Wild and Organic

Hello all and welcome to a rusty post!  It's been a while since I got my rust on, but that old distressing itch took hold with this page.  (I mean the itch to weather and distress things, rather than a nasty rash, if you see what I mean!)

There are some more words from the Neal's Yard catalogue on this textural spread, so it's another chance to join in over at Art Journal Journey for Halle's Words To Live By theme.  







I recommend clicking on the photos for a close-up view of all the textures, but I'm not going to give you much in the way of a step-by-step, sorry.













That's partly because there aren't any process photos (I was too busy with the process itself), and partly because I don't really remember much about it.















I find that when you're in a state of flow you don't necessarily know much about what's going on.  You're just channelling it.















I know there's some tissue wrap buried somewhere under there on this 10 x 10 page...















... and blue Colorex ink deep down in the layers.
















There's crackle, both paint and glaze, but both DecoArt, I think...













... and then plenty of paint - mainly DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics, with Quinacridone Gold playing a major role.
















I super-heated it in places...

















... creating these glorious bubbles of texture.

And I've used some of the Rusty Patina made by Imagination Crafts...















... for the turquoise and aqua touches of extra texture along the cracks and fissures.















Here are those words from the catalogue.  I meant to use the dip pen and ink over the top of them, as I did with the Inspiring Herbs page, but I forgot.  And now I quite like them like this, not taking too much attention.













Any paint or medium left over on the craft mat got mopped up with a watery brush...















... and splattered across the page to create even more deliciousness.














I seem to remember adding a burnishing touch of Florentine Treasure Gold to highlight the textures even further.















And the whole thing has a really pleasing glimmering sheen which catches the light.














That's where I think I'll leave things for now, with a final close up of my favourite bubbles!









After all this wild, organic, rusty decay, the next post will take you somewhere far more tidy and controlled.

I hope you'll be able to drop in again for that at the weekend (especially if you're one of those people who enjoys the miniatures side of things) and, in the meantime, happy crafting all!

All things that have form eventually decay.
Masashi Kishimoto

I'd like to join in with Words To Live By over at Art Journal Journey
And I'll make this my third and final entry over at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog where they are on their 50th Anything Mixed Media Goes theme

Simply because...

Hello all!  Well, it's raining again... grim.  And there are many many things I'm supposed to be doing, but my Ground Espresso Distress Ink arrived, and I needed to play with it.  So here are a couple of quick tags, simply because...

It's not just Ground Espresso - love, love, love it! - but also Blueprint Sketch and some good old Stormy Sky in the mix.





First of all I used Distress Sprays, spritzed onto the mat and wrinkle-free distressed up again onto the tags.  And then some inks blended on and spritzed and flicked.

Very happy with the backgrounds, so I needed to not cover them up too much.











I also needed to make sure whatever I stamped would show up against the dark mysterious depths, so it was out with the Vanilla White embossing powder and the delicate daisy stamp.












I cracked open my new Ledger Script stamps to add some detailing in the background.

Some of the text is stamped in Stormy Sky and clear embossed so that it shimmers.












And some of it is stamped in Picket Fence Distress Paint to add lighter highlights.














I used just a hint of watered down Faded Jeans Distress Paint to shade the petals and leaves.












Just love the ghostly look it gives the flowers.

Since there was a bit of paint left on the mat, I splattered the rest around the tag surfaces.













A couple of very simple phrases from the Small Talk stickers...












... softened with Stormy Sky and Antique Linens DIs, and with a shading of Ground Espresso around the edges to bed them in to the tags.








It's so lovely to have new blues and browns to play with!  Of all the new colours so far, Ground Espresso has shot to the very top of the favourites list - and it's challenging the original browns too.

There's just a wonderful, wonderful depth and richness of colour to it.  You can see why I had to put other crafty deadlines and dull administrative chores on hold (though at some point I'll need to do some invoicing so that I can be paid!) in order to play with it.







Simple toppings - lightly dyed seam binding and some twine - and we're pretty much done.








It had to be indoor photos since there'd be an almighty spritz and flick disaster if I tried to take these outside to photograph in the pouring rain!

And now I'd really better get on with some of the stuff I'm really supposed to be doing today.

Hope to be round to visit soon, and I hope your Sunday is sunnier than mine!





Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
(I think I may have used this quite recently, but I don't care - he's brilliant!)

I'd like to share these in the following:
Anything Mixed Media/Creative/Inky Goes theme at the Love to Create Challenge
Get Texty at the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge
Repeat Yourself at the Stampotique Designers Challenge - as so often, I have created in double - mirror images and repetitions are built into my creative process!
Sending You Flowers at Try It On Tuesday - so long since I've managed to play along there!!

Gently Grey

Hello all!  I'm glad you enjoyed peeking through my Brocanterie Window.  Today I've got something to share that I made completely and utterly for no other reason than that I wanted to.  That's become a real rarity here at Words and Pictures lately.

And I may finally have worked out a way for me to make cards... start them as tags!

I was tempted into buying the Tim Holtz flower stamps largely by the beautiful work Jennie at Live the Dream has been doing with them (including one of my favourite tags of all time).

And so I suppose it's no accident that my first play with them echoes her delicate style and colour palette.











