By the Sea

I enjoy painting scenes using vintage photos. But as you can see by the original (below), I didn't stray too far with this one.

After making an image transfer (using this technique), I used a Prima stencil for the stone wall and the birds are from a Tim Holtz stamp. Mostly, I used craft paint, a bit of ink and a Pitt brush pen.

I'm linking to this week's Monday challenge blog at Simon Says Stamp where the theme is Nautical/By The Sea in a mixed media style.

Snapshot

Behold my most favorite Tim Holtz stamp (Memoirs). It's a bit tricky to get a good impression but once mastered, I think the rewards are massive. I'll never tire of using it and I'm delighted to share it with you today (this image is also my favorite Found Relatives photo).

I've used it for this month's 12 Tags of 2016, though I've strayed a great deal from his watercolor resist and word layer techniques. Still, his post inspired me and this is the result.

The manila tag support and ephemera already had a vintage tint so I only used a few Distress stain colors--primarily Tea Dye and Bundled Sage with just a touch of Victorian Velvet thrown into the mix. To create more depth in the stamped image, I used an Indigo colored pencil in the background.

The ephemera frame is actually a windowed envelope that contained souvenir photos like this example.

The butterflies were stamped onto Tim's Plain Tissue Wrap then cut-out and pasted on. I also used words from a Remnant Rub and machine stitched along the tag edges.

Ten Degrees

Here's a journal page to share with you today. I've been working in a large Dylusions journal creating two-page spreads--it's almost one-third full and getting much too thick to manage.

So I removed the completed pages and made a separate binding for them. Now my journal is nice and flat again and this time, I will work on just one side of the page and see if I like it better.

Today's page was inspired by this photo from a blog I've recently started following. It began with a background made from the corners of envelopes clipped by my great Aunt for her postage stamp collection (when I removed the stamps, I kept the corners to use for collage projects).

I applied the photo via an image transfer and used Postale tissue paper (Tim Holtz) in the foreground. The top of the collage was stenciled with texture paste (Tim's Dot Fade).

To enhance the areas the girls are standing on, I added additional lines with a permanent marker and used a bit of white paint to lighten the squares.

I wanted to retain the vintage colors so very little additional tint was applied except for some minor shadows made with a black colored pencil.

I am really grateful to this unknown photographer who captured such an inspirational image (and to the website for sharing it). Working on this page was really a pleasure. I wish I knew what a fisherman's store is but think it may be a warehouse. Can anyone enlighten me? Then I wonder what in the world these girls were doing there!