Through The Looking Glass at A Vintage Journey

Hi everyone and welcome. Today sees the launch of a new challenge theme for this month over at A Vintage Journey with our host Julia. Called 'Through The Looking Glass', her challenge to you is to make a project involving glass (acetate) or mirrors (metal sheet), perhaps a window or a clock face, a hand held mirror or glass bottle. Tim has lots of Idea-Ology products and dies that would be just the thing for this challenge!

To me the essence of Tim Holtz' style is to take something new and give it a feeling of age, replicating in part the vintage pieces he's well known for collecting and exhibiting on his show stands (and even at home!) When Julia set the challenge theme I knew I wanted to some kind of reflective surface rather than glass but didn't want to go for the standard die cut option. Whilst browsing through Pinterest (anyone else lose hours doing that?!!!) I came across a set of boards from Savvy City Farmer which included antique furniture and mirrors. The cogs started whirring and, in one of those 'what if' moments, I came up with an idea for ageing a Tim Holtz Idea-Ology Mirrored Sheet.

The majority of the ageing process took place on the reverse side of the mirrored sheet. Having soaked it in water for a while I rubbed away some of the sticky backing sheet with my fingers, much like you do when revealing the reverse side of a double-sided paper/card (though it takes quite a bit longer with the mirrored sheet).

I then applied Walnut Stain and Black Soot Distress Paint to the edges and stencilled some onto the front using the Splatters Layering Stencil. Finally I stamped the script pattern from the Papillon stamp set onto a piece of white card and stuck it to the back of the mirrored sheet.

The first of the embellishments continued the mirrored theme; foil covered card altered with Alcohol Inks and die cut with one of the Mixed Media Thinlits dies. To make the embossed feather stand out more I offset another one (cut from black card) underneath. The rest of the elements, including the butterfly from one of Tim Holtz' Ephemera packs, were splattered with some Tarnished Brass Distress Spray Stain and the Alpha Parts numbers were painted with the matching shade of Distress Paint.

Now I highly recommend a visit to see the other DT members participating in this month's challenge at A Vintage Journey as they have created a stunning line up of projects to get your creative juices flowing. Then we'd love to see your Tim Holtz influenced entries using glass or mirrors so you can be in with a chance to win a £20 shopping voucher for Country View Crafts. To see all the details head on over to the challenge blog.

I'll be back again tomorrow with another IndigoBlu project so I hope you can join me for that, but for now have a great Easter weekend and whatever you're up to take care of yourselves. Jenny xxx