Use a Portrait for A Vintage Journey

Hello everyone and welcome to our first challenge of 2015 at A Vintage Journey. Our lovely Sandy is our host and she has challenged us to:

Use A Portrait

Tim provides us with some excellent portraits 

with his Found Relatives, but of course, 

it could be a photo or portrait 

of your own.

I decided to use this (one and only) school photograph of my mother taken in 1939 when she was eight years old. 

The original photograph appears to have been lightly colour washed (probably by my Grandpa - he did that sort of thing!) and the photograph has a slight pinkish look to it, so I thought Seedless Preserves would work well and I think would have been my mother's favourite Distress colour!

But …… Seedless Preserves is a bit of a strong colour and took a little bit of patience to knock it back on the canvas. I have used one

of Tim's burlap panels which includes a picture so I had to paint over first with gesso and then it was covered with Melange Tissue Wrap. The Harlequin Mask and Wendy Vecchi Crackle Glaze came next and then a spray of Seedless Preserves Distress Stain Spray. You can see I had to give it a few good coats of gesso to knock the colour back!  

The lovely School Memories banner is from the school photograph - isn't it fabulous!

I received so many lovely comments from you all after mentioning in a previous post that I felt I ought to try something different instead of my usual flowers. I decided to stick with the flowers but try something a little different. So using the usual Tattered Florals die I inked the edges with a combination of colours instead of the usual Vintage Photo.

I used Scattered Straw, Rusty Hinge and Seedless Preserves Distress Inks. As you can see I don't blend the ink on my mat but hold the flower in my hand and rub the edges with the blending tool.

The bottom photograph shows how I built up the colour using the Scattered Straw first, then the Rusty Hinge and finally the Seedless Preserves. It looks a little dire at this stage but once spritzed with water and crumpled up it takes on a softer look.

The flowers were then cut and rolled as in my Paper Rose tutorial. I am very pleased with the effect and can't wait to try some different colour combinations. I have been looking through my gardening catalogues at some of the beautiful summer rose colours. Watch this space as they say!

Tim's Ornate Frame was cut in white board but I had to give up on my initial wish to give it a crackled look. I tried various different products but the frame is quite small and delicate and it wasn't possible to layer on the glaze satisfactorily. I wanted something white so ended up using Antiquities Frosted Crystal Embossing Powder.

The metal embellishment was painted with Picket Fence Distress Paint.

I added some Film Strip decorated with rub-ons, some muslin and some mother of pearl buttons (Mum would have loved those). The little leaf from the Spring Greenery die also got a bit of gesso and ink and tucked in underneath.

I do hope you will join us in our challenge and do hop on over to A Vintage Journey to see the fabulous projects my teamies have come up with. As usual just ensure that Tim's style or products are evident in your project. 

For me I love using Tim's products in my shabby vintage style in order to create something a little more feminine and soft. 

Thanks for joining me today and have a lovely weekend.

Jennie x

Tim Holtz products used:

Burlap Panels

Melange Tissue Wrap

Harlequin Stencil

Ornate Frame Die

Antiquities Frosted Crystal

Embossing Powder

Tattered Florals Die

Spring Greenery Die

Film Strip Ribbon

Remnant Rubs

Distress Inks: Seedless Preserves, 

Rusty Hinge and Scattered Straw

Seedless Preserves Distress Spray Stain

Picket Fence Distress Paint

Metal Embellishment