Gooooodly Morning to all you Compendium-ers! Today sees the start of a
brand new Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge. To see all the details
on how to join in with the challenge, CLICK HERE. Also, if you pop across to Linda's blog, you will see all gorgeous creations that my talented teamies on the Curiosity Crew have made... well worth taking a cuppa and a packet of Digestives :O) The challenge is sponsored by the The Funkie Junkie Boutique this time... so you will have a chance of winning a very generous Gift
Certificate to spend there. As ever, Tim & Mario have very kindly
donated goodies for an extra prize... which will be awarded to the
"Curiosity Crew's Choice"... so you have two chances of winning fabby
prizes! If you haven't got your Compendium book just yet, you can order
a signed copy directly from the man himself... HERE. And... Linda has also done a FAQ page for you.. HERE it is... all the info you will need is listed there.
This week we are turning to Page 33 of the book and altering an Assemblage Clock. Now, as usual with the Compendium Challenge neither I nor the Curiosity Crew will be posting the technique
instructions and participants must not do so either. We all want to
encourage people to buy Tim's awesome book; giving away the instructions
wouldn’t be fair to him. Linda will have no choice but to un-link any
entries that don’t follow this rule.
My entry this week has been one of those ideas that has been abuzzing about my bonce for yonks - well, ever since the CC3C started actually. I knew the week we were going to be altering our Assemblage Clocks and I actually planned ahead a little on this one! I know! Forward planning and all that! This post is very photo heavy as there are lots of little details on my clock, so please do feel free to put your feet up and grab a choccy bar :O))
I have seen a fair few altered Assemblage Clocks around and all of them are delightful but I wanted to make something slightly different... something very natural and organic. The brainwave started out when I picked up a half dead hydrangea from the local Lidl store for a couple of quid at the beginning of June. The plant had some lovely flower heads all over it but it was really on its last legs... needed a big glug of water and unfortunately, the flower heads were too floppy to revive. So, I cut them off! Not only was I promoting new growth, I was also setting aside said flower heads for usage in my clock! I set them out on a bench in the back garden and hoped they would dry out and skeletonize (new word!) ... which is exactly what they did! Hurrah! Now I had some "bones" for my clock decorating....
As well as the plant, I also have had this little birdy sitting on my windowsill in the Room of Stash for absolutely yonks. She was attached to a little log and she was supposed to be being altered in the stylee of the other altered birds I have done over the years... but as per, I haven't got around to it. She was a bit big for the clock but minus log and minus glass for the clock, she fits perfectly.
So, the altering! The whole vision I had in me head was one of an old discarded alarm clock, sitting in a hedgerow, covered in rust and reappropriated by Mrs Blue Tit into a little place for her to call home. The clock comes in a bright silver tone and whilst this is ok, it wasn't anything like what I wanted so once I had removed the glass frontage, I set to with some Ranger Texture Paste and Alcohol Inks. I started by mixing up Ginger and Rust into the Texture Paste and popping it onto the clock with a palette knife. I then used the same AI's along with Butterscotch and Pebble mixed in, applying with a felt pad and in places where my tool wouldn't fit, I used the palette knife to smudge the inky felt into it. Directly dropping Rust and Ginger AI's onto the paste made it really rusty and a wee sprinklage and Vintage Photo Distress Embossing Powders added some extra texture to it.
For the inside I mixed Walnut Stain and Frayed Burlap Distress Paints and painted this one, drying with a heat tool and then adding more of the Texture Paste inky mix and repeating the process I used for the outside. I wanted to add something pretty for the background so I chopped up some Wallflower paper, stamped my usual diamond stamp (gotta get it in there somewhere!) and then blended some Vintage Photo DI around to mucky it up a smidge. I wanted to add a few words so I used Chit Chat stickers to make a little phrase to sit inside the clock.
Mrs Birdy was a bit bright - as normal, I forgot to take before pics...
ooopsies! I used a sanding block and took off some of her painted coat and then using the same mix of Distress Paints as before, I lightly painted over her and wiped off the excess... once dried, I added Distress Inks to make her tone in.
For the inside decoration, I nipped into the garden and snipped up some old twiggy and leafy bits, picked up some feathers, foraged for pebbles and seed heads and of course, grabbed some of the hydrangea heads, they had gone exactly how I wanted... skeletonified! I then made a circle nesty shape from some grasses and started building up her nesty abode. Of course, she has to have some eggs so I pinched a few pebbles from the garden, painted them with Weathered Wood DP and lightly spritzed them with a Sharpie Marker and the Distress Spritzer to add some speckles. Finally, I added some more nesting material around the edge of the clock... the ivy across the top was actually a piece that we cut back at the beginning of the summer and it was missed when we picked all the cuttings up... I was chuffed to see a real spidery web and a dead peel bug stuck to the end of it! Can't get much more realistic than that!
That's all for now - don't forget, you
will have
two weeks to enter the
challenge... and a bat at the chance of grabbing the Crew's Choice prize
which is a
mahooosive haul of stash donated personally by
Tim & Mario...
so if you are joining in, remember to comment on all the Crew's blogs and
you will be in with a chance of winning that too *believe me, this is one gigantic pile of goodies*! I will just say a big thank you to every one of you who has taken part in the challenge so far, it has been great to visit your blogs and see your wonderful interpretations of the challenge themes! Thanks for looking,
have an inky inspirational day! TTFN
