Vintage Heart

Sometime last autumn I enrolled upon a course that looked just right for me. It's on the Kara Bullock Art site and is called Vintage Heart.
It is all about recreating your old family photos in various media.
So, its taken me a while to watch any of it but I started this week.
WOW! Am I enjoying it!
The first, warm up class guided me through drawing ATC sized pics using pencil!
Here are my efforts. I so enjoyed doing these and became quite addicted.

Next, Ce Duff, the artist, guided me through a mixed media piece and I chose my beloved Auntie Joan as my subject!
I am really pleased with my efforts, it was a lot of work for someone like me that likes to be finished in a whisper!
Here she is.

And this is my photo.

So, onto the next project which I think involves figures and scenes.....squeal of excitement and nervous anticipation!

Learn To Be Silent

So, this is my third entry into the 5th Anniversary "A Vintage Journey" challenge.
The reason that I have kept playing was because I wanted to produce a piece that had some white space.
All too often I throw everything at my pages and don't know when to stop.
So when Jennie and Alison produced adorable pieces that had lots of breathing space , I needed to try.
I tried on my second entry but it didn't work out like that.

So, here is another part of the journey of my life, and a photo of my lovely Auntie Kit, out on a bike ride and enjoying a picnic. The photo looks very serene, so, I chose one  of Alison's quotes and also stencilled some words.
I have stencilled, and stamped and used crackle paint, also infusions , distress inks and gold paint.
The book print is a die cut that I had leftover from something else.
I found it hard to get a balance and I found it hard to stop!
But, happy and thankful for the inspiration from the design team.

If nothing ever changed...

Totally inspired by the wonderful creations from the “A Vintage Journey” team, I decided to create my second piece for the 5th anniversary blog challenge.

I wanted to create a journal page with some negative space instead of my usual kitchen sink approach.

I began by covering my double page with some floral paper and knocking it back with white gesso and ageing it with Vintage Collage Medium. The idea was to create something that looked like really old wallpaper.

I forgot to mention that my focal image was going to be a photo of my beautiful paternal Grandma. Annie Barnes.

Next I added strips of music paper and added some writing to my Grandmother telling her how I felt about her and of memories of her. 

I framed her photo with a Kraft paper diecut frame and added some diecut flowers.

I was searching for suitable words to fit in with my memories and came across this lovely quote about change and butterflies.. it is on acetate and was meant to be a rubbing which should be gilded but I decided to use the acetate piece. Same with the butterflies. 

I added Loving thoughts which is gilded.

To finish I scribbled a frame with brown inktense pencil and lightened the frame with Chalk Paint.

I really enjoyed creating this page but my idea of creating White Space went out of the window!.....maybe next time!

A Reflective Glow.

First of all, congratulations to "A Vintage Journey" in celebrating 5 years of this wonderful challenge blog. Have really enjoyed dipping into the mix of fabulous creations from the team and seeing the myriad of entries that you have sparked.

I began to think about my own journey and wrote down my thoughts for the future onto this page before I added anything. I wrote about wishes for the future for members of my family and for myself.
The image of the sun emerging from the clouds jumped out at me from a magazine and I had to add this to my piece.
As I assembled my papers, stencils, stamps and words, I became reflective of my family from the past and decided to find a family photo that would fit around how I was feeling.
So, I squished and stamped and rubbed and flicked and aged and blended and scribbled down more thoughts and I came up with this!
The tree is stamped onto acetate . I have used fresco paints, lots of fragile papers, stabilo pencil, uniball pens , excerpts from books and alcohol inks.
This piece has left me feeling calm and satisfied. Can't beat a bit of reflective journalling to soothe the soul.
So, I am entering this into the the A Vintage Journey challenge for March 2019.