Creative ExpressionsShrine #3

Sunday Night Offering

I know, my apologies I am a day late.

But here it is shrine number 3 . I know I am biased but this is my favourite , The shrine is covered in my homemade faux copper and metal embellishment . The head is made using Creative Expressions Mutli Tex Powder, Painted first with black gesso and the Micaceous Iron Oxide . The stand and bobbins are painted with Cosmic shimmer Gilding Polish and then wrapped in the faux copper .

Creative Expressions Shrine Sample #2

Friday Night Offering

Well here we go .I said I'd try and put the second sample up of the Creative Expression shrine . This one was done by Heather as she is a lot better at the girly stuff than I am but it shows the versatility of the Shrines. This one is wrapped in paper (Couture Creations, vintage rose garden), it was then embellished with various metal embellishments and self adhesive swirl pearls. The pin tops and the rosette centre are coloured with Cosmic Shimmer gilding polish. Other embellishments include a couple of resin roses and some chain. The centre piece is an old necklace.

Creative Expressions Shrine Sample #1

What's happening its Thursday ??

Yeah, yeah, I know its Thursday but I wanted to show you these samples I made using MDF Shrines cut by Lisa Horton for                     Creative Expressions.

My plan is to put one on tonight one tomorrow and one Saturday.

The top picture shows the front and centre picture, I wrapped the entire shrine in comic book paper and painted the interior black to accentuate the contents and the front face of the shrine. Then I added a bingo counter to the centre of a bottle cap and stuck this to the apex of the front face. Inside the shrine I placed the old die-cast jaguar, Monopoly piece, Scrabble tile and Howzat dice. On the outside I attached a couple of pieces of hardware in the form of a little door handle and a bookplate finally I added the Boy's room text ( deliberately spelled wrong just to get comments and open a dialogue ) the last thing to do, was to cut a couple of phrases from the comic book and stick these on. All done.

The stand is made from the recycled base of a figurine painted with cosmic shimmer gilding polish topped off with a couple of wooden bobbins covered with mini 4 x 4 tyres which I thought looked quite cool.

I have tried to show you all the angles to give you an idea of the end effect. The pictures don't do the finished article full justice

Don't forget to check out the other pieces, later in the week.

Soundtrack to my week

This week has mainly been about The War of the Worlds

Yeah what can I say listened to it a lot this week but have also listened to the following:-

Enrique Iglesias :- Sex and Love

Bryan Adams :- Reckless

Chris Rea :- The Very Best Of

Creative Expressions new product showcase

My Sample piece using the new Creative Expressions Products

Just love these products and this piece, as you can see its not my usual style although it is heavily textured and I've already been asked to teach this in future workshops.

The new products are as follows

Lisa Horton's MDF Hexagon tiles

Cosmic Shimmer Lustre Paints

Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Polish

Multi-tex mould and paste texture powder

               Here is the piece on display at  The N.E.C in the new product showcase cabinet.

War of the Worlds, Dominion Theatre, London

Another Item Ticked off my " Bucket List "

 

 

This weekend just gone , I managed to tick another item off my Bucket list, I have always been a big fan of The War of the Worlds by H G Wells , but I have always been a bigger fan of the same titled musical Soundtrack , which I originally had on Vinyl then cassette and then finally CD .

 

The performance was brilliant and far surpassed my expectations . The cast was as follows :-
Liam Neeson (projection and hologram) , Michael Praed , David Essex , Jimmy Nail , Heidi Range , Daniel Bedingfield , Madalena Alberto.

My first time to the Dominion Theatre , I was quite impressed a lovely theatre and the stage looked really cool decorated by steampunk cogs.

Smiles all round before the performance .

Soundtrack to my week

Hi all
          Just back from  gruelling 4 day "weekend" at Birmingham's NEC . A rather hectic week last week making samples and preparing for the weekend and then the actual trade show itself . Met up with loads of my customers , most of whom  I now consider to be friends.

