Something Old, Something....Old!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Embrace the old!".  I have a friend who is travelling to New York to see some Broadway shows on her birthday soon, so I decided to combine those two elements into a card for her.  The old tickets and old travel ads were perfect for this week's theme!

I started with a section cut from the Destinations paper stash and used Promarkers to colour the headings at the top of the page.  I used some gesso to lighten a section so that the "enjoy the journey" stamp would show more boldly.

The theatre tickets were stamped and cut out, then coloured with Promarkers and arranged then fixed to the background.

She's going to have a wonderful trip, hopefully this card will be one of the souvenirs that will help her to remember it in the future!

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Don't leaf me this way!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Summer Distress".  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it's nothing without a nice frame around it.  When I started decorating this frame for my niece I decided that I wanted it to have a subtle element of childhood memory to it, which hopefully is there in the hint of Cavallini abc tape you can see through the gesso.  I used all 3 Summer Distress colours on the leaves, painting them with a water brush - I used to use that technique a lot with distress inks, it was nice to revisit it again!

I'm sorry for the short post this week, family events have overtaken me and that has taken up all of my time and attention.  Hopefully normal service will have resumed when you next see me.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com
Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Once seen, never forgotten?

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "a bit of brown".   I spent a few days thinking about this theme before I started work on my tag, and my mind kept coming back, again and again, to old sepia toned photos.  I started thinking about memory too, how some things are vivid in our memories forever and others slowly fade over time.

We keep photos and ephemera to remind us of people and events from the past, but as the name implies, they are ephemeral, objects created with a short life-span built into them.  What happens to our memories once the reminders are no longer with us?  Anyway, all of that was squashed together into this tag! :)

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Roll Up! Roll Up! Come See the Main Attraction!

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Something Old, Something New". The old thing in my piece is the leftover configurations element I used, and the new was two of Tim Holtz's recent limited edition Distress Ink colours.

I started by covering the frame I was using with a couple of layers of gesso, applied with a baby wipe so that they'd be nice and thin with no brush strokes.  I dried the frame with a heat gun between layers.

Next, I stamped the "rays" with Festive Berries distress ink and then used a yellow Promarker to colour the gaps between them.  I used a blending tool to cover the frame with a generous layer of Gathered Twigs distress ink, and stamped lots of scratches and splodges, also with Gathered Twigs ink.

I cut the circus awning on the Cricut and coloured it with Promarkers, then coloured the configurations box with an Umber Promarker, to tie in with the background panel (from the Tattered Time stack) and the brown I'd used to age the frame.  I lined the inside of the box with black card and stamped, coloured and cut out the clown and fixed him in place.

I really had a lot of fun completely distressing the frame, lol  My hands were good and inky by the end of it, thank goodness for craft scrubbies! :)

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Beware the one...

The theme for this week's Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "an old wives' tale". After a bit of research and Googling, I decided to do "Beware the one whose eyebrows meet, for in their heart you'll find deceit".  It's hard to see the detail in this photo, if you click on it you'll get a much larger view!

I was lucky enough a week or so ago to take a 3 day art journalling course with Dina Wakley - she's such a great teacher and so inspirational!  I learned so many techniques with gesso, multi medium and color washes and decided to incorporate some into this piece.

The cheap-o Ikea frames were painted with gesso to give them a lime-washed look.  Each panel was primed with a thin coat of gesso and then I used a palette knife to scrape on thin layers of brown, red, yellow and white paint.  I cut a large polka-dot stencil from an OHP acetate on my Cricut and then placed it over each panel and used a baby wipe to remove some of the paint through the holes.  When it had dried, I applied a little more paint and some Forest Moss distress stain over the top.

The main images were stamped onto vellum and then turned over and painted white on the reverse side to highlight part of the image.  I then stuck them (and the computer printed text) down with matt multi medium.

I had some leftover dyed cheesecloth from Dina's class, and incorporated a piece of that on each panel, along with strips from the stencil I'd used, which give a shiny highlight as the eye moves over the pieces.  Oh, I also used a black promarker to make sure their eyebrows met in the middle! :)

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)