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!

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Be sure to stop by Venetia's personal blog and say hello, and please let her know we sent you! 

Also, check out our "We Spy..." board on Pinterest; and don't forget to share your projects with us on Facebook!  If we spy fabulous projects using Authentique products, we might just feature you in a future blog post!