Mixed Media Tags

Merry Christmas to all!

My little gift you you is a bit of holiday inspiration, starting with a snapguide on how I made these little treasures for Graphic 45!

Check out How to Make Mixed Media Christmas Gift Tags by Rhea Freitag on Snapguide.

The vintage tinsel I have gives these the perfect texture for the season.  And the color palate is right on too!

I also like the sweet little Christmas charms that I used.  I have had them on hand forever and my new motto is to use what I have! (even the really good stuff!!!)

Christmas is just not the same without lots of glitter, so I was sure to include a bit of that medium to set my gift tags a sparkling. 

I was excited to choose a different tag for each gift I wrapped up this year!  

I just love how they look all piled up.  P.S. An assembly line made quick work of this project, don't be daunted!

I hope this post and the snapguide leave you inspired to take a mixed media approach to your holiday gift giving this year. 

Merry Christmas!

Rhea

Glitter Row Houses

This months themed kit over at Alpha Stamps is Glittered Houses.  When I received my goodies, I used the idea to finally use the Artful Dwelling die from Tim Holtz. 

For a complete supply list you can follow this link.  I incorporated all kinds of fun supplies and added lots of layers with different product.  The base was distress stain which did prove problematic as you can see the stain bled onto my snow.

I decided to just embrace it, and I do think it just makes the sky glow now.  Lots of different Dresden trims were added to edge out roof tops and windows.

 

I incorporated pieces of metal junk and findings.  I tried to keep the spirit of Christmas alive in my selections.

By layering some of my embellishments I was able to create really cute adornments for my houses.

I hope you all enjoyed my little glitter row houses!


Cheers,

Rhea

Christmas Stockings

My poor little blog has been neglected of late!  I am so sorry dear readers and I hope to have the situation remedied soon.  In the meantime, here is one of the few holiday projects I mustered up this season, this time made for Alpha Stamps.

I used gilders paste in white to add a sprinkle of highlights on my star, flowers and the edge of the stocking.

I love how adding just a bit of the paste changes the tones of the metal.

On this stocking I added UTEE to Tim Holtz's metal numerals.  A few flecks of black made them look a bit vintage.

Here the image is an old embossed Santa from Dresden scrap.  I backed it with burlap to add a layer of texture.

Merry Christmas to all of my faithful readers!

Cheers, 

Rhea

Christmas Hope Box

With this post it is my hope that the Christmas spirit finds me!  It has been late in coming this year, but I have a feeling the lack of time left  and the constant fall of snow outside will help it to emerge.  Showing off this cute upcycled box may just do the trick as well.

I made this project for Graphic 45 with their latest Christmas collection, 12 Days of Christmas.

It started out as an old cigar box.  I reinforced the lid with masking tape since the paper holding it together was brittle and old.

On the top I embellished with lots of 12 Days flowers.  I love how Graphic 45 makes embellishing work so easy with all their coordinating accessories.

A few extra leaves, die cuts and embellishments and I had totally revamped a crusty old box.  Note my love of tape continues along the edges with some tissue tape by Tim Holtz.

To keep the vintage look going, I was sure to ink my edges to create shadows, edges and interest.

I even made the inside cute with a bit more paper.  This is one of my favorites in the collection.  I imagine this could be a fun box to add a few exotic spices and recipes in.   Or perhaps I could fill it with vintage craft supplies for one of my artsy pals.  Last idea could be to use it as a junk box and add in all the notes, cards, receipts and lists from your holiday season to capture memories in a unique way.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of Christmas cheer!  I hope it multiplies with this post!

Happy Holidays!

Rhea

Christmas Assemblage

I am amazed that I caught the holiday crafty bug as early as I did this year.  I think designing for Alpha Stamps really helped that along, since we have to get all the delicious eye candy ready for the crafty community.  Anyway, today I am going to show off (gasp) a holiday piece I made to show off all kinds of new Christmas charms that Leslie got in the shop.

I started with one of Tim Holtz's configuration boxes.  I really love these things!  You can change up the pattern of the box to suit your needs.  I chose to leave out a bunch of the smaller compartments to create a spot for a larger scene up top.  This gave me the perfect spot to showcase my Dresden Santa, deer, Santa sack and one of the new woodland trees.  These are really cool as they come white and you can color them however you want too.

I had an idea straight away to make some sort of Santa sack and have the charms spilling out.  Now I am not much of a "fabric-ey" person, but a crafty pal coached me.  Thanks Brittney!  I simply took a bit of her scrap fabric and stuffed it with some of that white fluffy stuff and tied it up.  I then manipulated it to get it to lean in a way that worked for me and got to gluing.  

Now my wise pal Brittney advised me that this may happen, but my sloppy crafting ways made this inevitable...lots of glue showed up on the fabric.  I simply covered up my mess with little bits of vintage mica snow. This subsequently added a bit of shimmer and a lot of texture, which I love.  

Here is a close up of the bottom compartments.  I am always on the search for tiny things.  The drum was found on a Christmas pick at a big box craft store.  The deer focal was scored in a giveaway I won last year.  I am happy to have found a great spot to show him off.  

