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Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge #14 - Color Crackle

10/27/2014

Page 53, "Color Crackle" is the subject of challenge #14 from the Tim Holtz Book, Compendium of Curiosities 3! This challenge is being hosted by Linda Ledbetter at her blog Studio L3 and sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique. A requirement of this challenge is to use the technique as described on the book, and, of course, to not reveal the technique (You should buy the book yourself if you are interested... it's worth every penny and Tim Holtz will even autograph it for you!).

For some reason, this piece didn't turn out as originally planned. It somehow morphed over the last few days into this tag, partly as a result of several steps not working out how originally planned. This is something new for me which I believe is resulting from participating on the challenge. I used to start a project with all my product and tools at the ready for a design I already had conceived in my brain and went from there. In the CC3C, I'm finding that when I start with a technique, things tend to go sideways and off on a tangent from whatever design I may have had in mind. I hope this is a good thing as it will help me "embrace imperfections" and let the design process flow more freely.

At any rate, I covered the aspects that didn't quite work and changed direction. what resulted is this tag with color crackle flowers:

"Love is the Garden"

You can't see the crackle well in this photo but it is there--- just finer than I had wanted. I think the chipboard I used for the flowers absorbed a great deal of the crackle paint before drying, resulting in thinner layers than intended. I need to work on how to make that chipboard less absorptive!

Products used, in no particular order were:

Distress Paints: Worn Lipstick, Spun Sugar, Dried Marigold, Spiced Marmalade, Squeezed Lemonade, Scattered Straw, Old Paper, Peeled Paint, Shabby Shutters, Forest Moss
Crackle Paint: Clear Rock Candy
Distress Spray: Peeled Paint
Distress Inks: Vintage Photo, Antique Linen
Distress Markers: Walnut Stain, Forest Moss
Other Inks: StazOn Forest Green, India Ink Black, Versamark
Papers: Bazill pale olive green, 6x6 Collage Mini Stash
Adhesives: Ranger Collage Glue Stick, Multi Medium Matte, Glossy Accents
Embossing Powder: Creative Beginnings Clear
Gemstones: Darice Finishing Accents, Creative Craft Gems
and 8 precut chipboard flowers...

Tools used were

Stamps: Dylusions Doodle Parts DYR 34582, Seaside Stampin' Inc sentiment
Tim Holtz stencil THS019 Lattice Work
Tim Holtz Distres Spritzer
Frameworks Alterations "Lattice"

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Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge #13

10/17/2014

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Page 35, "Worn Cover" is the subject of challenge #13 from the Tim Holtz Book, Compendium of Curiosities 3! This challenge is being hosted by Linda Ledbetter at her blog Studio L3 and sponsored by The Inspiration Emporium. A requirement of this challenge is to use the technique as described on the book, and, of course, to not reveal the technique (You should buy the book yourself if you are interested... it's worth every penny and Tim Holtz will even autograph it for you!).

Again, I have a back story for this challenge. In June and July of this year, my husband planned to attend the national convention of the American Hemerocallis Society (daylilies for the uninitiated) in Asheville, NC. Since we have friends (ranging from daylily hybridizers to college buddies to former work colleagues) scattered along the East coast from South Carolina through West Virginia, it seemed a good time for a road trip with the convention as the centerpiece. Now I'm not an avid daylily person, and touring daylily farms wasn't high on my list of activities to participate in, but we could manage to fit in a lot of visiting, good food and visits to historic sights as well if we extended this trip to visit all our friends, so I signed on. It wasn't a cheap holiday, but it was an epic one --- nine states in 13 days!

I won't bore you with the details here (For a detailed description, check out my blog posts for June 25, July
2 and July 9) but I did collect ephemera and took photographs along the way, as is my wont. Usually, however, such collections end up in a manila envelope in a box somewhere and that is the end of it. But I decided to use this challenge to create a small souvenir book of that road trip.

Since there was no single technique to be used, the creation of the basic book cover should be pretty self-explanatory. The materials I used were:

Distress Inks ; Black Soot, Antique Linen and Vintage Photo
Distressed Embossing Powder - Peeled Paint
Distressed Markers - Gathered Twigs, Forest Moss, Peeled Paint and Squeezed Marmalade
Card Stock - Paper Stash 6 x 6 "Menagerie, Lasting Impressions "Gardener's Diary" and Bazil forest green
Remnant rubs - "Elements"
Stamp - All-in-One INR-032-7 ("Daylily")
Adhesives - Matte Medium and redline tape

Tools included the Frameworks "Trellis" and the Distress Marker Spritzer, as well as the usual craft knives, scissors, rulers, paint brushes and craft sticks!

