Spring Flowering

Hello everyone - time for a new challenge at A Vintage Journey, and it's the lovely Jennie of Live the Dream who is our host this time.  Anyone who has seen her extraordinarily beautiful handmade flowers will be unsurprised to hear that her theme for us is Spring Flowers!




You can find all the details of what she's looking for here at A Vintage Journey, but please, please make sure to read the challenge requirements carefully, as well as the Travelling Directions (the challenge rules!).  


We've so enjoyed your creations in all the challenges so far, but too many of them have had to be left out of the prize deliberations for one reason or another.  And we have to be fair to those who have hit the mark.


Anyway, here are my Spring Flowers to get you started, and do hop over to see what the rest of my amazing team-mates have created to inspire you.













I was inspired by watching an old video of Tim's, introducing the Idea-ology Fragments.  At one point, he shows a metal case completely covered with a patchwork of them... so I decided to play with a similar idea.  


Since the Fragments are quite heavy, I worked on a pre-cut wooden tag (sorry, no idea any more where I got them from!) so that I'd have a solid base for my patchwork.


And of course, that gave me two sides to play with... so I couldn't resist creating another Spring Flower scenario on the reverse!

The first step was to cover the wooden tag with Distress Paints... I think I used Scattered Straw, Stormy Sky and Picket Fence, but there are possibly some others involved too - Antique Linen?

I spritzed lots of water over to allow them to "marble-ize".












Once the paints were dry, I edged the tag with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

I had a little play with laying out my pieces so that I could add some rub-ons.  Creating the Fragments reminded me of using microscope slides, so the botanical labelling seemed appropriate!










I finally broke into some of my new Tim Holtz papers for this... consider yourself honoured, Jennie!!










Some are from the Wallflower collection, and some from the 8x8 Menagerie, so as to get the smaller images.

If I was ever going to stop stroking and start using these papers, it needed a project which was really going to highlight them properly.












Now I've broken in, it'll be easier the next time!












On the other side, I also began with paint, but this time with some Frescos and Crackle Glaze to create a slightly different background.













I added some Distress Ink stencilling through my favourite TH Latticework mask.

(Okay - confession time... this was actually the first side, but then the background was just too busy for the Fragments to work against, so I started again with the Distress Paints!)









I absolutely love this Tim Holtz hedgerow flowers stamp (from the Spring Sprung set) - could it be more up my street?!











And the sentiment is a PaperArtsy one, stamped in my favourite method of blending different ink colours onto the stamp and then clear-embossing them once stamped.












Since the whole thing is pretty streamlined (for me!) I kept the topping fairly simple too - some frayed linen ribbon bound together with some curly white wire (the ring binding from a discarded notebook).

So those are my Spring Flowers with Tim Holtz products and techniques galore.

If you're not already inspired to come and play along this fortnight, do go and see what my team-mates have been up to - you won't regret it!  



Thanks so much for stopping by... I'm back later on today with a PaperArtsy appearance, but for now I'll hope to see you joining us on A Vintage Journey with bouquets of flowers very soon.

... always
                  it's 
                          Spring and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

From who knows if the moon's by e.e.cummings (with a missing punctuation mark - apologies e.e.! - but it didn't make sense out of context)

With all these spring flowers, I'd like to enter this in Eileen Hull's Art With Heart challenge which is an April Showers theme
And with crackle glaze, meadow flowers and the clear-embossed sentiment, I'd also like to offer up A Few of My Favourite Things at the Inspiration Journal, sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium