Memories of Venice

At Last, blogger has finally allowed me to upload pictures. Yesterday drove me completely round the hat rack, I uploaded one picture then it wouldn't allow any more. I'd wait 30 minutes try again, get one more uploaded then it would kick me out again. I was starting to think it was just me but having aired my frustration on Twitter, I find out that the rest of the world was as frustrated as I was. Anyway, today is another day and blogger is having a good day which is fabulous as I can now share my finished Venice project with you.

A couple of years ago, Mark took me to Venice as part of my 50th birthday pressie. I had always wanted to go and I have to say it is even more amazing in real life than I had imagined, I loved every minute of it even if it did rain a lot! So when I spotted those gorgeous hand made ceramic buttons with the Riato Bridge, I knew that I had to make something that I could hang on the wall as a reminder of our adventures.

So my frame was painted with Fresco Finish London Night with a small amount of Vintage Lace dry brushed over the top. I used the same colours on my canvas but it had the Crackle Glaze sandwiched between the two layers of paint. When completely dry, I diluted some of Tim Holtz Distressed Stains and washed them over the canvas so that was a variety of pastel colours and added a touch of stamping for a bit more interest.

I also stained some of Tim's Tissue Tape and a page from his Kraft Resist 12 x 12 pad of papers. I cut out the compass from the Kraft Resist paper which was a perfect match for the fabric, canvas and button.

I have a lot of customers who tell me that they do not find it easy to make a collage of items so I thought I would share a couple of of my rules with you. First of all, don't stick anything down until you are happy with the placement. Sometimes, I need to walk away for a while and when I come back to a piece, I kind of see things from a different perspective and something new usually jumps into my head. But my main rule of thumb is linking items together which I call bridging. I hate to see things floating in mid air so that it just looks plonked there. Now nobody wants to be known as a plonker do they????? So to avoid being a plonker just make sure that every item is slightly touching or overlapping another item, then it will all flow nicely.


To finish off my collage, I die cut some Ten Seconds Studio copper art metal using Tim Holtz, Pennants On The Edge die. I used a diagonal embossing wheel around the edges and my pointy tool to scribble a design in the centre of each flag. Gave them all the black paint treatment before cutting them into individual flags. I folded the top edge over a piece of chain to make some bunting and added some of Tim Holtz Alphaparts to spell out Venice.

Everything was stuck down with Claudine Hellmuth's Matt Multi Medium, this stuff works great on everything, it stuck my metal, paper, card, fabric and ceramic button.....I just love a product that is multi purpose!!!

So there we have it......wonder if blogger will work two days in a row?
Lin