It was also my first chance to try out the new Hickory Smoke colour, and I paired it with Pumice Stone and Frayed Burlap.  (I would love to call them shades of grey, but I don't dare to any more.)











What can I say?  I've been feeling a little grey recently (which is at least partly to do with not being able to get to the craft table as often as I'd like), and also the weather keeps returning to a grey drizzle which really doesn't feel very summery... so I think the greys were inside and outside of me, and so they turned up on the craft mat.










I started by gluing some leftover book page pieces to manila tags and painting the whole lot with a wash of white paint.

Then I did some wrinkle-free distressing with the three grey tones.  The result is certainly downbeat, but it gives me great delight.










I stamped the flower stems and heads in Watering Can Archival with a hint of Olive tapped onto the stamps too, and then clear embossed them.

I used Hickory Smoke and Frayed Burlap to watercolour them - plenty of imperfections in terms of extra embossed bits creating a resist as well as extra bubbles of light, but I'm definitely embracing the effect. 













In a brief moment of sunlight I was able to capture the magical effect of the light on the embossing - like faerie dust!











I used the end of the stem to add some extra grass stamping around the base of the flower, as well as stroking some blades of grass into existence using a water brush and some Frayed Burlap Distress Stain from the craft mat.











Taking a deep breath, I snipped off the top edges of the tags, and set about mounting the resulting panels onto cards.  With one of them, I kept it very simple - just distressing the edges and gluing it to a tall, slim piece of folded card.












For the other, I added a couple of extra distressed layers - one of the same card as the base, and one made from one of the Tim Holtz papers that toned in with the flower panel.













And it's a happy accident that such a lovely word turned up right in one corner.













Small Talk stickers next... and once I'd chosen my wordings and stuck them in place, I added shading around them with pastel pencils and with some more Distress Stain.











I created puddled shadows above and below the words by applying soft layers of the Hickory Smoke with a water brush.  It has an almost pinkish tone at times - or at least my bottle does!







And that's really that.  I know that's quite a lot of photos for some simple cards, but the chances are - since they are cards - that they'll disappear in an envelope some time, so this will be my only record of them.

Since they're so delicate in hue, these cards didn't respond well to being photographed in the window of sunshine which appeared.

They prefer to be slightly in the gloom it seems, and so for once most of this photography is done indoors against this lovely music paper.

I hope you like them, and that they don't leave you feeling too grey!  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you out there somewhere in Craftyblogland.

True strength is delicate.
Louise Nevelson (Russian-born American assemblage artist and sculptor)

In case you haven't heard, the wonderful Sue Carrington had her blog hacked, and it's all gone... I can't even imagine how awful that must be (am now backing up maniacally in the hopes of avoiding complete disaster).  She's started over, so do hop over to the all new Stamping Sue Style and follow or re-follow her brilliant work. 

Tic Tac Toe Time

Hello all!  It's time for a new Vintage Journey challenge - there's just time to squeeze it in between all the PaperArtsy excitement! - and our host for this fortnight is the wonderful Annie.  She's created a Tic Tac Toe board for us to play with, and for my turn I've created this pair of metallic ATCs.

Here's the board and, as you can see, I've played the first vertical line - Idea-ology or any Metal Embellishment/Paint/Foil Tape.

Idea-ology or any metal embellishment	Sprays	Ribbon/twine
Paint	Ephemera	Die cuts
Foil tape	Texture fades	Stains

I've also, as it happens, played the bottom horizontal line Foil Tape/Texture Fades/Stains, but that was an accident!

I'd given myself the additional challenge of trying to see if I could use only the three chosen ingredients (absolutely not part of the main rules, you can use as many extra ingredients as you like, as long as you tell us about the three in your chosen line).

Then I realised as soon as I used the Texture Fade on my foil tape covered card that I'd failed, so a couple of other ingredients found their way in too!










Even so, they're pretty simple in the making.

I stuck a sheet of foil tape to some card and ran it through the BigShot with the Subway Texture Fade embossing folder.

Then I applied lots of blue/grey Distress Paints and spritzed with water to let them do their marbling magic.










After the paint was dry, I sanded back the raised areas to reveal some of the metal underneath.












I also did some extra distressing with the Craft Scratcher for a really weathered look.

I added some paint to my metal embellishments too, and there's some Distress Stain dribbled into the lettering too.














I also applied Mushroom alcohol ink over both the embellishments and the backgrounds.













I took my cue from one of the recent CHA videos where Tim was talking about how the Mushroom alcohol ink gives a really vintage look.













Finally, I mounted the ATCs onto black card which I daubed with Weathered Wood Distress Paint for a softer look.

And that's that!










Do hop over to A Vintage Journey and see the fabulous inspiration created for you by my team-mates, and we'd love you to come and Play Tic Tac Toe with us this fortnight.












Be sure to check out the challenge details in full as well as our Travelling Instructions to make sure you qualify for the prize voucher generously sponsored by Country View Crafts.  Hope to see you on the journey soon.

And I'll be back in almost no time with another exciting PaperArtsy release post... see you then!





Life is more fun if you play games.
Roald Dahl

There'll be some new twists to the games we play on A Vintage Journey after next month.  In March - can you believe it? - we celebrate our first birthday, and we're shaking things up.  Check out some of the details today over at A Vintage Journey, and we hope you'll enjoy travelling along with us for many years to come!