It's Patina Time!

Hello all!  I hope you are staying safe and well wherever you are. 

I'm so glad you enjoyed some spring sunlight on my Spring Greens pages with me.  There will be some more springtime creating along soon, I've no doubt. 

But I'm in a different mode today with this textural tag full of crackle and weathered patina effects.

I'll try to keep the words to a minimum, though there will as usual be plenty of pictures.

I was originally thinking of creating more of a partner piece to the Full of Bright Hopes tag, with maybe a Paper Doll or two involved.

I hadn't intended to go down this metal-heavy, patina'd look... but some already patina'd metal embellishments hanging around on the craft desk had other ideas!













The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is inviting us to indulge in some Stencil Fun, which gave me an excellent excuse to try out this glorious new Prima Gothic font stencil.














I thought it would be fun to apply some crackle paste through it - this is the Ranger Opaque version - because I always have fun with crackle!
















I added some random smears around the edges with the palette knife.
















Once it was all nice and dry and cracked, I gave it some spritzes of Distress Spray - Vintage Photo and Rusty Hinge mainly, with a touch of Pumice Stone somewhere under there.














For contrast, I flicked and smooshed some Distress Oxides - Broken China, Peacock Feathers and Cracked Pistachio at this point.

Then, of course, I needed to figure out what to put over the top of it all.












This clock was one I used to experiment with the wonderful VerDay patina paints when I first got them about five years ago. 

I'm not sure whether it ever made its way on to a project which later got dismantled or whether it's never made an appearance at all... 









... but it's been sitting in my bits and bobs bowl on my craft table forever.

When I reached for it and put it against the crackled font, I knew I was on to something.












The large cog was in the bits and bobs bowl, patina-ready - I think done with Fresco paints way back when.  Again, I'm not sure whether it came off a dismantled early project or whether it just never got used.













I did do some present-day patina altering of a couple of other cogs, and added splotches of the same new colours to the already-done ones to make sure everything toned in nicely. 

 Mostly I used Distress Paints.













Broken China, Evergreen Bough, Peacock Feathers and Twisted Citron all played a part.

Some stayed unaltered to match the background.












I also created some extra spatter with those colours onto the background to keep everything nice and harmonious.













The Word Band got the same Distress Paint treatment, and the final touch with all the embellishments was to sand back a bit in places to reveal the gleam of metal again.












I found a great way to use up the leftover smooshes of paint on the craft mat... I rolled this bit of chain in them so that it would end up with a nice weathered patina too, ready to take its place at the top of the tag.














The whole thing is mounted on some thick scrap cardboard for extra sturdiness to bear the weight of all that distressed metal...















... as well as all that chunky crackle!

So that's your lot.  I hope you like it.  I certainly had lots of fun making it.










There's endless delight for me in creating weathered, crackled, distressed, aged and antiqued effects.  The quote at the foot of the post today is probably a decent crack at trying to understand why they appeal to me so much.

And it's nice to have some bolder colour in action for a change too.  Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I'll be round for some (non-infectious) visiting soon, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you've been up to.  Take care, stay safe, and virtual hugs to all.

Monuments are anchors in time. Epochs pass, weather erodes, people lose interest. This cannot be helped. But patina itself is worth appreciating. Patina is the value that age puts on an object. It’s what makes an antique antique. It is experience, maturity, the soft sheen of time. Patina wasn’t present at the spanking-new creation. It comes from a life lived.
John Yemma

I'd like to play along with the Stencil Fun over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
At the More Mixed Media Challenge it's still Anything Goes with an Optional Twist of Green

Full of bright hopes

Hello all!  Thank you for the lovely feedback on the Useful or Beautiful tiny houses.  I'm glad you liked them as much as I do.

Just a tag for you today, and I'm taking the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge at their word in entering it there.  They say they want A Bit O' Green... well, there is a very little bit of green, but it's what brings the tag to life, I think.

And speaking of life, it feels like spring this morning outside, so I am - as the post title and the tag say - full of bright hopes.

I'll try to keep this pretty short so that we can all enjoy some of the spring sunshine... before it vanishes again (hope is a fragile thing!).













I started by putting some texture paste through this fabulous Gothic stencil by Prima.  (It was the Prima Plaster Paste I think.)














I added a wash of PaperArtsy French Roast paint over it, rubbing it in with a cloth to get a nice textured finish with some movement.














I used a PaperArtsy sanding block to sand back the texture revealing nice white highlights.













Then it was just a question of deciding what should go on top of the background.

This chap was an early candidate who kept demanding to be included.















He's layered over a scrap of book text and some of the fabulous Idea-ology film strip ribbon, and attached with some tiny staples.














The stickers are from a couple of different sets of Idea-ology Clippings - one from the regular collection and one from the Halloween set.













I wonder if you can guess which is from which!  I think the little phrases work well with his expression.














