Repose-itory Part 1 - All Bricked Up

Sometimes you get inspired the minute you see something and you just have to go with it, and that's it what happened here.  When I saw the seasonal dies from Tim Holtz and Sizzix, this Repose-itory started designing itself in my mind and I was compelled to make it.
I know it uses a LOT of the new Chapter 3 seasonal dies, but I couldn't help myself. I love them all so much and just needed to use them on one project.  So if you only have a few or you have something you can substitute from older dies in your stash, I hope this serves as some inspiration that you can use.

I've broken this project down into several posts so we can focus just on a few techniques used. As always, if you have a question or want to contact me, please use the link in the column at the right. I am unable to reply to comments below.
Let's get started on the brick background technique today.

I used one of the large Etcetera Tombstones from last year's release. If you still have one or if you find one somewhere online, great. If not, just adjust your design to one of the smaller tombstones available this year from Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous.
I was certain that I wanted a really soot covered brick wall in the "attic" area of the tombstone, and on the back of the fireplace. There are several options available for making this, but I settled on die cuts since this was a Sizzix project.

 Begin by coloring a piece of Distress Mixed Media Heavystock a Brick Color. You can make this plain red or add some brown as well if you want.  I just sprayed the DMMH with Fired Brick Distress Stain for this post sample but in the actual piece the bricks had more brown in them.

 Then I made sure to spray a little water on it and let it dry with a heat tool.

 I had stain left on my nonstick mat, so I just went back in and put the paper, stain side down into the left over bits, then dried, and repeated this until I was happy with the coverage.

The Mixed Media 3 die set has these alpha, crackle and brick portions of backgrounds. I cut out several of the brick backgrounds so I had plenty of bricks to choose from. If you are making a mixed media journal or art piece, you can use either the bricks or the mortar outline.  I wasn't too worried about some of the bricks having the ends cut off on the second cut on this piece because you will see that there are some places where you only see one side of the brick anyway.

 The bricks on the left are as they come out of the die. The bricks on the right are with the edges inked with a brown Distress Ink. You can choose which you prefer.

 This next step I did on two surfaces. For the attic, I painted the Etcetera tag tombstone parts with Black Soot Distress Paint. Then I added a nice layer of Distress Collage Medium as seen above. For the Fireside background, I put collage medium on black cardstock as seen above.

 Then lay the bricks onto the paper or the tombstone "attic" in this pattern. The alternating rows should be off-set so that the lines look like a brick wall and don't line up vertically. You can see that along the outside edges you really only see the end of the brick that faces the other bricks so you can use the part bricks for the outside edges. Once you are done, then cover all of the bricks with a layer of Collage Medium to seal and dry it.

Once it is dry, it goes in two directions. The Fireside piece skips ahead to the Distress Crayon step a little later in this blog post, so set it aside and continue with the other steps. As you can see from the step below, for the actual piece I made, I had some brown mixed in with my Fired Brick. The Distress Crayons age the bricks as well.

For the attic bricks, I have seen attics on home improvement shows where the the bricks seem to have some crackly mortar or something on them, so to get that look I broke out the Ranger Opaque Crackle Texture Paste. I smeared some on the bricks kind of here and there and let it dry.

This is what it looks like dried and crackled. I also added this to the frame on the upper part of the tombstone for added texture and interest, as seen below.

Once it was crackled, I attached the frame to the brick base with Distress Collage Medium and then covered the entire piece with a thin coat of  Distress Collage Medium.

I needed to age the bricks and the crackle paste, so in came the Distress Crayons. Remember, that the small piece of brick needs aged as well.

I scribbled over the texture paste with Vintge Photo brown Distress Crayon, Then I rubbed it into the piece with my finger .

Then I added a layer of a darker brown called Ground Espresso Distress Crayon and rubbed it in.

You can see it is getting darker and grungier.

 The last step is to scribble some Black Soot Distress Crayon around the outside edge and rub it in.

The final result should look something like this.  It might be good to practice this technique on a piece of scrap paper as I have done for this post. Practice makes perfect and none of us are able to get the exact look we want on the first try. We all have to practice, so just try it out and then save the practice runs. You never know when it might be just the right little brick piece for something later on.

 I love how grungy it turned out and think it really looks like an old burned out, haunted house attic.
Now don't forget that the small cardstock brick piece needs to be used. It goes behind the Fireside mantle die and is covered up by the firescreen that goes in front of it, but it is a nice realistic detail to include, and you know, I'm all about the details in my vignettes. It comes from my years of loving all the magical Disney Details.
And speaking of details, now that it's blow up bigger than on my phone, I can see in this photo below that there is a cat hair from my cat Leota Toombs on the mantle. LOLOL! That really couldn't be a more perfect detail because she is named after one of the Disney Imagineers who created the Haunted Mansion.  I love that cat.

I hope this was enough detail for you to be able to give this brick background a go. I really like it! My next post on this piece will discuss how I made all the books.
Thanks for stopping by my Repose-itory!
Tami

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