New Winners and a new Guest winner project

It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to Lys who won the last challenge and joins us as a Guest Designer this week. She also has a worthy place on our Pinterest Winner’s Board.

“I’m very happy and so honoured to be the guest designer for the 4^th Challenge on A Vintage Journey, such delighted and thankful to the so inspiring team! My name in blogland is Lys, and I live in a village in France.

As far back as I can remember, I have always loved creating. Any recovered object could become something else. Then I started with the world of miniature: display cases, 1900’s dollhouse, never finished ... I always decorated my photo albums but it became scrapbooking ten years ago.

My full-time job leaves me little free time, but since last year my children leave one after another the family nest, and after having scrapped many of their portraits, I refocused on what myself wish to express. I am a psychologist, and meeting children everyday, I am never far from creative, intensive and full of possibilities that is their world, feeling so lucky when they allow me to enter for a while.

Story, deepness, meaning and expression are what guide my crafting.

When I saw the theme of this new challenge, I immediately thought “shabby”, and light colours as pink and cream. I also had a look on the Japanese cherry-tree we planted in our garden, which gives us a fabulous white and pink blooming in April.

I always wished to make an altered book, so I thought it was the opportunity… and a real challenge for me! I wished an old book but the kind I will never read again, not a precious and antique one… I used gesso to make the writing lighter, and to thicken the pages that I folded and tore here and there to give them life.

I also wanted to make my own flowers, inspired by Tim Holtz’s videos … I tried and tried again… until it looked like flowers!

I used distress inks, mostly “tattered rose”, “antique linen” and “peeled paint”. The picture is from our cherry-tree, based on a piece of fabric. Other pictures and papers are gathered from my drawers (I especially love “Maja Design” papers and “Madame Payraud’s” collection).

 

The medallion is a rub-on on a piece of fabric, circled by a ring and covered with “crackle accents”.

I wanted movement. That’s why most of the things are on one side. The page strangely crumpled was a lucky accident, as I found it stuck with gesso, and left it like that… I hope you can imagine that move, as if the flowers, no matter the story told in the book, were strongly following their own way, towards the Spring sun.”

Lys

Impression Scrap 

 

This week Astrid and the Creative Guides had the most difficult job of choosing a winner for the third challenge ‘A Little Bit French’ here is what Astrid had to say -

“Thank you all so much for your amazing contributions to our third challenge with the theme " A little bit French"! What a talented group of travellers you are! From the streets of Paris to the countryside of Provence, all of your contributions were amazing and we want to thank you for sharing them with us. It was the hardest task to choose an overall winner and a top 3 who will all be "pinworthies" and will be added to our Pinterest boards, which at the moment of writing have nearly 3000 followers!

But needs must, so here goes:

Our overall winner for this round was:  no: 26 Jools Robertson, with an amazing altered box and set of playing cards!

Jools used many products that were not Tim Holtz, but yet the overall effect was totally Tim Holtz inspired and all the Creative Guides just loved it!!

And now for the 3 pinworthies, in no particular order:

no 2 Kerstin F

no 15 Louise Zuzu Crosbie

no 28 Lerusho aka Ruth

Thanks Jools for sharing your fabulous projects with us and congratulations on being our next Traveller to gain the Winner’s badge. You will soon receive notification of your prize which is a £10 voucher to spend in-store at Country View Crafts. We hope you will join us for the next challenge as a Guest Designer and create something to share and tell us a bit about yourself and your crafting talents.

A big thank you to everyone else who joined us for this leg of the journey, as always it is such a pleasure to come and visit your blogs and look at your art work in more detail. Don’t forget you have one more week to join in Jennie’s ‘Spring Flowers’ challenge and we look forward to seeing you aboard.

Enjoy the journey.

hugs Brenda

xxx

Destination Inspiration – Pastel floral shadow box

I've been given the honour of having my second excursion ticket today for Destination Inspiration and decided to keep to our floral theme with this pastel shadow box:

The glass fronted frame is made of a smooth, natural wood so I started with a layer of Picket fence DP rather than Gesso:

Next came Milled lavender and Shaded lilac DPs painted in rough patches all around the frame. When dry, Picket fence DP was stippled all over the block colours with a stippling brush:

So far:

Turning to the inside, I cut a square smaller that the size of the box frame and misted it all over with water then sponged on the lavendar and lilac DPs with a fine sponge. Before it dried I added sploshes of Milled lavender DS with a pipette which I then blew about around with the spritz tool to get a marbled effect:

Using Tim's Bubble layering stencil and some Dusty concord DI I added some inky texture:

Then another stencil (Splatters) and Picket fence DP before adding some random stamping (Tim's Curiosities set - CMS 104):

The edges were inked with Antique linen DI before being mounted on a piece of block colour card:

I tore a strip of white paper diagonally and stained it all over with Milled lavender DS dabbing Dusty concord DS randomly over it before it was completely dry. Once it had dried, it was torn into 3 pieces and edged with Antique linen DI then rolled and glued into tubes:

Now it's time for the flowers and, of course, it has to be Tim's Tattered floral die (standard Bigz) cut from thin white card and book pages. The larger shape has been smear stained with Shaded lilac DI and then misted whereas the medium and small shapes were stained with Milled lavender and Victorian velvet DSs. The larger shape was then debossed using a spotty embossing folder rubbed with DI:

I made the smaller flower by reducing the petals on the medium shape and just adding a fringed centre:

Stained tissue tape was added to the background before mounting it on it's final white base:

Leaves for the flowers were cut from mount board using Tim's Regal crest Bigz die then painted white. The silver tone butterfly was painted lilac and some chit chat stickers edged with Dusty concord:

Finally, it's putting it all together...

and adding the final touches - top left:

Roses and flower:

Adding a zip pull and staining the edge of the frame with Antique linen DI:

Finished: