Authentique Guest Designer!

Hey Everyone! So happy to share this guest post with Authentique. If you're new, please follow. I love sharing with friends!

 

 

 

Guest Designer: Venetia Holbrook

Hello! I am Venetia from Atomic Venetia. I am from the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where I enjoy crisp grey days with coffee, and warm evenings in front of the fire with my family. My whole life I have created objects and art across many media.

I am incredibly happy to be sharing some projects I made with the gorgeous collection from Authentique, Natural. As soon as I saw this collection I was in love, and the collection pairs well with both warm and cool neutrals. It was a breeze to make projects perfect for host gifts for upcoming fall and winter celebrations.

My first project is a mixed media canvas. The patterns in Natural are a beautiful mix. This collection’s colors feel rich and bright. Canvases are one of my favorite projects because they are a fun way to mix techniques and media. I also like being able to add a sentiment intended for the recipeint. For this sentiment, I mimicked the design of the stickers in the Natural collecton pack. On the canvas, I mixed basic punches with Silhouette cuts. To add depth, I distressed with ink, added texture with gesso, and added a pop of sparkle with glitter glue.

I also created a pomander. I am so in love with how this collection pairs with gold, which reminds me of fall. I built stackable flowers with a mix of Silhouette cuts, hand cuts, and punches. I used a foam ball as a base, and used gold and pearl floral pins to place the flowers around the ball. Authentique papers have long been my favorite for paper floral designs because they are a heavy weight, allows for the manipulation of the floral to build dimension and texture.

For my final project, I created a wind chime. This time, I paired the collection with silver and black neutrals. I knew that Natural would pair perfectly with the aluminum pot when I found it, and I remembered a pin on Pinterest of a wind chime using recycled materials. I decided to adapt the pin into an altered project.

To create this, I punched circles from the papers in Natural. Then, I decoupaged the papers and sequins onto the bottle caps. I used some alcohol ink to distress the caps, and used a metal punch to create the holes. I connected the pieces together, and then added some sparkle to the pot with some ink and glitter ribbon. To hang the pot, I drilled two holes, and placed two eye screw and nut sets through the holes. I then used a chain to create a hanger.

I am so grateful to share my love of Authentique with all of you, and hope you found some inspiration from my projects. Thank you!

SWAT sketch

I'm so excited to share my interpretation of the SWAT sketch! I got to play with some Authentique Sweetness on this layout.

The story is kind of sad, if you follow my blog, you know my Dad has been sick, and a couple of months ago he spent a handful of weeks in the hospital. This picture is of my oldest at one of our visits. I was pretty upset, and I looked down at her sitting on a stool below my chair, and saw this little smile.

My oldest has the sweetest, biggest heart that I have ever known. She is everybody's friend, and in this moment, she knew exactly what I needed.

Fun- Scrapbook Sketch

My oldest is a rough and tumble girl, and I loved how this photo caught her intensity.  She adores being outside. She climbs, runs, and gets dirty. She’s always been this way.  She has so much energy, and she brings so much joy to anything she does. She definitely brings the sunshine into the many, many gray days we have in the Pacific Northwest.

With this layout, I wanted to capture the feel of my oldest.  I wanted it to be happy, and busy, and bright. Authentique is one of my favorite paper lines, and I love the teals and yellows in the papers.

I used a few circle embellishments to capture the feel of the bubbles, and if I can put a flower and button on something, it’s happening.

I have shared the sketch with you, Happy Monday!

~Venetia

Layout- Call Me Maybe?

 

 My youngest is getting a lot of attention lately on my blog, yes? She and I are bonding more lately, and I have been enjoying it. She is a funny kid, and very rarely messes up words or sentences, until it comes to songs, and then, it's a whole different thing.  One of her latest misheard lyrics is from "Call Me Maybe". You know the song, it was inescapable in 2012. If you don't know the song, you live under a rock, or hate technology, in either case, we can't be friends. For the rest of us, we know the line as "So here's my number, so call me maybe." For Budge, it is:

"So here's my Mama, so call me maybe"

This does two things. It cracks me the heck up, and it irritates her dad, because he seems to think that having a 3 year old helping me get numbers is not appropriate. Fun sucker.

Apparently,  the image of my daughter asking random people to call her because they saw her Mom is not a universally hilarious concept, despite my arguments to the contrary. It's funny because I said it is doesn't hold up in my house as well as it should.

I made this layout to celebrate her, and that funny line she sings. I pulled out a bunch of paper from my stash, and decided I wanted to make it work together. This was the result. I am glad this turned out sort of fun and ecltectic, because it really caught the spirit of what I was trying to capture.

And the sketch- For you!

~Venetia

Valentine

Oh Yes! There's a sketch! Keep Reading!

My youngest is a Girly-girl. She adores pink and all things pretty. We call her the pink princess, and she lives up to it. I enjoy this because my oldest is not at all girly, so I know my youngest comes by it naturally, despite, not because of, her mother. Of course when Valentine's comes into play, the pinker the better. I decided to make her a beautiful Valentine for tomorrow.  Budge is so funny when she gets any sort of card or gift because she is always extremely positive and excited.

Another Look Craft- Rosettes Valentine

Altered Canvas-re look

 I find myself using a lot of hearts in my art. This canvas was a gift last Valentine's day for my husband. 

I painted the canvas with acrylic paint to get a subtle background.  I used Authentique papers for the heart element, and sketched on them to create the name banner.

I like the mix of elements on this piece, and it has happily lived in our dining nook since last year.

Supplies:
Paper- Authentique Journey
Paint- Daniel Smith Acrylic
Ribbon: May Art

Pure Joy- Layout Sketch

I interpreted this sketch of mine using Authentique Carefree, and I was especially happy with this version.  My youngest girl usually sneers at the camera, or glares.  Something about having to "act" happy in a picture is not her style at all. 

This is one of the first photos I have taken of her where I was able to catch her face of joy.  I was so glad to capture it, that even though her face is a mess, it is my favorite photo of her.







Full Disclosure: Authentique Carefree

was provided to me for a Guest design on Scrapbooksteals.com



We were on the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle, and it was a gorgeous sunny day, but very cold.  The girls would go out on deck until they were freezing, come inside the seating area until they warmed up, and then go back out.  Budgie thought this was so much fun. She was in love with everything about the ferry.