Here is the front cover:

The label is cut from a page of a memo pad that was in the goodie bag at the convention, distressed with Antique Linen, spritzed with Gathered Twigs, mounted on the forest green card stock and then detailed with a Peeled Paint marker.

The flowers are photos form my husband's daylily garden, printed in matte ink onto matte photo paper and trimmed to fit the cover.

Here is the back cover --- I kept it simple:

Here is the interior, which includes printed and distressed itineraries for the trip, to be used and a sort of index for what I intend to fill the book with. Again, I kept it simple since I plan to fill this book with pages and didn't want embellishments to interfere with that:

I created some blank pages which I will ink up at a later date and use, along with pocket pages,

to display the ephemera I gathered along the way:

which I will use, along with selected photos taken on the trip, to create the album. Much will need to be scanned, reduced, trimmed and otherwise altered to fit in this small album but I hope it will serve a a pleasant reminder of two weeks spent with very good friends!

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Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge #12 - Distressed Photo TInting

10/2/2014

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Page 41, "Distress Photo Tinting" is the subject of challenge #12 from the Tim Holtz Book, Compendium of Curiosities 3! This challenge is being hosted by Linda Ledbetter at her blog Studio L3 and sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique. A requirement of this challenge is to use the technique as described on the book, and, of course, to not reveal the technique (You should buy the book yourself if you are interested... it's worth every penny and Tim Holtz will even autograph it for you!).

Again, I have a back story for this challenge. Deep in the archives in our basement (that's a nice way to describe the chaos of stuff stored down there!) there is a photo album in progress that I started with old pictures of my family. Amng them is this photo of my maternal grandfather, PopPop (AKA WIlliam Edward Johnes) in his color sergeant uniform from the Spanish American War. At the time of this photo, he was approximately 22 years old:

Except for a very dodgy photocopy of an undated newspaper article about him, this is the only photograph I have of him. I never knew him as the vigorous young man he was in this picture: he had suffered from several massive strokes before I was born and I knew him only as a very stooped man who couldn't speak well and needed assistance to walk. But, according to the newspaper article, he was a master carpenter who worked on several major buildings in the area where he lived (a courthouse and a Christian Science Church among others), a volunteer fireman (a service he passed down to his grandson and great grandson as well), a member of the First Baptist Church (a real surprise as that side of the family, as far as I knew, was Methodist!), and a member of the American Eagle and the Zimmy Cycle Club (these were racing bicycles built in PopPop's home town, and as tall as PopPop was - well over 6 feet - I can't picture him on a racing bike, but...)! He was, when he died, the last of the Spanish American War veterans in the State of New Jersey (or so goes family legend). He had five children, four of whom survived him, and my Mother was his youngest! She resembled him quite a bit, in fact...

I had my husband copy the photo and print it onto photo paper and I tinted as per the instructions in Compendium of Curiosities 3, after researching Spanish American War uniforms to find the correct color (I settled on blending the closest distress inks I could find to "Cavalry Yellow" for the trim and opted to not try to put Army Blue over the dark jacket.).

I mounted the tinted photo on a fussy cut abstract flag, backed both with some navy cardstock, added some industrial numbers to indicate the date and a charm to represent what he meant to me, and then mounted the full assemblage to a lighter blue tag:

I stamped a sentiment on beige cardstock using Black Soot Distress Ink, fussy cut it and attached it to the tag using foam squares:

Finally, I attached a saying using Army Blue raffia and a foam square to hold it steady (I find raffia a little twisty!):

What resulted is perhaps a bit plain for the "Distressed" genre but I think it portrays what my PopPop meant to his family:

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Author

Born in New Jersey, I grew up in Southeastern Ohio. Attended university at Bowling Green State University (B.Sci in biological science, 1964), University of Southern California (M. Sci in biological science, 1967) and University of Florida (Ph. D in zoology, 1971).
Worked in environmental consulting for a little more than a decade and then seven years as an instructor in biological science at various community colleges in California and Texas. Moved to London in 1992, then Beijing (1996) and Saudi Arabia (1998), before returning to NW Ohio in 2002. I am currently living in NW Ohio with my husband and three Bombay cats. I love to read (mystery, science fiction, history) and stitch (have done crewel, currently experimenting with free embroidery and needlepoint but blackwork and cross stitch are my main genres); have been known to knit; and now I'm heavily into papercrafting!
Retired upon the return to the US so lots of time for our hobbies...