Denim Christmas Upcycle with JOFY {by Keren Baker}

Hello everyone !

Keren here with you today and I'll be sharing a very simple way of using JOFY's new Christmas stamps and how wonderful they look painted onto denim.

I wanted a traditional look that would also go with the deep blue of the denim. I thought I'd chosen a great combo and then looked at Jo Firth-Young's scheme and it was nearly exactly the same!

All you need is paint and leftover jeans. A little thread for sewing and anything else you'd like as embellishments.

This technique is very simple. If you want something that'll be washed regularly then it would be worth mixing a fabric medium in with the paint, but as my stocking would rarely be washed, I just needed to stamp and lay down an initial layer of white to act as a background for the colour or the colours wouldn't have been quite so vibrant without lots of layers of paint.

A white chalk pen is useful with denim but do you remember the anti-static bags for heat embossed powder some of us have in our stashes? They make excellent dabbers over shapes and if only I had known where mine was!

If your fabrics are tired or stretchy, adding a little starch will help the finished look and also enable you to stamp more clearly. I used Stazon for a crisp outline.

   

Now it's time to paint. You may need two layers of white and a couple of layers of the colours, depending on whether you're using opaques or semi-opaques / translucents.

Leave the paint to dry for a few hours and then you want to dry press the reverse of the painted side to set the paint. Now to sew..

I set the stamped fabric that was going to be a tag into an hoop so it was easier to sew.

Lots of sewing later I had an upcycled stocking. Even the lining was from a thrifted duvet cover.

I made sure that the back of the tag was a light plain colour so I could write a message on it.

The details are textural- eyelets, twine, ribbon, stitching and Jo's beautiful stamped images. It's easy to glue the stamped sentiments onto the tag.

I did wish I'd done a brighter colour for the quilting and the tags are definitely something I'm going to repeat. They're a quicker make than a stocking and if you use erasable ink, the tags are ultimately reusable.
Have you tried upcycling anything you don't wear anymore. Have a go at stamping and painting on fabric; it's really rather addictive ! 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kerenjb

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/craftstampink/

Nut Shell Books with I&D {by Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos}

Hi everyone, Liesbeth here. These beautiful PaperArtsy I&D 'Vintage Nude' stamps were once among the very first I ever owned about 20 years ago, and today I'd love to show you how I used them to create two (nut)shell booklets.

I no longer have the original packaging, but here you can see the wonderful stamps featured in this blogpost: PaperArtsy Ink & The Dog Collection: Vintage Nudes plate 1, Vintage Nudes plate 2, Vintage Nudes plate 3 and Vintage Nudes plate 4.

I also used real shells and nutshells, and PaperArtsy Stencils PS234, PS002, PS239, PS173 and PS105.

For the pages I used PaperArtsy Smoothy white stamping card,regular. The perfect cardstock!

Paints I used: PaperArtsy Fresco Paints: Smurf, Banana, Snowflake, Gold and Gloss Glaze.

I started with the shell book, two shells will be the cover. Using one of the shells as a template I cut the double pages out of the folded cardstock.

Time for some layers, first I used the stencils with the Fresco Finish paints Banana and Smurf to paint some marks at the edges of the pages here and there. Later on the paints will work as a resist. I sponged the pages with Distress Inks: Wild Honey, Salvaged Patina, Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire, overlapping areas.

I sprayed some waterdrops to create nice spots, after drying I made a next layer with Distress Ink Chipped Sapphire and the stencils as shown.

Time for the beautiful Vintage Nudes stamps, I stamped them with Tsukineko StazOn - Jet Black. I used every single stamp from the four stamp sets and tried to create nice compositions. I also stamped the small flower (Plate 3) here and there with blue and yellow Distress ink. After that I bleached (watered down bleach and a synthetic brush) and coloured the women and some other details, and finished with a bit of glitter glue.

A hard decision.. shall I paint the shells or not? I did, using the Fresco Paint Snowflake :-) Onto very thin, one layer napkin paper I stamped the small flower (Plate 3) with three different blue colours waterproof ink (I used Versafine Clair), tore them out and glued them one by one onto the shells with Fresco Finish Gloss Glaze. 

