Spring Is In The Air for A Vintage Journey

Hi everyone. It's time for a new challenge at A Vintage Journey. This month, the lovely Sandy is our host and here's what she has to say:

Leave those winter blues behind. Make anything which says SPRING using pastel colours. It is your choice: a card, canvas, 3D, a card or a tag etc. Please remember it should be in one or more of the following styles we favour: shabby,vintage, mixed media, art journalling, industrial or steampunk.

I always associate little lambs, chicks, bunnies and gorgeous flowers (which brighten our gardens and hedgerows after the winter) with Spring. I decided to make an ATB for my project. (Thanks to the lovely Anne Redfern who sent me some ATB's as die cuts many moons ago!).

Here's my Spring inspired ATB:

A super sweet vintage scene with the little girl, lambs, bunnies (playing trumpets!) and some gorgeous spring inspired blooms.

I made a rusty fence from two die cut pieces of grunge paper.

The little girl image is printed from Pinterest then stuck onto card. She's fussy cut, sealed with matte medium then given a coat of crackle glaze to age her. The edges are inked and some raw umber acrylic paint has highlighted some of the cracked areas.

Her hat was a little bare so I added a small crackled flower with a gem to pretty it up.

The bunnies were found on Pinterest too. To give a good group of them, I printed out two bunnies as they came but flipped the image to get two facing in the opposite direction. They then received the same treatment as the little girl.

Die cut leafy stems were stuck onto the shape after constructing. A layer of gesso was applied. Four faces of the ATB were layered with DecoArt fluid acrylic green gold paint. Next came dry brushing in two colours to tone the green down a little. This was followed by some stencilling with DecoArt chalky paint in a toning green shade. The flower stems are dry brushed with gold metallic fluid acrylic then everything is give a coat of crackle glaze. The gorgeous lamb image was made in the same way as described before and also came from Pinterest.

The stencilling which gives a lovely vintage look to the sides and echoes those wonderful Spring green shades.

Little die cut leafy stems for the flower blooms to sit on.

Four feet are made out of silver beads which are given some colour using a DecoArt Metallic Lustre cream. The edges of the block are finished by applying some jute string to unify the look of the edges.

The tiny blooms are punched from scraps of gelli plate prints. They are given a layer of crackle. some inked edges and a little raw umber fluid acrylic highlights the crackle. Each flower is then shaped with the end of a paint brush, glued together and finished with a toning stick on gem.

The top of the block is painted as before but without stencilling. To complete the look I've added some real moss collected whilst walking my dog and a range of blooms all made as before. Love how the little girl's feet look as if she's stood in the grass amongst the flowers.

So there you have it - an almost cute little project from me but still with enough grunge to hopefully give it some street cred!!

You really must pop over to A Vintage Journey and see the beautiful projects made by my teamies - you will absolutely love them! 

Our generous sponsor this month is Country View Crafts who have kindly donated a £20 voucher for the winner of this challenge. you need to be in it to win it remember!! You could also be one of our Pin Worthy mentions so it really is worth linking up and having a play with us.

Thanks so much for popping by. If you are interested in any of the techniques and/or products I used for this project please just drop me an email and I'll do my best to answer you as soon as possible.

This is one of two posts I'm sharing today. If you'd like to see the other post, please click here.