cut the top third of the Tag off.

On scrap card coloured with distress inks I stamped clocks from

The Time and keys plate also the tick tock 

plate I cut them out.

I then layered the clocks and embossed some of the edges with

gold and placed others on top.

I placed glass embellishments on them, along with cogs

and I also used distress crackle paint rock candy

on one of the faces. of coarse a little bit

of gilding wax, to highlight.

I backed it all onto black card. I hope you like this piece 

and come back to view part two. Please feel free to 

let me know what you think.

Cheers Dee x

Air Mail box: By Zuzu

 

I decided to alter one of the oblong boxes on the theme of "air mail". I like the colour combination of the nice blue and red you get with airmail and the "postage" theme is a popular one.

I coloured the box in a pale sky blue colour wash and let it dry thoroughly before stamping on it. once it had dried I stamped various elements from the airmail "ephemera" sheet, using black, blue and red inkpads. the red and black are both Stazon inks. I added some "ink blots" using the ink blot background stamp too.

I used some of the fab airmail washi tape "washi tape narita"  around the top of the box (I glued it on as its quite low tack.) I also glued on some random bits of scrap metal, mostly from an old disassembled typewriter, and I used some salvage stickers to add interest.

To compliment it (and to give me something to put inside) I distressed some tim holtz journalling tickets, by using the paper distresser on the edges, gently blended some vintage photo ink around the edges and then stamped more Ephemera themed stamps on them.

Token of Love by Astrid

Hello everyone and welcome! Do you have that wonderful Springtime feeling yet? Today I want to share some collage stamping with you, so I created this vintage (of course this is me after all) postcard.
Now as you may or may not know, the Artistic Stamper sells loads of wonderful Collage stamps. But today I wanted to do something slightly different, and so I created my own collage using different stamp sets to create said postcard.
These are the stamps I used:
Botanical 3
Swirls Splats and Dots
Calligraphic Mat 12
Postage 1
Ephemera
I cut a piece of 4 x 6 smooth stamping card and stamped the rose from the Botanical 3 set in Archival Jet Black, coloured it with Distress Markers in Peeled Paint, Victorian Velvet, Pine Needles and Aged Mahogany. Then I masked it and stamped the writing from the Calligraphic Mat 12 over it in Archival Coffee.

Next I created the lines by stamping the rubber frame that comes around many of the stamp sets. I had kept some bits of that after mounting my sets on Kling On and trimming them. As you can see I did not manage to do it perfectly but decided to "embrace my imperfection" to use the phrase of a certain famous person in the crafting world.... I also stamped the word Postcard and the stamp from the Postage 1 and Ephemera sets in the Coffee Archival.

To give the whole thing a bit more of an aged feel still I inked it with Distress Inks in Antique Linen and Vintage Photo, Distressed the edges with the Tim Holtz  Paper Distresser and stamped some "ink blots" from the swirls, Splats and Dots plate in Vintage Photo.

Finally I mounted my postcard on a piece of paper from the Crowded Attic paper collection by Tim Holtz and embellished with some lace, string and an Ideaology word band

I then mounted it on some Kraft Card and voila, my token of love was done and ready to post out to its recipient.....

Hope you liked my project and see you next time! I'll post thumbnails of the stamps I used below.