"Flaming June" - an image impulse challenge at Our Creative Corner

Servus and welcome back to my creative spot!

You are just in time to learn about the new challenge for June at Our Creative Corner for this month which is hosted by lovely Julia this time.

"Flaming June"

She chose one of her favourite paintings from Romantic painter Lord Leighton as an impulse and wants all of us to use the rich orange tones from his painting as the main colours of our makes! To see the painting and to learn more about the details (so you can join in and get eligible for any prize wins or making Top3) hop over to Our Creative Corner!

So Julia says: "use bright orange tones as the main focus".....sounds easy at first, doesn't it? But I found that I really struggled with finding a theme where orange might fit as the main focus....funny thing is: I love orange (especially wearing orange clothes), but I found that I hardly ever use it with my projects...I had never noticed before honestly. 

It was a lucky incident that finally let me come up with something I really like: I had my new Vintaj patina kit out for play and used it to practice on some metal embellishments. And there was an orange lace ribbon lieing on my desk as well (I guess it fell off my box with ribbons when I was searching for some other fabric for a different project some days ago)....when I took both and held them against each other I found that they would make a lovely bracelet! I had always wanted to create one of these gorgeous cuff bracelets made from leather, lace and vintage embellishments!

So I grabbed some beige leather scrap and tried to tint it orange - using almost anything I had at hand: orange mists, orange fabric paint, orange spray paint and distress stains...and it worked (but don't ask me what it was that finally did the trick *lol - I assume the whole mixture)! Yay!

To have a contrasting colour - as is the blue sky in Lord Leighton's painting, which makes the orange of the dress pop even more - I died some white lace ribbon using Colour washes. Then I rummaged my various treasure boxes and drawers (especially the one with the old buttons from my grandma and the one with the metal embellishments I got from fabulous Retro Kraft Shop :

...and after I had coloured the lovely bronze metal branch and the label with the Vintaj patinas, I was ready to sew it all together. And as there is a plant in Lord Leighton's painting, I decided to use a plant (the metal branch) too ;)

It was a bit fiddly as you first have to punch all the holes for the sewing needle to go through the leather and then have to find them again while sewing ribbons to the leather strip from front and back...but the result was so rewarding (at least for me)!

I love how it looks on my wrist and honestly I would never have come up with a colour scheme like this if there hadn't been Julia's tricky challenge theme (so thank you, Julia! xx) ! I had so much fun dyeing all the ribbons and the leather I used and the Vintaj patinas worked great!

I love that I could use some of the buckhorn buttons from my grandmother's collection too and that they add so perfectly to the design! This way I can carry something that belonged to her with me and have her close.

I am sure that this won't be the last bracelet I did, as I had a ball creating it (and still have a lovely collection of old vintage treasures to be used up). I hope you like it too and can't wait to see what you will come up with for Julia's challenge!

We have a prize sponsor too this month and it is Tando Creative! So join in to get the chance to win some of their awesome goodies!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xx