 I thank the following artists for inspiring me and helping me through the week.The soundtrack to my week reads as follows:-

Testament :-The Formation of Damnation

Megadeth :- Th1rtee3n

Megadeth :- Dystopia

Billy Idol :- Essential

The Rasmus :- Dead Letters

Eurythmics :- Ultimate Collection

Its great to be home where my true inspiration keeps me on my toes, here's to a new one

john

A Gift From a New Friend

 

A New Acquisition 

 

I have been working at head office all week getting ready for the big trade show at the weekend , in the course of this I got to meet a new friend . While chatting it came out that I like all old things including old cameras , record players etc . She then kindly told me that if I liked old cameras I was quite welcome to her dad's old Russian camera , which you can see from the photos is in really good condition , now my original idea was to break this up and use the parts maybe on a mannequin but having seen it in the flesh I don't think I could bring myself to dismantle it . It is in its original leather case and comes with a fighter pilot type viewfinder again with its original case.

The camera is stamped made in Russia

 

SOUND TRACK TO MY WEEK

Music to work to

Been a busy week at Dreamsofvintopia1 Head Office, working with new products from Cosmic Shimmer and getting ready for the big tradeshow at the weekend.

I, like most people like to listen to music while I am working. Always interesting how the different genre of music affect my freestyle crafting! As I have been doing proper work this week, I have kept the music pretty safe and the "sound track to my week" this week has been:-

Beatles - '62 to '66
Queen - A Night At The Opera
Mastodon - Once More Round the Sun
Athlete - Vehicles & Animals
Foo Fighters - Greatest Hits
Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best of .....

Tomorrow is a new week and a new soundtrack. Always interested to hear what others listen to while crafting and working.

Stay tuned for this week's soundtrack.....

TTFN
John

Vintage record player courtesy of HMV

A Recent Addition

 

 

I,  like many people have recently started collecting Vinyl again , I always preferred to have my music in this format , I love the sleeve art and the lyrics hidden away inside, either within a gatefold cover or on the sleeve . I loved picture discs and shaped records and I am so happy that this great medium is making a comeback ......so imagine my delight when I stumbled across this little baby in an antique shop for £20!!!!  yeah I know she is in amazing cosmetic condition but I think she needs new valves . I have no idea how old she is but she has 4 speeds which I have never seen before . I have seen 33, 45 and 78 but never 16.

 

 

Happy New Year 2016

Wishing a Happy and Creatively Constructive New Year to each and every one of you.

May the coming year help and inspire you to do the things you've always imagined x

 John & Heather 

View from Fiona ' home in South Africa

Some of the views from Durban

These are just a few of the views from Fiona's house in Durban 

In the shade of the Christmas Tree

I can't believe it but the ladies put the tree up last week and it was 35 degrees outside. I must admit it's a bit alien to me as I am more used to 5 degrees . But the made an excellent job has you can see .

South Africa visit day 2 The Shongololo

The Shongololo

This is a Shongololo I've named him red he is the first native creepy crawlie I've found 

I think we would call him a millipede he's about three inches long .

South Africa visit day 4

Really!!

Don't know if somebody is trying to tell me something but look at the name of the road we are staying on !

Went to Pavillion yesterday this is the local mall, This used to be the biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere ,  very much like Meadowhall back home although I don't think it's as big a lot of the shops are very similar but obviously have different names when we came out it was pouring down .

Breakfast with the Stevenson's South Africa visit day 2

Breakfast at the Moses Madhiba stadium, Durban , South Africa.

Breakfast at Nino's beneath the Moses Madhiba stadium, Durban built for the 2010 World Cup .

South Africa visit day 1

We have arrived after travelling for what seemed like forever . I' m struggling a bit with the heat , but I would,  I' m from Yorkshire .
We had a really friendly reception straight out of the car straight to a braai ( that's South African for a BBQ ) and a few beers .
The temperature has been 35 degrees today and we have been out perusing the local antiques shops looking for goodies . Unusually for us we didn't buy anything .

