Star Light, Star Bright - A Vintage Journey

Hello Friends

The first Friday of the month means a new challenge at A Vintage Journey  The lovely Julia is our host this month.  Here is what Julia has to say:

'This month we are asking you to create with STARS.  Fill up the dark winter sky with them or use one big one as your central focus.  Stencil them, stamp them, emboss them or die cut them.  Make a card, make a star box, make a canvas, create a journal page - remembering to create in the vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journalling, industrial or steampunk styles.'

I usually make a 'light up' home decor piece at Christmas time and the Star theme fitted my plan perfectly.

I used a Tim Holtz Vignette Box, his Merry Moose (I love him!!), one of Tim's  Woodland trees and a few other Tim products to create my winter scene...

I started by creating a fake 'wall' at the back of the vignette so that my lights could fit behind.  The wall was created with a really old Tim Holtz paper pad - one page had resist stars on and I simply added some Distress Ink to the starry background.  I punched some holes, through some of the stars for the lights to show through.  I used the same paper for the insides of the vignette.

The top, sides and floor of the vignette were coated with Ranger Distress Grip Paste.  I die cut Merry Moose, some trees and small deer, coloured them and added them to the vignette along with one of Tim's Woodland Trees, coloured green.

I added a lot of Tim's Greenery to the top of the vignette and added a Ideaology sentiment.to the front.  The back of the vignette was covered with some snowflake design paper from my stash.  I used the same paper to create a battery pack holder.

It was difficult to get the night time view but here it is lit up, it does look better in real life.

 I hope you will join in our Star Light, Star Bright challenge this month, it would be lovely to see you there!

Do please check out my teamies projects too, over at A Vintage Journey  there are some real beauties over there.

As always, thanks for your visit.  Hugs, Anne xx

Create Inside a Frame - A Vintage Journey

Hello Friends!

This month at A Vintage Journey, the talented Julia has chosen 'Create Inside a Frame' for our September challenge.

Julia says 'we would like you to create something inside a frame.  Whatever you use, show us how you have incorporated a frame on your vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journalling, industrial or steampunk project!'

This started off as an experiment using the new Distress Grit Paste by Tim Holtz and comparing it to Ranger's Texture Paste. I wanted to see how they took colour.

I am not going to show the steps for the frame, it is so easy to do and there are lots of YouTube videos to show how, the one I used is HERE, it creates a wonderful sturdy finished 5" x 5" box frame, from a single sheet of 12" x 12" paper.

Using a brick stencil, I used Tim Holtz Distress Texture Paste on the left hand side and Grit Paste on the right side hand and left these to dry. 

Both pieces were spritzed with Tim Holtz Distress Spray Stain in a combination of Fired Brick and Rusty Hinge. The Texture Paste (left) soaks up the colour beautifully and the two colour tones showed up clearly. The Grit Paste did not soak up the colour of the stain as easily and took quite some time to dry.  I repeated the step but the colour remained pale.

 To give some light and shade to both sets of the bricks I painted some of bricks with various Distress Paints, watered down a little. I think the bricks look a little more realistic now and the Grit Paste takes the colour of the paint much easier than the stain.

I applied the Grit Paste bricks to the inside of my frame and added the Texture Paste bricks to the front of my frame.

Finally, I coloured one of the dogs from Tim's Crazy Dog set of stamps, with Distress Markers, cut him out and mounted him with some foam pads to give him some dimension.  The words are from Tim's Idea-ology Label Letters, mounted onto some white card.

I hope you will join in with our Create a Frame Challenge over at A Vintage Journey.  There is always a wonderful prize on offer from DecoArt.  If you have time, do please go over and see what my talented teamies have made for your inspiration too!

As always, thanks so much for your visit!