PaperArtsy: Vintage Florals on Black with AB {by Autumn Clark}

Hi friends! It's Autumn Clark from SewPaperPaint back with you today to share sooooo many little projects and fun experimental finds featuring the exquisite new Alison Bomber collection of rubber stamps and stencils. What a delight to play and explore some of the possibilities these beautiful stamps hold. My projects today range from dark and moody to vintage and springy. I hope you'll enjoy and be inspired by either direction, or hopefully both!

For days these beautiful stamps by Alison Bomber, sets AB057, AB058 and AB059 and the coordinating stencils, PS521, PS522 and PS523, lay across my art table to inspire my imagination. I let the imagery guide my color palette choice, which is always such a fun part of the process for me. I decided to base my colors upon the rose stamp and chose PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Sage, Blush, Cherry Blossom and Rose. Later in the process I added Mattint in Glow for a vintage overlay.

I really wanted to make these gorgeous designs sing! I kept thinking of my stamping "bag of tricks" (so to say) and was trying to put a spin on things for this post. I mulled this over for several days as I inspected the products again and again. Finally I had the idea recreate a vintage floral illustration with a dark background. I found an all black journal I had made from an upcycled book cover, a perfect substrate. The pages were folded deckle edged watercolor paper. I had covered the spine with black book binders tape and used black waxed linen for the signatures.

Only, I didn't want the background to be stark black. First I contemplating adding a chalk rubbing and sealing with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic Glaze in Matte, but I thought maybe I could make a more vintage background than just chalk. I adhered several vintage book pages all across the top of my cover instead.

This was inspired by a recent playday I had with my dear friend Barbara, where we shared our vintage book finds and vintage papers and created a stash of layered book page substrates from THIS Ceri Griffiths video. In fact, she and I each bound an entire journal made of these layered papers!

I grabbed some of those smaller layered paper pieces to do some testing with before diving in with paint on my journal cover. I mixed the Matte Glaze with Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Little Black Dress to make a black glaze.

I tested it on one of the pieces by painting the glaze on heavily, then using a cloth towel to rub off some of the glaze in both horizontal and vertical rubbings to try and create a linen pattern in the glaze.

I repeated by testing another panel and wiping with a wet baby wipe. Then another panel without wiping at all, and finally a fourth panel with an all new experiment. Here's a photo of the four text panels. Top left: wiped with towel. Bottom left: straight glaze. Top right: vaseline resist. Bottom right: wiped with wet baby wipe.

Several years ago I blogged THIS post, where I brayered petroleum jelly onto my gel plate and used it as a stamp pad to create a "vaseline resist" technique and followed with Infusions Powders. So fun! You can find the YouTube video I did HERE. For a more aged effect I rubbed the vaseline onto the silhouette stamp from AB058 with my finger this time. I stamped onto the book page substrate a couple of times. Then I went over it with the black glaze, taking care to brush softly and not overwork the paint and thus move the vaseline. I was amazed at the resist it created! Look how beautifully the book text shows through!

Granted, this is a bit of a messy process and I am always thinking of how a technique may or may not appeal to our readers. So I did a test to see if I used Vintage Pearl embossing powder (by Ranger) if it would be similar to the resist. It is certainly beautiful but so very different. See below.

While those panels dried, I took a moment to do some stamping onto an unbleached coffee filter, another fun technique I've been doing a lot lately and hope you will enjoy too! You can dry your used filter for this technique too for an even more aged look and an eco friendly bonus.

I duplicated the same resist technique onto my book cover. And again painted it with the black glaze. The fun began when it was time to add some of the flower stamps, starting with the gorgeous roses from AB059. I had in mind a particular collage...

That led me to try and figure out how to set up a repeat stamping situation with the thick book cover - yikes! I tried multiple angles and was able to get the book into my Tim Holtz stamp platform as shown. I marked a pencil line on my Sizzix adhesive panel at the bottom so I could realign the book if it moved out of place. I used the magnets as a "border" to keep the cover from moving downward, then stamped my first rose using permanent black ink.

This gave me a guide to paint the rose petals and leaves using a combination of PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Sage, Blush, Cherry Blossom and Rose. I used these colors of pink to make it easy to create shadows and highlights. Once the rose was fully painted and I confirmed the book cover was properly aligned in the stamping platform, I repeat stamped in black to redefine the outline. It worked beautifully! Twice more I followed this process with the roses onto my cover. You can see the resist peeping through behind a layer of vintage paper I added to the collage.

The grouping was a little off balance and I wished I had done another resist on the bottom left. I didn't want to add embossing and had to come up with another way to add contrast, so I pulled out my Fresco Acrylic in Nougat, a great vintage white and stamped one of the hydrangeas from AB057 with the paint there. Then I took some of the collage stamps from the various sets and stamped in black all around my cover for extra (albeit subtle) depth.

I gave the panel splashes of the leftover pink paint mixed with water.

I wanted to add some other vintage style ephemera and cleaned off the black glaze on my brush onto another book page, then stamped the little label from AB059 onto it, also with Nougat. I adhered these to thin chipboard and fussy cut them.

For one final bit of dimension, I stamped some of the leaves from AB059 onto book page and painted them loosely with Fresco Acrylic in Sage and some water. Again, I adhered these to thin chipboard and fussy cut them.

I let the book cover collage sit while I figured out the final additions and decided to finish the test panels. I made the first one with the same repeat stamping/painting technique using the hydrangeas from AB057. As I was heat setting this one, the paper unglued and so I curled it and let the base paper show, which just adds to the vintage vibe. Then I decided I wanted to do some other samples with watercolor, which is the number one tool in my "bag of tricks" and always a favorite of mine. I started stamping all of the flowers onto thick, porous book pages and giving them loose washes of color.

Once all of my images were watercolored and fussy cut, I decided to use the stencils to create a few patterned pages. My friend Barbara is so good at this stenciling technique with watercolor but I've never had much success, so I thought I would try out a few different brushes to see if that helped. I discovered that my thick angled mop brush worked best. This brush has a low pile, but holds a lot of water. I used thick, absorbent book pages. I loved how the hydrangeas turned out using PS521! The bonus palette stencil was fun to play with too!

Using PS522 had to be my favorite result. I tried to create ombres with my watercolor. Yellow - blue - green on the first and pale pink - bright pink - purple pink on the next.

Finally, I used PS523 to make some black stripes and other repeat patterns. I could do this for days, but tried to make just enough for this post. It was hard to stop!

Meanwhile, the layers on my book cover were dried and I was ready to finish it off. I loved the painted roses, but they were a bit too bright for the vintage look I was going for. Enter Mattint in Glow to the rescue! I did a test onto a blank book page, but was afraid it might be too bright, though when I layered it over the paint, it really created a warm "glow". I painted it loosely over the entire cover and it truly unified the collage.

I finished my journal with a sari ribbon tie and a bit of vintage trim. I'm so pleased with it and have already added some of the scraps from this post to the inside pages to help encourage my future drawings and watercolors.

The test panels were a fun way to experiment and will become trading panels for my next Flowers Magic Art Journal. I think they will be fun inserts on various pages.

I love how the coffee filter stamping turned out! It looks amazing on the black surface, as well as the lighter ones.

The torn strips from the stencil work made great layering material, especially here over the vaseline resist. And what's not to love about the repeat stamping and painted hydrangeas from AB057?! I didn't add the Mattint in Glow on this one, as I didn't think it needed it. It will serve as a good side by side comparison for me for future projects.

I couldn't help myself and had to make a batch of vintage greeting cards as well! This first pink rose card features the rose from AB059 paired with stencil watercolor using PS522 and stripes from PS523. To the left, I stamped a hymnal page with the silhouette foliage from AB058. I didn't use this set as much as the others, but honestly it is my favorite of all! I just got so carried away that I didn't have enough time. But look how beautifully this turned out! I used Distress Ink in Bundled Sage and spritzed the red rubber stamp with water before stamping to get this effect. It really seeped into the paper and gave a beautiful effect.

For my next card I watercolored a yellow rose from AB059 and layered over the ombre background made with PS522.

I was happy to incorporate some of my vintage trim and love the soft dimension it added. Here I used that favorite foliage set AB058 to emboss a white background on a very aged dictionary page beneath one of my focal roses.

A thing I've been doing a lot of lately is stamping on the torn off pieces of my book pages. You can see sometimes I use the page number and text and other times just the plain paper. I loved using the various text stamps in this way and combined them with stickers by Tim Holtz to create my own phrases for these greeting cards. This final card has a layer of torn, frayed canvas. I really like the juxtaposition of these vintage projects in both darks and lights and truly hope they've inspired you today! Thanks for sticking with me for this long post, but honestly I feel like I've barely scratched the surface! I'm looking forward to experimenting with new ways to use these beautiful stamps by Alison in the near future. xx, Autumn