There's a little Type Charm attached at the foot of the photo.  I chose H for him/he to match with the "his"s starting each of the little phrases.














It was all looking a bit gloomy so I grabbed the grassy die-cut stem which was sitting nearby, leftover from or left out of some project or other.














I added some Perfect Pearls detailing to the stamens (stamens?), and some droplets of white paint over the top of that to get a nice textural effect of seed pods or some such.











There's a tangle of simple cotton thread adding a swirl of movement.















Some simple rustic twine, and some scissor-scraping of the edges of the tag and the pale card behind, and we're pretty much done.
















Oh, apart from the white spatter of course...

I hope you're having a great week, and I'll be seeing you soon either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland. 









The promise of spring's arrival is enough to get anyone through the bitter winter.
Jen Selinsky

I'd like to play along at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where they are looking for A Bit O' Green

There's not mushroom inside...

No, they're all over the outside!  And there certainly isn't much room inside as it's only a little box.  Sorry for the appalling pun... back to business now.

It's time for a new challenge at A Vintage Journey and the lovely Julia is asking us to Box It Up.  You'll find all the details of the theme along with some spectacular inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides over at A Vintage Journey.

My offering is a 3-inch Artist Trading Block covered in fungi in two dimensions and in three.

Tim Holtz's new mushroom stamps were an absolute must for me.  My mother, Cestina (of Cestina's dolls houses), is a fungi fanatic - at least partly owing to her Czech parentage (the Czechs are huge gatherers of wild mushrooms... it's all those fairytale forests in their landscape).

She's always complaining that there aren't enough mushrooms around here at Words & Pictures, though they have put in the occasional appearance over the years (quite recently over at PaperArtsy, or rather longer ago courtesy of Stampotique and I'm sure there have been others).  I thought these gorgeous tiny botanical images might finally shut her up!












It all started with one of Calico Craft Parts sturdy MDF boxes, and I cut 6 3x3 panels of watercolour paper to decorate it.














First of all, they got a smooshing of Old Paper and Antique Linen (for that old botanical sketchbook look)...














... but then I got tempted into a little more colour with some Tumbled Glass for the sky.















I only needed the fungi on four panels to go around the sides of the box, and I stamped them as though it was one long panoramic scene.














It works really nicely as all the illustrations have a grassy segment at the bottom so you can join them up very easily.














I had a lovely time "colouring them in" with a waterbrush, Distress Inks and washes of Fresco paints.














I decided to keep the mushrooms themselves in soft neutrals, from the palest of grey/beiges to a darker, nuttier brown in some cases.














And of course you get another touch of colour with those grassy knolls and tufts.















The background stamping details are all from the same stamp set - the tiny script, the specimen label and some of the delicate spatter is stamped too.














The top and bottom panels of the box got some more layers of smooshed Distress Ink and Oxide in various shades of brown to create a nice woodland floor.













The moss and logs I used for my Stargazing Skeleton scene were still just by the craft table, so it was a pretty short step to deciding they would play a part on the top of the ATB.

But I really needed some mushrooms to sprout there too... out with the modelling clay.  This is a Fimo type clay, rather than air-drying, so it needed baking.  They're pretty ugly in the original colour (bought mainly for doll-making).














A few layers of Fresco chalk paints later, and a sweep of Archival ink for the final burnishing...
















... and I'm really pleased with the finished look.














I even carved some gills into the underside of the mushroom heads.















I really like that you get the toadstool illustrations all the way around the box...















... and then the three dimensional scene echoing them on the top.














An Idea-ology tokens warns you to watch out which fungi you're picking for the pan.  There's a Czech proverb which says: All mushrooms are edible, some of them only once.















And I've used tiny phrases extracted from the quotes on my PaperArtsy EAB01 Trees & Flowers plate...














... just the odd word or two, which seemed right for the subject matter.















Fungi roots (or more properly, mycelium) can spread a long way underground.















What you see sprouting on the surface is a tiny proportion of the potential fruiting capability.














And you certainly do get fungi in lots of wild and crazy forms, even if the ones here are tamely beige!













I hope you like my box of mushrooms, and I hope you'll be inspired to Box It Up with us this month at A Vintage Journey.  As I said, there's lots more inspiration over there to get you going.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and I'll see you again soon.

I say, I say, I say (Not you again)...
My dustbin's absolutely full with toadstools
(How do you know it's full?)
'Cos there's not mushroom inside...
From Lonnie Donegan's My Old Man's a Dustman

At the Mix It Up Challenge it's an Anything Goes with an optional twist of a 3D project - done!
613 Avenue Create are playing Anything Goes with an optional twist of Pop Up or Exploding Boxes - my box is not quite a pop up, but there are mushrooms sprouting up!
At Moo Mania & More they are inviting us to Use A Stamp - I used several!
It's another Anything Mixed Media Goes at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog