Out of the Cold - guest design for Frilly and Funkie

Well how proud do I feel to be guest designer for the new challenge over at Frilly and Funkie! I haven't blogged for such a long time, so be given the opportunity to guest design having won with my first post in nearly six months was a huge honor...just hope I'm not too rusty!

So the theme is out of the cold...and all the details as well as gorgeous inspiration can be found here .

So I used one of the new fab thickboard Etcetera tags - from Tim Holtz and I chose the medium one for this piece , so here is my make inspired by sunnier times and summer flowers :

I started by giving the base a coat of distress paint in tumbled glass and smudged on some picket fence with my finger. I added some texture paste through dot fade stencil to add some texture, left to dry and coated with a layer of collage medium .

Next I added some lines of distress crayon and smudged in with my finger, gradually and slowly smudging and building up the colour until I was happy  - I know I am late to the party on these but I am loving them !

When happy with the base layer I added a layer of collage medium and added more layers of colour to continue building ...

I then lightly sanded back some areas of the edges ...to give a more vintage feel and added in some walnut distress crayon...well there was bound to be brown in there somewhere!

this show the texture and colours- was kind of hard to cover some areas up.

I then started to add the base layer of collage elements ...slowly building as I went... I had used the other tag to lay out my pieces to get an idea of placement..as that helps me to plan the overall layout.

So now for the details...I wanted a splash of tropical colour and what better than shades of abandoned coral flowers and hand dyes seam binding...I used the Tim Holtz tropical dyes and distress spray stain to colour the foliage and flowers and then added walnut stain distress ink to highlight the edges.

I do love idea-ology so plenty can be found tucked in between the flowers and foliage ...

 The foliage was dipped into spare stain from the craft sheet to create a more natural mottled look..and a compass idea-ology piece to tie in the while travel / holiday feel.

I love the found relatives and am eager to get my inky fingers on the new paper dolls....so this found relative card formed the focal point ...plenty more splashes of colour...very unusual for me..

 The top was finished with a splash of hand dyed seam binding and an idea-ology plaque- wanderlust was coloured using distress crayon..to complete the piece.

So all that remains is to say a huge thanks to all the lovely ladies for having me as guest designer...and leave you with a final photo of the finished piece . 

trace x

Happily Ever After

Well it has been a while but I am back over on Country View Crafts blog with a vintage inspired valentine.... and the project can be found here .

So here is the make :

and for all the details of how I made this please hop here  and a huge thanks to Susan for letting me pop back .... hopefully a bit more regularly x

Trace x