AVJ Daisies, Bees? & Cherry Blossom

Hi Everyone,

A big welcome to my new followers so pleased to have you aboard. 
Today I am showing off my entry for the current challenge at  the new challenge blog A Vintage Journey if you are a fan of anything shabby grungy and in particular anything in the style of Tim Holtz, this site is for you.  The theme for the challenge is Spring Flowers click on the link for full details.  The elements of this project have changed so many times over the last week I thought I was going to miss the deadline.  Finally though I was happy with the way it looked, and just in time too as the challenge closes tomorrow. Here is my contribution.

 

I started with some of the new Wallflower papers very generously given to me by Anne and stamped a few birds and butterflies around the plainer areas.  The edges were distressed and inked and this got mounted onto an inked Kraft card base and secured with my trusty sewing machine.

 

These little birds have not even noticed the bigger bird to the left of them, but at least one has spotted something, we will find out what later......

 

 

For the next layer, I took a piece of card and distressed it with Frayed Burlap, first just direct to the card, and then through a stencil.  It was stamped over with the Honeycomb stamp and heat embossed with my new found favourite, Vintage Photo embossing powder.  At this stage I was thinking rusty wire mesh to compliment the flowers to follow.

 

 

I stamped the edge of one of my new damask stamps using archival ink to give it a bit of colour away from the browns.  I  had an idea in my head of trying to show the way that spring emerges through the dead foliage of the winter and so to give it a decaying look, I burnt what started out to be just one hole in the card.  The edges followed and as I was going along with it, I quite liked the way the paper on the base of the card popped through the holes, so I burnt a bit more till I was happy with it.  The green foliage was just die-cut using the bigz Spring Greens die and given a coat of Peeled paint DP followed by Vintage Photo DI.

 

 

Originally I was thinking large daisies for the flowers, but then I noticed the clusters of beautiful pink cherry blossoms in bloom and decided to have a go.  First cut out of manila card and painted with Victorian Velvet DP, I scrunched them up tightly, dried with a heat tool and carefully unravelled them.  They were layered up 4 at a time and I poked a hole in the centre of each flower for the stamen.  The stamen themselves were painted with Rich Mahogany and Mustard seed DP and secured through the centre at the back. 

 

 

The little daisies were punched from white card using 2 sizes of daisy punch, the smaller ones were painted with DP and the outer ones were shaped and their edges tickled with Victorian velvet DI.  The small embellishment in the very centre is a glittered white flat backed pearl I used as snowballs in a workshop last year, now excess to requirements they got a new purpose with the help of a little alcohol ink to stain them.

 

 

Did you spot what those little birdies had earlier??? it was this fellow here is a closer look...

 

 

I thought he was a bee, but he looks more like a wasp close up thus the ?? in the title of the post. He was stamped with one of the tiny things stamps, he was just the right size, it is a bit hard to see but his wings have a layer of rock candy distress crackle on them to make them more realistic.

 

 

I must apologise for the length of this post and thank you if you have managed to get this far, but I do hope you enjoyed .

Hugs

Mo x