Bountiful Harvest at A Vintage Journey

Hi everyone,

It's my turn to host the challenge this time over at A Vintage Journey and I chose Bountiful Harvest as the theme for this fortnight.  The Creative Guides have provided some spectacular inspiration - a feast for the eyes - hope you will come by for a look by clicking here.

 

Halloween will soon be a fond memory, I hope you have lots of cute and scary Trick or Treaters at you door.  It is now time to think about the Bountiful Harvest that comes in November and how we celebrate it.   I would love for you to join in and show us your creativity.  Simply let your mind wander off to those crisp fall days.

For my project I choose to use the colors and images of fall. I made a shadow box using a canvas, just used the reverse side. I invite you to come along with me to the "Paper Pumpkin Patch".  Fall is also the current topic over at Frilly and Funkie so I will share my pumpkins over there as well. 

I started out simply enough by gathering all my pumpkin dies and found that I had lots more than I realized.  I'm sure I have mentioned in the past that orange is my favorite color and there is something about a pumpkin that attracts me every time.

Now I thought I would cut all my pumpkins from grunge paper so they are sturdy.  I got all of them cut out and then decided that I would add Gesso so the color stayed true.  Well, that was a great plan until I started to add ink.  I inked my first one with Distress Ink - the ink never dried, well dahhhh!! By adding Gesso I made the surface non porous which means that water based inks will not work.  This discovery lead to many experiments and I have to say there were many "Happy Accidents".  I got out all sorts of inks, Archival, Alcohol and Staz-On.  I even edged with Sharpies.  They all worked great so then of course I had to get out my Distress Paints, also great for this project.  The only trouble with this is that soon my work table looked like this.  OMG, I had to stop and clean up.

 

Who knew that so many shades of orange could be made?  Sorry I don't have a photo of all the pumpkins before I added them to the shadow box but I guess I got caught up in the moment.  For the one shown below, I used a stencil and molding paste.  I ended up cutting off the stem to make it look as though you were looking at it from the top.

 

Lets just say that I did lots of experimenting and inking.  Sometimes I would paint over the entire pumpkin and start over to get what I wanted.  I used lots of stencils from Tim's collection and used molding paste on some.

I have to say that this was rather fun.  I used dry embossing on some and embossing powder on others.  There are no two alike in this Paper Pumpkin Patch.

 

Next I lined the inside of the shadow box with a soft blue paper and then added a piece of resin paper that I made for  Destination Inspiration - Ice Resin.  You can see the complete tutorial by clicking here.  The resin makes the paper transparent and lets the blue show through.

 

  Next came the frame which I cut out of strong cardstock, embossed with Tim's Letterpress Embossing Folders - I used, together, happiness, grateful and celebrate.

After mitering the corners, the edges were inked with DI and put on the canvas.

After my frame was ready- I got the pumpkins and I have to say I rearranged them several time before coming to the final decision.

When my pumpkins were just the way I wanted them I had to go looking for leaves and such.  Once again I was amazed at how many dies I had with leaves.  I cut leaves and flourishes and arranged them among the pumpkins until I was happy.

When it came time for the photo I went in my stash of holiday décor and found some more paper pumpkins that I made in previous years and added them.  I'm pretty happy with the result and hope you like them. 

This post turned out to be much longer than I planned but I hope you enjoyed it and will stop over at A Vintage Journey to see all the fabulous work done by my wonderful team mates.

Have a wonderful and creative weekend,

S@ndy