Encore - Nautical Salvage Plaque

Encore Posts

While I'm away, there are some scheduled posts with new creations coming your way, but I'm also taking the chance to do some catching up here at Words and Pictures.   Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook.  I'm calling them "Encore" posts and they're formatted differently (all the way down the centre), so you can spot them easily.

Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

I hope you caught my new White Fire journalling pages in between all these Encore posts... If you missed them, you might want to visit the Golden Stained Glass over at Country View Craft Projects.

In case you're confused (and I wouldn't blame you), I'm now on the next leg of my travels - New York, New York, so good they named it twice... and I feel so grateful to get to go and work there twice!  I should have a bit more time to spare than the last time around, so I'm looking forward to that and to some sightseeing in Craftyblogland too.  

But we don't Press for another few days yet so, while I'm still busy with the shows, I'll just share this layered Nautical Plaque, which was created with the Calico Craft Parts.  Here's what I wrote back in June of 2015.

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I used some of the Birchwood Plaques to create this - an Oval and a Rectangle.  There are various sizes and you can specify whether you would like holes pre-drilled or not.

My oval has holes so it's ready for hanging, but my rectangle is hole-less, making it a great substrate for layering.

Let's start with that rectangle... I gave it a coat of DecoArt crackle paint and then stamped and painted it.  I didn't plan it that way, but I noticed it was starting to look like an antiquarian map - something I love to pore over - so I decided to let it happen, and added more ocean tinting around the "land".

So then I changed direction with the rest of my plans.  I had thought I would go for quite an industrial grey-blue look with all the Mini Cogs and Gears, but with the old map looking so splendidly weathered I decided to go for a rusty look instead.

I applied texture sand paste roughly to the cogs, leaving some blank areas, and then layered paints and sprays until I liked the look of them.

I added some metal pointers to some of them, as well as a couple of extra altered metal pieces.

As I tried to position the cogs on the plaque, I found they were covering too much of the map for my liking, so I decided to expand the whole project by a layer.

That's when I took the oval plaque and applied layers of paint and crackle to get a look of ocean waves and weathering around the edges.

Now I had some extra space to arrange my cogs, and it also created a great dimensional look.

I attached an altered WordBand with some of my trusty rusty wire, and there's also some rusty wire to hang it up by.

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So there you have it.  Once the press performances are out of the way, I'm hoping to be able to meet up with Marjie Kemper as well as some of my other friends in New York, but there'll be time to catch up with all of you too, all being well.  Thanks so much for dropping in today, and I hope to see you soon.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

Vincent Van Gogh