Here is a shot so you can see how the outside of the box looks.  I covered it in paper from Tim Holtz that was colored with red stain.  I also used some really cute decorative tape to edge out the box.  To add more distress and depth copper guilders paste was buffed all over the piece.

I hope you all are embracing the upcoming holidays in your crafty world as well!

Cheers, 

Rhea

Junque Book: Video Tour

So I have found these little videos to be a fun way to interact with my readers.  Surprise, surprise because I hate to be on camera.  For some reason, I feel okay behind the scenes and I am going with it. 

I decided to post a video clip showing off the inside of my very chunky Christmas Junque Journal.   Sometimes it is hard to capture the true feel of a piece in a blog entry with just photos and words. This way, readers can hear the wonderful little jingle of the bells, learn about some of the secret bits of junk and hopefully get a little inspiration to save or repurpose something for your own art journal. 

You can read more about my first junque book journey here.  I liked that one so much I had to make my own, which is detailed here.   There were so many comments, inquiries and such overall positive feedback about this project that I also did a tutorial here.  Hopefully you have enjoyed sharing my journey, I know I have found joy in sharing it!

Thanks for stopping by today and always.  I appreciate my readers so very much.  Happy New Year to each and every one of you, may 2012 bring you your soul's desire!

Cheers,

Rhea

P.S. Nails done with Sally Hansen Salon Effects: Misbehaved.  LOVE this product! 

Winter Winnings and Blessings

I had a wonderful Christmas, I am so very blessed and grateful for my abundance this season and always.  The gifts I received this past month, extended beyond my typical circle of family and friends.  In the past year I have really discovered the wonderful world of blogging, and this community has shared with me several additional gifts this holiday season.

As I write this I can't help but reflect on my annual milestones.  I have hit 200 followers and I am really close to 30,000 hits on 90 posts.  What is even better than that are the 982 comments I have gotten so far. The comments you leave are precious gems to me, that continue to fuel my creative spirit.   Blogging has become a great way for me to express myself.  I love the way I can move from creating the art, to documenting my efforts (and pitfalls) and then putting it all together and publishing in a pleasing artful manner.

I pushed myself outside my box and made a video of my Winter Winnings to show off the generosity of so many people out there.  I have never done a video, so it was interesting and challenging to try something new. 

This crafty community sure is fun to be a part of.  I can't help but dream of doing this on a deeper level, designing, inventing, teaching, writing, selling...I would love to do it all!

My prizes generously came from:

Jewelry Push Pins from sweetbeadstudio won through  Lori Anderson's virtual craft fair. 

Yellow Bicycle stamps and extras, from Allie Gower.

An AMAZING Boxful of Christmas from Red Lead.

May you too be blessed with crafty abundance!

Cheers,

Rhea



My Christmas Configurations

As my loyal readers may have expected, I have had a Christmas assemblage in the works.  I still can't quite figure out why I love to put these together, but I really, really do.  This piece has been getting put together in my mind for quite some time.  I started out by just gathering small items I knew would fit inside the boxes and putting them in little bowls on my craft table.  I also joined a Christmas ornament charm swap, with the intentions of using them to embellish my project.  This makes it extra special, as I have little pieces of others art tucked inside. 



I am so grateful for Simon Says Stamp and Show, as it was their challenge this week of show some depth, that pushed me to actualize this piece.  I used several strategies to ensure that there is a lot of dimension and depth to this piece.  To that end, lots of texture was created with several different applications.  I used distress stain, acrylic paint, molding paste, fiber paste, rock candy crackle paint, vintage mica snow and stickels.  I was also sure to add several elements in each area and stage them at different dimensions.  Decorations were added to the sides and the tops of some boxes too, these details provide a lot of depth and interest.  My last secret to showing the depth here was in how I photographed the piece.

I love this little charm I made with the wings and the holiday muse token.  It reminds me of the spirit of Christmas because of the symbolism of the wings. I colored these metal pieces with picket fence distress stain and then sealed with matte medium.  Stickels were added for more depth and glimmer.



I used the white stain and acrylic paint on many of my items inside this assemblage.  This helped to create a wintry feel and keep the palette muted.  I love the shabby look of the feet from this distress technique.



I really love how I used the various art pastes to create little snow drifts.  I wish you could see the crackle a bit better, the texture on the edges is really delicious. 



I altered the bottle brush tree quite a bit.  I used gesso, acrylic paint and stickels to make it look snow covered.  In this little area a dangling charm was added. I always like to have an element of movement in my pieces, if I can make it work.



The vintage block above was also altered.  I washed it with acrylic paint and then simply added stickels.  I think these would make charming Christmas ornaments.   This project took some patience overall, as there were many stages due to the drying times.  This picture above does show a bit of the glimmer from the vintage mica snow.  I imagine I will be finding flecks of this in my work area for some time.



In this photo you can see that the base of the collage on the boxes is tissue tape. I love how the stain adds a whitewash look.  This toy compartment has lots of charms from my art charm group.  Thanks so much ladies, hope you like what I have done!!!



I always like to finish the backs of these boxes.  I chose my favorite piece of kraft paper from Tim's seasonal kraft stack and whitewashed it for consistency.

