Encore - Destination Cabbage Roses

Hello all!  I'm having trouble settling back into the swing of things blogger-wise, and the craft table hasn't seen much action either, partly because I've been distracted by watercolours (which you'll see some of very soon), and partly because I've unexpectedly landed up with another theatre gig when I thought I was going to have some nice quiet recovery time.  But I get to play at Shakespeare's Globe, so that's nice!  While I'm trying to get my act together, here's an Encore post in the meantime (see the foot of the post if you've never met one of my Encore posts before).  This was made for Destination Inspiration at A Vintage Journey in June 2015, and here's what I wrote back then...

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Hello all, Alison here from Words and Pictures, and I'm delighted to have arrived at Terminal 4 to share June's fourth and final Destination Inspiration project with you.

Packed in the travel bag this month we had:

Colour - Walnut Stain

Technique - texture paste through a stencil

Substrate - watercolour paper

Product - any Tattered die

Three of my fellow Creative Guides have already shared their inspiration with you, keeping us all fuelled for the journey (you can see their roadmaps of inspiration again at the end of the post), and now it's my turn.  Here's what I came up with...  (I had to make this some time ago before life got busy, but I'll do my best to remember how I put it together!)

I started by cutting a large tag out of a sheet of watercolour paper, and applied texture paste through the fabulous Typo stencil before spritzing with Walnut Stain Distress Spray.  I tried to keep some whiter spaces, and places where you can really see the delicate splatter pattern from the spray.

I decided I wanted the Typo lettering to pop a little more, so I did some dry-brushing with Picket Fence Distress Paint to highlight the texture.

I'm not much of a flower-maker in the general way of things, but I know where to go when I do want to do some... my fellow Creative Guide Jennie has some amazing tutorials over at her blog Live the Dream, and I almost always go there for help when I'm using the Tattered Florals die.

I followed her Cabbage Rose design for my large flower (I've enjoyed the results in the past, and it didn't fail me this time either) and a sort of half version of the same for the smaller ones.  I did less curling of the petals on the small roses as my book pages weren't really strong enough to take it.

So with all my luggage unpacked from the travel bag and in place, I now had the fun of adding collage elements and embellishments to finish the whole thing off.

I used one of the brilliant Photobooth photos, and layered up paper scraps and other ephemera to frame it.

I altered my metal embellishments with alcohol ink and some Treasure Gold.  I think the clock looks pretty good peeking out from behind the roses.

I particularly like the effect on the WordBand.  I thought about applying paint to accent the lettering, but decided I rather liked how subtle they are like this.

I like the dark Teakwood and Espresso alcohol ink contrasting with the bright gilding.

I needed something a little brighter to carry the eye on a longer journey and capture the light in places, so I grabbed some thick card off-cuts from the Frameworks Honeycomb die which were hanging around on my craft table and gave them a coat of Antique Linen Distress Paint and then one of Rock Candy Crackle Paint.

Once it was dry and cracked, I pressed the pad of my Walnut Stain Distress Stain down onto them to let the ink sink into the crackles to highlight them.

The seam binding at the top has had a close encounter with the Walnut Stain inkpad so that it tones in with the rest of the tag.

And I'm a real spatter fiend at the moment - can't resist it!  You can see the dry-brushing and a hint of Treasure Gold on my stencilled texture paste here too.

So there you have it... my roadmap of inspiration to re-charge your batteries for the next stage of the journey.  I hope you like it.

I love seeing how each Creative Guide uses the same luggage from the travel bag to create such different and individual projects.

So there you have it.  What will be packed in the travel bag next month?  And how will each Creative Guide use the components to fuel our onward Vintage Journey?  

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Thank you so much for stopping by today.  I hope you're all enjoying a lovely long weekend.  The sun is blazing down from a blue sky here, and the birds are singing, so my guess is the craft table still won't see much of me!  Ah well, the cycle of creativity will swing round again at some point, I'm sure.  

Cestina's Dollshouses has been even quieter than Words & Pictures, but for those of you who like to follow what's going on at the Small Worlds dollshouse museum, you'll be happy to know there's finally a new post over there now.  Happy Easter or Passover or whatever you may be celebrating (we have a lot of family birthdays round about now) and see you soon!

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.

H.L. Mencken

Since there's not going to be another one for a while, I'd like to share this in the Simply Neutrals Party over at Apple Apricot.

Encore Posts

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 while I'm busy.

As always, the Encore Posts are formatted differently from the regular ones, so that you can easily spot them.  Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!