Last Sunday....

Last Sunday before departure

Morning all , well this is my last weekend before departing on my winter adventure to sunnier climes. I have actually got a design commission to work on while I am away , as well as another private venture to plan. I'll keep you all updated with lots of photos as and when I have access to a computer .

until the next post , look after yourselves

j x

Countdown to the Cradle of Civilization

Winter Vacation

Well not long now , this time next week we will be  winging our way to sunnier climes . That's right we are off to spend Christmas and New Year in Durban , South Africa. I am hoping to do a travelblog so if you are interested check it out , if your not I'll catch you on the flipside.
TTFN

Metal Box

 

Finished and dressed metal embossed boxes 

 

 

 

 

Top picture shows the three stages of colouring whilst the picture bellows shows a finished box dressed for display

Metal Box Faux Leather

 

Box Internals  

 

 

 

 

The internals of the boxes are decorated with faux leather which turned out great and once again the pictures don't do them justice

Metal box Rose Detail

 

 

Top view of metal embossed boxes

 

 

 

 

Two pictures showing the two degrees of colouring  the roses are hand tooled onto Quilting metal ( Pewter ) the one on the left is lightly painted and then buffed the one on the right is more heavily painted and then sealed

Metal Box Workshop at MB Crafts, Cleethorpes, 21 Nov 2015

A combination of metal embossed boxes from my last workshop in Cleethorpes



A great day was had by all. A great bunch of ladies and a great day , no doubt i'll be there again sometime next year.

Maniq Monday Deirdre's Tanks Painted........

 

Revelation of Detail

 

It's amazing how the base coat of black reveals the detail . The middle picture is probably the best representation of the finished tanks but these will look even better by the time I have put more texture and paint effects on to them . Keep watching .

 

 

Maniq Monday Deirdre's Air Tanks Take Shape......

Detailing of Deirdre's Tanks



Shaping ,contouring and detailing is now complete. I love how these have turned out although they look more like mortar shells than oxygen tanks , they have been textured, they just need painting up.

Vintage Camera Finds... 15 November 2015 Sheffield

 

Retro Camera Oddments 

 

Last weekend we found some really cool vintage/retro photography  accessories

there is a really cool lens, a couple of vintage light meters and some other bits, don't know what they are but that doesn't matter to me , what matters to me is that they are cool and that they will be re-purposed.  We also found a couple of retro brooches.

 

 

Cool lens and light meters

No idea what these are but I love them

The whole ensemble

Dream Metal Embossing & Colouring Workshop

Metal Colouring workshop at Graces Craft Shop in Middlesbrough

What a great workshop and what a great day. all different ways to colour or alter metal . I did this as a techniques sampler .The base substrate is an Ikea mirror frame . The texture is built up by using different techniques and then coloured in different ways.

Coloured with Black Acrylic and Terracotta Alcohol Ink

Coloured with Black Acrylic and Pool Alcohol Ink

Rusty Owl Workshop

 

 

 Rusty Owl Workshop

 

Had a great day teaching this rusty owl workshop  

Basically this is a technique sampler where we attempted to simulate marble, wrought iron, cast iron , Faux welding and faux rusting techniques

we also did faux rivets , faux pop rivets, faux nails and faux screws

 

 

 

Manniq Monday :- Deirdre's Oxygen Tanks

 Deirdre's Oxygen Tanks

Hi Guys
             Finally got back to working on Deirdre and had some great fun doing it. I decided she needed some oxygen tanks. This was done by cutting a plastic coke bottle in half ( I didn't want them to be too bulky ) The two halves were then filled and wrapped with newspaper and then tissue paper before sealing with golden gel medium. They will then be paper blocked before adding detail and faux welding . Come back soon and see what the finished tanks look like .

 

The intermediate tissue paper layer

Blocking and padding out with newspaper

 



Paper blocked and then sealed with Gel medium