In pursuit of texture

Hello and welcome everyone, with an especially big welcome to the new followers - thank you so much for jumping on board!


It's time for a new challenge over at Fun With ATCs, and I'm sure this one will get your creative juices flowing... We're looking for Texture on your ATC (2.5 x 3.5 inches and no bigger!).


And today's quotes at the end of the post are from an actor, a writer and an artist: seems we're all in pursuit of texture!


All the challenge details, as well as some fabulous inspiration from my fellow Design Teamers, can be found here.  But here's my starter for ten.









I'm back in my happy zone of the neutrals, and with some torn off cardboard box to start me off.  

It's not quite rectangular, and those jagged edges are my first element of texture, as well of course as peeling away some of the top layer to reveal the delicious corrugated texture underneath.

A sweep of gesso, roughly applied, and then a very delicate dusting of Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder, just to add some tiny rust particles to the surface.  

And the edges are inked with Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs DIs, of course.





The words are cut from a stamp of Distressed Background Text from Magenta.  The stamp is part of the debut stamp-designing range by the very wonderful Ellie Knol of Paper-Stamps-Colour.  If you've never visited her site, I urge you to do so - she creates delicate beautiful work; and you can find her lovely new stamps and stencils here.



I selected several of the words which seemed to me to be about the texture of our lives, the things we try to build into a lifetime.  

They're stamped on handmade paper (not by me), so there's some added texture there, highlighted with some more inking around the torn edges.

The words are mounted on some rusty metal mesh, which I got from the Funkie Junkie Boutique. I twisted and frayed the edges - love it!

And I added a twist or two of burlap twine, for a different kind of textural accent.







I clipped that with a fabulous vintage rusty clip that was part of a delicious parcel of goodies I received from the amazing Kasia of Papierowywymiar (Paper Size).  

Again, I strongly urge you to go and have a look-see - her work is absolutely lovely.  (And I'm honestly not just saying that because she sent me some lovely things - I loved her work before I won her beautiful altered notebook!)

So that's me for today (unless you've time to pop over and have a look at my Artistic Outpost offering for this week - sneak peek reminder here - in case you missed the original post).

As I said, there are wonderful projects from the Fun With ATCs team to tickle your texture taste buds.  I do hope you'll feel inspired to come and play along with the Texture challenge this fortnight.




They're playing with ATCs this fortnight at Anything But A Card, so I'd like to pop this in over there.  There are still a few days to go, so you could do the double too!

Little moments can have a feeling and a texture that is very real.
Ralph Fiennes

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.
Kazuo Ishiguro

I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it... I always want to see the third dimension of something... I want to come alive with the object.
Andrew Wyeth

UPDATE
Yikes!!  I'm a Blogworthy Link!!  Over at Tim Holtz's blog... I'm bouncing off the walls!!!