Neutral Zone.... April 2019 Challenge at A Vintage Journey.

Hi Everyone and Welcome

Its great to be back today creating alongside my lovely teammates at A Vintage Journey contributing to our new challenge hosted by our lovely talented Nikki:

The Neutral Zone

'Time to banish Colour! You can create with blacks, whites, greys, beiges, creams and browns but whatever you make and whatever style needs to stay in the neutral zone and remember to create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.'

I have created a Mixed media Canvas for Nikki Challenge theme working with a Neutral palette of black white, grey and silver - one of my favourite palettes to work with. It features one of the many Tim Holtz 'faceted hearts' I have had lying around my desk for the past few months - thanks Nikki's for providing the ideal opportunity to finally feature one of 'the many' in my art.

I don't have any process shots but I will take you on a short narrated tour around the canvas recounting the creative steps long the way.

The canvas itself is a 5x7 inch board. It was primed with gesso and then I added torn strips of tissue tape around the canvas to create an initial thin layer of texture.

Next came some rough scrapings of texture paste before I embraced the paints. I worked with Distress, Americana acrylic and PapeArtsy fresco finish paints in shades of grey, black and white laying them down with both a palette knife and brayer building up layers of 'neutral' colours.

For more detail there's some stamping using a couple of my 'go to' Impression Obsession stamps designed by Seth Apter -you know the ones ,the trusty faves that lend themselves to almost any project

and some texture paste stencilling using a PaperArtsy stencil designed by Sara Naumann(PS100) -a new addition to my stencil collection but I know already its going to be a 'go to'.

The focal feature is as I mentioned at the top a Tim Holtz 'faceted heart'. This is cut from black cardstock and treated to some '3d Mechanics' embossing.

The embossed detail is highlighted with gilding wax.

It rests on a triple layer mount - a panel of black cardstock, a circular frame created from the top of a That's Crafty white/greyboard door hanger and a That's Crafty mdf ATC frame.

The circular frame is treated with paint and textured stenciling using Tim Holtz 'Stripes' layering stencil whilst the ATC frame is altered with paint and grit paste.

A piece of Tim Holtz Correspondence paper sits behind the circular frame aperture and some chicken wire is nestled in the open space between the walls of the ATC frame. 

 The 'viewing eye' is able to peek through the apertures and chicken wire to see the layers beneath- I like that! 

A Tim Holtz quote chip gives the canvas a title

and eyelets touched with silver gilding wax embellish the four corners of the canvas

and the top and bottom of the stacked focal feature to finish off my 'Neutral Zone'' Canvas
'Trust Your Heart'

I hope you have enjoyed your time here with me today and that maybe I have offered some creative inspiration for our new challenge. 

If you haven't already be sure to stop by A Vintage Journey where there is a fabulous gallery of inspiring projects created by some of our talented Creative Guides. 

We hope you will join us in the challenge as we always look forward to seeing your creativity.
As always there will be 3 Pinworthy winners chosen at the end of the challenge with each winner being awarded a Pinworthy badge and their work will be pinned to our Pinterest board . 

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today.

Your visits, follows, comments and support are sincerely appreciated- very much so! 

Wishing you all a lovely weekend 

Take Care 

and 

keep on the 'happy' side.

Amanda 

x

I would like to enter this into the following challenges; 

Craft Stamper TIMI challenge: April 
Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge #48: Anything Mixed Media Goes.