Vintage Clipboard with NEW Seth Apter products {by Mags Woodcock}

Hi everyone, nice to be back with you again, Mags here with you today.

This year on the blog, we have free reign to do a deep dive into a PaperArtsy product ranges of our choosing. For this post I have been exploring some new products designed for PaperArtsy by Seth Apter.  Four new Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics and three new stamp sets.

Today I'm looking forward to sharing how I combined these new products with some of my favourite PaperArtsy products and book pages from my stash. I wanted to give my project a vintage vibe and you will see how I achieved this, along with a definite French feel.

I really enjoyed creating all the separate elements to this project, especially mixing the new paint colours to create some vintage inspired tones. I also included some Rusting Powder and Just Walnut Infusions in the mix for a touch of grunge.

For my project I was using three new stamp sets by Seth Apter, sets 46,47 and 48 (ESA46, ESA47, ESA48, available from a PaperArtsy Stockist) and four new Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics, Castleton (FF231), Pumice (FF232), Admiral (FF233) and Kiln (FF234) (available from a PaperArtsy Stockist).

You can probably see by this photo, that the stamps have a French theme. This had an impact on the inspiration and thoughts behind my project. Read on and I will explain.

When I received the paints and stamps my mind started whirling with ideas. Leandra had mentioned that the stamps had been designed by Seth, to be used at the Art Retreat being held at PaperArtsy HQ in France. As my signature style is vintage with a touch of grunge, it's not surprising that my thoughts took a turn in that direction. My idea for the project was to create a series of cards or sheets of paper with a vintage style photo of a guest at a retreat. A little like a check list, marking everyone as present. These would be held together on a vintage style clipboard. So lets start to create the backgrounds for those pages.

I love to create distressed backgrounds with Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics and a brayer. I used Smoothy (SCA4) paper as my base and brayered on small amounts of the new paints, Castleton (FF231), Pumice (FF232), Admiral (FF233) and Kiln (FF234) mostly concentrating on the edges of the paper. I varied the sequence of paints on each sheet to give a slightly different look.

To give the backgrounds a vintage look, I brushed on a wash of Just Walnut Infusions (CS25). When this was completely dry I spritzed again with a mini spray bottle filled with the diluted Infusions mixture. I like the blobs of Just Walnut this created.

It was now time for the stamps to come out to play. I used some of the words on the backgrounds, stamping in black for impact. In this picture I used Eclectica Seth Apter ESA46. You can probably see that I added some stamping on the edges of the background, this gave some extra visual texture.  Finally I mounted each sheet onto vintage book pages to give a border.

I was very happy with how the backgrounds turned out, just the right amount of distressing and subtle grunge. It was now time to move on to creating the embellishments and ephemera using the rest of the stamps.

For my next steps I decided to experiment with the Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic  paints, mixing them to create more options. As you can see, the combinations were fabulous, with some unexpected results.

I was particularly drawn to the combinations of the darker colours, Kiln, Castleton, and Admiral, mixed with Pumice.

I used up the leftover paints brushed onto Smoothy paper. I didn't worry about creating a smooth coat of paint, in fact I wanted a distressed uneven look as you can see above.

I used the label stamp set (EAS48) from the stamp trio to create some ephemera, Ranger Archival ink was ideal for that.

To add a more aged look to the labels I spritzed the sheets of stamped labels with diluted Just Walnut Infusions, as I had with the backgrounds. I love the dried splodges that resulted. When they were dry it was time to cut them out.

I had finished cutting out the labels and had quite a lot of painted paper leftover. It was ideal for die cutting, I used the recently released Sizzix dies designed by Seth. I wasn't sure how I would use the die cuts, but I liked the way they looked.

Now that I had some lovely aged ephemera to add to my project, it was time to move on to building my pages.

I had some French vintage book pages in my stash and those mixed nicely with the stamped labels and die cuts. I backed each Vintage Tim Holtz photo with a piece of cotton rag paper which had the Frescos brayered on to it. I also included some vintage lace and cotton fabric.

It was now time to move on to the clipboard.

I had this mini clipboard in my stash for a while, just waiting for it's moment. As you can see it was a bit new looking for my project. That was easily remedied. A couple of coats of Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic, Heavy Cream (FF203) and a section of Printed Tissue (PT07) adhered with Matte Glaze (FF52) and it looked a lot better.

I love rust, so the obvious thing to alter the shiny clip at the top of the board, was to add rust. This is a very easy process with PaperArtsy Rusting Powder (RP45). I coated the clip with Heavy Gel Medium, adding a couple of cocktail sticks to stop the clip from sticking down and together. A heavy dusting of Rusting Powder to coat the gel, left to dry and the excess brushed off. I added few spritzes of white vinegar to the powder and left to activate overnight in a well ventilated room.

The next step was a bit of an experiment, I wanted to seal the rust, so it didn't mark my pages. I decided to try a coat of Matte Glaze over the rust. It seemed to work well.

A few spritzes of diluted Just Walnut Infusions and the look was complete. You may notice a gap in the rust on the clip, there was a piece of washi tape covering that area, which I removed after rusting the clip. I will explain in a moment.

I wanted to use one of the labels at the top of the clipboard, so stamped and distressed it as before.  It was a perfect fit when it was cut out and adhering was easier to the unrusted part of the clip.

I loved how this all came together so easily and I know I will be using the leftover die cuts and labels in future projects.

Here are a few photos of the finished project, with some close ups.

So as you can see in this photo, I created 3 pages to work with my Vintage style clipboard. The two ladies already had some colour to the photos, the gent was just black and white. I used a small amount of Fern Mattint (MT03) to colour his shirt, I didn't want him to be left out , haha.

I tried wherever possible to coordinate the stamps so they told a story. My school girl French came in handy at last. I'll let you decide on the story behind each character, but I definitely think this très chic lady is Parisian. You can see here how the pages look on the clipboard.

I love the effect that spritzing the Just Walnut Infusions creates on top of the painted and stamped image. A real vintage vibe.

The painted papers were ideal for die cutting and added some extra texture and interest.

Using the word stamps to add interest to the edge of the pages, the wording doesn't need to be readable.

Last, but not least, a close up of the rusty clipboard.

I hope you have enjoyed reading how I created this project, and how I was inspired, not only by the paints and stamps, but also the Art retreat at PaperArtsy HQ. I know I will be exploring more of the colours I mixed, along with the stamped images in future projects, so watch out in the PaperArtsy People Facebook group.

Happy crafting............. Mags x

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