Grungy florals

Hi everyone and welcome to my first ever blog! I am super excited to share this with you. Today I have for you a little mixed media floral panel, in a grungy style. Lots of fun layers here.

 This year I set a goal to try to reduce my scraps so this panel has begun with collage on two card rectangles. 

This one above is the combination of paper, card, vintage paper and offcuts of the card left over from a die cutting session. 

I have dry brushed and used my brayer to add layers of white gesso, paint and Lemoncello infusions over the top of the collage with a large flat brush. Full disclosure I created these panels several months ago so I can't remember what colours of paint I used here! Then I  randomly stamped using stamps by PaperArtsy designed by the wonderful Seth Apter. EM77. 

The second panel is again collages with scraps of paper, vintage music score and book page. I used white gesso over the top and coloured it using coffee. 

I then die cut the top and bottom of the panel and inked the edges with vintage photo distress ink. I used Tim Holtz mixed media #1 660220, die set by Sizzix. 

I have then stamped randomly over the top with ground espresso distress archival ink with another PaperArtsy mini stamp by Scrapcosy EM88. This is a lovely little poem about crafting. 

Next I used a mini stencil THMS092 by Tim Holtz with vintage photo ink, again not full coverage just here and there. I wanted a faded pattern look. Finally I heat embossed using vintage pearl embossing powder by Ranger the postcard print from EAB51 by Alison Bomber. I then glued them together and trimmed the edges. 

Next came some stamping of ephemera onto a vintage sheet of paper, I like the authentic colour and texture of this paper. I used a variety of stamps from Alison Bomber, but use what you have. A good alternative would be field notes by Tim Holtz but there are many others that would work really well.

You can see above I did many more than I used in this panel. I used archival ink in a variety of colours. 

I stamped three of the Coneflower from Alison Bomber RAB49 and painted them with PaperArtsy infusions. I added frosted crystal by Ranger to the flower centres. I love the texture it gives. 

Then it's time to gather my other elements, I love using vintage fabrics, muslin, cheesecloth, lace and string in my makes. For this one I chose some rusted vintage tablecloth that was my Nan's. (It's always super special when I use elements from her belongings in my crafts. ) As well as cotton lace and dyed cheesecloth. 

This is intuitive, I fuss about with the layout until it is pleasing to me. This is what I created. 

Here are a few close ups 

You can just see the beautiful shimmer of the embossing, it's subtle but apparent. 

Here is a close up of the layers of cheesecloth, lace, string and stamped ephemera. 

Well I hope you enjoyed this blog on how I made my panel. Please feel free to leave a comment, be kind this is my first attempt! If you choose to create something similar I would love to see it so feel free to tag me in!