 



I hope you enjoyed peeking inside my little holiday assemblage.  I sure had fun creating it and sharing it with you.

Update:  Just after posting this project I found out that I won this giveaway from Red Lead.  Can you believe it!  How lucky am I!  Both thier store and their blog are full of inspiration, so stop on over and check out all the vintage and crafty goodness.  Thank you so much Red Lead, as you can see from above I will put the items to good use!

Merry Christmas to all,

Rhea

Junque Book: How to

So as promised, I am going to share with you some (poor quality) pictures depicting how I assembled my holiday junque books.  I am sorry the lighting in my craft area is so poor!  What will be shown here is just how to assemble the book, it is up to you to personalize it with what you put inside.  Here is one of the books I have finished assembling, but there is much work to be done inside.  You will see links at the bottom to see inside a few of my books.  I have also made a video tour of my completed book, if you want to check that out.



To create the basic book you will need:

Wendy Vecchi Art Parts: creative covers, size large

Tim Holtz ring binders, size large

Tim Holtz kraft paper

Ranger Sticky Backed Canvas

Tissue Tape

Yes Paste

Distress Stains

Duct Tape

Basic Craft Supplies: pen, scissors

Get your cover ready by using one piece of the cover to trace and cut out your cover design for both front and back.  I chose Tim Holtz's kraft paper.  I really like how it accepts the stains and how sturdy it is.  Cut out your paper and then color how ever you choose.  On my first journal I buffed in distress inks with an applicator, in this project I used the distress stain. 

Next, prepare your sticky backed canvas.  This will act as the binding of our project.  I simply colored mine with the distress stain again.  You can add some more decorative elements here though.  You could stamp a texture stamp, paint or even emboss a design on your spine before binding if you choose.  Just remember this will eventually bend, so be sure whatever application you decide on can bend once finished.  As you can see above, mine curled a bit when I used a heat tool to dry the stain, it is all good.

Your package of Art Parts will come with extra spines. You have the choice to orientate your book either way.  Above I have laid out the proper one for this project. 

Now simply attach the binder ring to the spine using the brads provided.  I learned a trick that helps, but has not perfected the issue of being able to see the brads through the canvas.  I then added a bit of duct tape to the back of the spine.  It does not matter what this looks like as the canvas will cover it, my duct tape was camouflage in pattern.  This assists in covering up the tails of the brads.  You will still be able to see them a bit after assembling.  Next time I make one, I may try two layers of duct tape.  I found this also helps the brads to stay better as well. 

I then laid it out to plan the assembly.  The band of sticky back canvas I used was four inches.  I cut this off the bottom of one sheet.  You will need to leave a bit of a gap so that there is room for the covers to move.

 Peel the backing from the canvas and carefully place the spine on top.

Add each cover to the binding as well.  Be sure to line everything up as straight as you can.

Simply fold up the extra bit of canvas binding material on the top and bottom as shown. Burnish the canvas down well and be sure the canvas has made good contact with the art parts. 

Now, I did not like the naked look of the art parts on the inside of my book.  So to solve this issue I used a very strong paper adhesive, Yes Paste, along with some tissue tape to cover this area.  The tissue tape worked well as I was able to rip bits and layer to get around all of the binder.  It is a low tack tape, so adhering this on its own would probably not stand up to the wear and tear I plan on putting on this book. I was sure to use a lot of the paste in the cracks between each book component and get every bit of the tape tacked down.   

To finish the inside, I used my assembled book as a template to cut out pieces to fit the inside.  Again I chose kraft paper as it is tough and really adheres the the covers with the help of the Yes Paste. I covered the inside almost to the edge of the spine.   

As you can gather, I ended up disliking the blue and so it ended up brown.  I simply went back over everything with more stain.  Now the blue shows through a bit and I love the layers of color.  To see inside of my book more click here.  Below you can also see the first book I made for a secret Santa.  To see inside of Beth's book click here.

 If your playing along at home, now is the time to embellish at will.  I added a book plate with a personalized message on one, a knob on another.  You could write out a word in grunge board or chip board. Add a closure or a window peeking inside.  I took a big risk and put a hole right in the cover in order to add a large dangle of a charm complete with bells, stars and vintage tinsel. 

   

My inside pages are made from more kraft paper and other holiday paper as well. You will have to use the links above to browse inside.  Most pages I simply glued together two pieces of paper and finished the edges with tissue tape.  I added tabs, reproduction holiday ephemera, pockets, envelopes, recipe cards, junk mail, past Christmas card covers and anything that inspired me. 

Some other ideas:  Save your everyday ephemera, now is the perfect time to collect things such as tags from gifts, bits of wrapping paper, ribbons, envelopes, packaging from gifts, Christmas cards, holiday photos from family etc.  This is what will make your book uniquely yours. To make your journal ecclectic attach your junque with decorative tape, staples, paper clips, binder clips.  Keep your to do lists, holiday invitations, programs from holiday events and pieces of your kids holiday school work inside.  Make it your own and don't think twice about it, just stuff it inside and document your busy holiday season.  This will be a treasure for years to come.

I hope you found this information helpful and inspirational. 

Merry Christmas!

Rhea