Hi everyone and welcome! Well you really did rise to the challenge of adding fabric and stitching to your projects last month! Before we reveal our 'Sew Special' Winner and Pinworthies we are delighted to welcome our Guest Designer today who has created something rather special for this month's 'Texture or Embossing Paste' challenge hosted by the lovely Astrid. So without more ado, let's hand you over to the lovely Christine a.k.a. Craftyfield of Crafty Endeavours... Craftyfield (Christine) I live in the South of England with my partner and son, who, whilst making fun of my crafty ways, are thankful for keeping them supplied in customised cards and are even fuelling my habit by buying me magazines and other crafting items! I started making my own cards some 15 years ago and my passion grew with the increasing availability of craft tools, supplies and inspiration! I fell into scrapbooking to showcase my son’s photographs and have since dabbled in jewellery and altered art. Stamps are my favourite crafting items as they are so versatile, and I am a confirmed stamp-a-holic. I also love making my own embellishments and tools, such as stencils, embossing textures etc... Style wise… I love and try everything from CAS to grungy and I am particularly attracted to vintage images. ***************************** I’m delighted to be invited to guest design on the AVJ blog for their latest challenge, hosted by Astrid who is looking for Embossing Pastes/Textures. What a great theme! Hoping for warmer weather, I selected bright colours and let go the Vintage tones entirely, taking inspiration from beach colours for a holiday scrapbook page. The photo I have included is not the actual photo but a place holder I had great fun to design. First I used green and blue sprays through the Garden Gate 12x12 stencil (The Crafters Workshop) on my watercolour paper base. With grunge paste I stencilled through another TCW stencil, the "Stencil specimen" and a Prima doily stencil. At that point I decided I needed to darken the borders and used a dark spray, and had to sand back my stencilled paste so it would not get lost! But texture pastes can do so much more than stencilling... here I created my sandy beach with heavy gel medium, a touch of yellow acrylic paint and sand of course! To make my fake photo I stamped the lady in Versafine on glossy paper (from the Take the plunge set by Rubber Dance) and coloured her with Distress inks. Finally I used some paste as a 3D glue to give my shells a more realistic shape. To make them I first stamped them (all shells, starfish and seahorse are from the Rubber Dance Retro Beach set ), then fussy cut. I applied a bit of colour with Distress inks and shaped them with a ball tool on a foam mat, giving them a curve. The gel medium helps in supporting the curve as well as keeping the shells stuck! I added a few sea creatures confetti (painted with gesso to dampen the garish colours), muslin, and micro beads. Under this angle the sun catches the mica for maximum shine! I hope I have inspired you to play with textures and to enter the AVJ challenge. Many thanks to AVJ for having me on the blog today! *********************************** Thank you Christine - what a gorgeously textured piece, and the lovely shimmer captures the look of sunshine on water perfectly. And now it's time to see who our talented May winners are. The winner of this fabulous prize package from our generous sponsors last month, Calico Craft Parts, as selected by Random Generator is... That's Kerstin of Scrapbook Dreams with her wonderful vintage layout. Congratulations, Kerstin! Your winner's badge and prize package will be on their way to you soon, and we hope you'll join us as a Guest Designer here at A Vintage Journey in the months to come. ********************************* Now onto our selected Pinworthies chosen by the Creative Guides. This is always difficult with so many wonderful creations but these three are the ones we felt really captured the challenge with their submissions. #10 Lena Loken #24 Hazel Agnew #29 Mo Stokes Congratulations to our Winner and Pinworthies. We will be in contact shortly with your badges and invitations to be a guest designer here at A Vintage Journey. Thanks again to everyone who entered, and we hope to see you again this month for the 'Texture and Embossing Paste' challenge. Remember, one of our Creative Guides will be back on Monday to share the next Destination Inspiration. You'll have to drop in to find out who it is and what they've done with the contents of this month's travel bag, so we'll see you again soon! Jenny, Alison and the AVJ Creative Guides