And the surprise Guest Designer for February is...

As the host for this month's Our Creative Corner 'A three colour challenge', I am pleased and proud to introduce a very special Guest Designer for February...

Toni (otherwise known as the 'Artistic Craft Dabbler')

This incredibly talented lady has no fear of using colour and a natural artistic talent that allows her to create some stunning work. For this reason I knew she would take this challenge in her stride and come up with something to delight and amaze you. Guess what, I was right!

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I was very flattered and excited by Jenny’s invitation to be February’s guest designer for Our Creative Corner. To follow in the footsteps of previous guests, Lynne Moncrieff from Adorn and Trace from Inky Pinky Craft, is indeed an honour. Lynne was one of my very first blog friends and I’m a great admirer of her wonderful romantic style. Trace’s work is always inspiring. I love her subtle use of colour and texture.

When I found out that Jenny had set the challenge theme for February and she had chosen to use a restricted colour palette, with shades of brown, purple, plum and blue, with no black lines allowed, I must confess I was a little nervous. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve ever created a project without a smidgen of black Archival ink featuring somewhere! That is of course until now......So, without further ado, here is the project I’d like to share with you. As February is the month of romance, I’ve chosen to make this canvas as a tribute to my lovely late grandparents.

I’ve used a copy of a photograph of them on their wedding day which was the 24^th December 1930. I thought the sepia tones would fit the challenge theme perfectly. My grandma looks so pretty with her beautiful dress and trailing bouquet. My granddad looks pretty handsome too. I love that he’s holding a bowler hat and a pair of white gloves. I can’t imagine that he would have actually worn them on the day.

I started by applying some texture paste through a Tim Holtz ‘ Dot Fade’ Layering Stencil. I left this to dry and then added more paste using Wendy Vecchi’s Flourish stencil. I did this in sections, leaving each part to dry so that I didn’t smudge and flatten the raised areas. I then gave the surface a coat of white gesso, before painting with Distress paints in Antique Linen and Frayed Burlap.

Whilst this was drying, I made some flowers from manila card, using a small Movers and Shapers Tattered Florals die. I really like making flowers, with these dies. It’s a little fiddlesome but it’s very gratifying. In no time at all you can end up with a whole bunch of flowers ready to be painted or inked or both as is the case with these.

They’ve been painted with distress paints, and sprayed with Dylusion Inks and Perfect Pearls Heirloom Gold. They are amazingly resilient! So, flowers made, time to get back to the canvas. I took the plunge and started to spray the surface using my mini misters with diluted Distress Re-Inkers in Aged Mahogany, Chipped Sapphire and Vintage Photo. I sprayed and blotted the inks with a cloth to stop the colours from being too intense, once I was happy with the effect I dried the canvas with a heat tool.

The next stage was to highlight the flourishes with a little Treasure Gold, and a little more stencilling. This time, with ink rather than paste, I used Wendy Vecchi’s Archival Ink in Hydrangea, and a Trellis Layering Stencil.

Everthing was now ready to start assembling the canvas. I layered the photograph onto dyed watercolour paper, and card, then added the metal corners, which have a little Treasure gold on the surface. The flowers were secured with Matte Multi Medium and I finished off, with a die cut leaf and a little tag, handwritten, with my grandparents’ names and the date of the wedding.

I’ve enjoyed the challenge of using a restricted colour palette and will definitely try this again. It’s so easy to reach for the black ink but I hope this project shows that you can keep the lid on it, once in a while!

Many thanks to the wonderfully talented team at Our Creative Corner for inviting me to be their guest designer this month and don’t forget to upload your entry into this fabulous challenge and remember... no black lines !

Toni x