Vintage Garden Challenge at Anything But Cute blog

Hello, friends! I am so happy and excited today as our first challenge ever has started at Anything But Cute mixed media challenge blog and I have an honor to be the first hostess there! Our first challenge is 'Vintage Garden'. 

What do you think of when you hear the word Garden? Is it flowers, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, lattice, vines, fences? Whatever garden vision you have, we want to see it. But make sure it's in a vintage style.

I was inspired by my past memories to make a reverse canvas and this is what I started with.

I put one coat of gesso on the borders and then used my brown acrylic paint over it. To achieve a worn look I went over it with my cream acrylic paint randomly.

Now, I would like to show you how I made my butterfly for this project. I used my Butterfly duo die and embossing folder, Cracked pistachio distress stain spray, some Lindy's stamp Moon Shadow mists and a piece of manila cardstock. 

This is what I came up with my sprays.

I cut out the butterfly, embossed it and applied my Walnut stain distress ink on the raised areas using my ink blending tool.

To add a final touch, I used my water brush pen and Cracked pistachio distress stain spray to color the lower areas of my butterfly. Simple, isn't it?

That is how my finished 'Vintage Garden' project looks like. 

Here are some closer looks. You can see the rest of my sprayed cardstock attached inside the reverse canvas as a background. The butterfly is attached to a piece of chicken wire and I put the branches I found in my yard. The leaves are from my stash.

Every vintage garden has to have an old rust key so I put mine :)

The fence was a part of an Easter arrangement I bought last year and I just had to adjust it to fit to my canvas. The branches on the bottom are attached with a piece of an old wire. I added the bird nest, some flowers distressed with my Walnut stain ink and some greenery (Tim Holts die - cut out from manila card stock and  sprayed with several different distress stain sprays in green tones). 

To embellish the whole thing I used some of my Ideology goodies. The frame was cut out (Tim Holtz cabinet card dies) from a cereal box and covered with a distress crackle paint in Clear rock candy. I went over it with my various distress stains. The little butterfly is embossed with distress embossing powders in Rust and Verdigris. I glued a piece of beautiful paper from my favorite Tim's Wallflower collection, inside the frame.

To get the more realistic look I added some moss behind the fence. 

I hope you'll hop over to Anything But Cute mixed media challenge blog to see all the inspiration my talented teamies have created and hopefully you'll decide to play along.

Our first challenge 'Vintage Garden' runs until June 4th and the winner will receive the honor of being our Guest Designer for an upcoming challenge!

Happy crafting!

Challenges:
Mixed Media Monthly Challenge - May Flowers
Country View Challenges - Simply Scenic
Our Creative Corner Challenge - April Showers Bring May Flowers
A Vintage Journey Challenge - Spring Colours - I used Tim's Distress crackle paint Clear rock candy technique