PaperArtsy: Fun with Mini's, with Kate Crane products {by Nikki Acton}

Monday, 10 November 2025

Fun with Mini's, with Kate Crane products {by Nikki Acton}

Hi everyone, Nikki (a2a.craft) here with you today.

This year on the blog, we have free rein to do a deep dive into a PaperArtsy product range of our choosing. For this post I have been exploring Kate Crane's products.

Today I'm looking forward to sharing some fun cards using her mini stamps and stencils.

I do love making two cards at once, using the same colours but in different places. I have used one mini stencil to give two effects.

I love these cute mini stamps - fun images and easy to colour. I took a simple approach to colour choices - lilac and blue/green always works well.

I had a good idea I was working with circles to frame my images so reached for PaperArtsy Mini stencil - PM034 by Kate Crane. Using Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Berry Nice (FF216) I first sponged through the stencil giving the top image above. I then added paint to the stencil and spritzed with water before laying on some card. This is effectively stamping with the stencil.

I repeated this with Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Bermuda (FF224).

To create my background I cut some card to size and used PaperArtsy stencil PS453 by Kate Crane and Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Little Black Dress (FF19).

PaperArtsy Mini stamp KCM013 goes very well with the larger stencil. I added some leaf stamping in Ranger Archival (Majestic Violet) to the stencilled background.

Next to focus on the chicken....

First I stamped a few images - always good to have a few spare before starting to add colour.

The chicken stamp is PaperArtsy Mini stamp KCM010 and the Owl KCM011.

I used coloured crayons to match my paint colours - just adding colour in places.

I added Ranger Glossy Accents to the eyes and Ranger Stickles in places for a little sparkle. Before adding to the eyes I took a black pen and emphasised the black lines and pupil as the colouring in had dulled the black a little.

Finally I coloured and cut up some stamped leaves from KCM013 to add some embellishments around the circles.

I die cut the circles and added an additional black circle. For my greeting I reached for some older PaperArtsy stamps by Emma Godfrey - Eclectica Mini18 (EM18) and Eclectica Mini 20 (EM20).