I glued the double pages back to back to create a book.

Something was still missing, so i decided to take the amazing Fresco Finish Paint Gold and painted the edges of the shells a bit ragged. It's so shiny..to me the perfect finishing touch!

To 'bind' the book, I added some washi tape on the spine of the booklet, glued some pieces of fibre in the shells and glued the booklet in the shells.

Here you see how the first page is glued into the front shell. I glued the edge and secured the page with clamps till it was dry.

I couldn`t resist making another tiny walnut book, the stamps are so perfect for this! Made in much the same way. This one, however, is an accordion book, 6 pages long.

The closed books. I decided not to paint the nutshell, but of course it's up to you.

This picture shows the beauty of the stamps! And also the layering, glitters, colour pencil make-up and other details. 

Finished! A small shell book and a tiny nutshell book full of lovely Vintage Nudes:-)

Look at that cute nude ladies in their gothic arches, love it!

Another detail of the nutshell pages.

This is the final page of the shell book. The bleached woman pops out, the golden Fresco paint and glitter glue make it shine!

It was a pleasure to create this two books with the wonderful ,oldies' PaperArtsy Ink & The Dog ,Vintage Nudes`.

Hope I inspired you, have fun!

Liesbeth XX

Blog: Liesbeths Arts & Crafts

Facebook: Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos

Instagram: liesbeth_fidder

Squiggly Christmas with PaperArtsy's Squiggly Ink stamps {by Nikki Acton}

Hi everyone, good to be back, it's Nikki here (a2a.craft) to share my latest project.

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 Squiggly Ink products.

I'm going to be sharing some Christmas cards combining a (mostly) stencilled master board and the fun and easy to use Christmas stamps from the Squiggly Ink Collection.

I will show you how I created my master board for these cards to form the background before getting all sparkly for Christmas with the stamps.

I wanted to use the traditional red and green of Christmas while keeping it bright - so selected the range of colours you can see above.

The image above is my finished master board. I created this on one sheet of A4 white card.

To start I cut myself some triangles out of A4 copy paper to use as stencils and started my painty background using Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Kiln (FF234) and Blah Mange (FF140).

The next layers use PaperArtsy stencils by JOFY - PS438 and PS309 and Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Toffee Apple (FF219) and Frosty (FF190).

As I knew I would be cutting up this master board I wasn't too worried about the composition but tried to fill some gaps while also overlapping the triangles previously added.

Next I added the brighter green dots / circles using Fresco Chalk Acrylics in Parakeet (FF225) and another JOFY stencil (PS477).

I then reached for the small snowflake and present stamp off PaperArtsy Squiggly Ink - Nut and Meg 1 stamp set (SINM1). I stamped in Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Chalk (FF83) and Ranger Archival Ink in Olive.

Finally I added Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Gold (FF20) - again using stencil PS477.

There is a lot going on in this background, but I liked it! Now to make some cards.

 

For the first card I used the Christmas tree and greeting from PaperArtsy Squiggly Ink - Nut and Meg 3 stamp set (SINM3). 

I cut some of the background for the inside of the card and the front flap and matted onto another layer of card painted (just around the edges that show) with Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Parakeet.

For the tree I quickly painted a piece of card with stripes of the colours I used on the background. I stamped and fussy cut the tree.

I added some Ranger Stickles to the tree for some sparkle and cut an oval for my tree to sit on. This was decorated with more stencilling and stamping.

I punched some little stars and mounted the greeting on some sparkly paper for some added bling!

The second card was built the same way - but this time I used the snowman from PaperArtsy Squiggly Ink - Nut and Meg 2 stamp set (SINM2).

I added some slightly watered down Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Frosty to some white card before stamping the image. I took some coloured pencils and coloured his face / scarf etc before adding Stickles to some areas.

This was fun! Like many of us I love making backgrounds and these stamps contain clear focal images that are great to stamp with and easy to fussy cut.

Blog: Addicted to Art

Instagram: @a2a.craft

Pinterest: nikacton

YouTube: Nikki Acton