Art of Gifting with Kate Crane stamps {by Katy Norgate}

Hello everyone

Katy Norgate with you today, and I'm delighted to have been invited to showcase Kate Crane's scrumptious festive new products released last week. I came up with the idea of making gift bags. 

I always look forward to Kate's Christmas designs; her fun style works perfectly to bring Christmas joy! That being said there are features, e.g. those lovely mice, and the stencils, that don't have to be just for Christmas!

Here is a taster of what I've been creating.....

Below you can see the new stamps and stencils! Are they not soooo much fun ?

We have stamp sets KC024, KC025 and KC026; along with stencils PS530, PS531 and PS532 (currently available and in stock with your local PaperArtsy stockist). I have utilised all of these products as you will see throughout this post.

As many of you will know, I am primarily a card maker, but I wanted to try something a little different, so I've had a go at making gift bags for a change. Nothing too adventurous, and certainly easily achievable! These could be great for end of year gifts for friends, teachers or family, so maybe this is a good time to get ahead on your seasonal 'to do' list!

The idea of designing and making my gift bags evolved slowly. I was initially playing with collage pieces from the papers I made, to creating a Christmas scene on the bags. But, the end results were looking a little cumbersome. The more I played, the more I became focussed on the papers I had created with infusions and stencils, to subsequently make collage fodder... more of that below.

Let's begin with the papers I have made. When I have new stencils to play with, making papers is my go-to activity, even before I have an end result in mind. 

Using stencils PS530 and PS531; infusions green man (CS18), a bit jaded (CS02), Emerald Isle (CS01), blackcurrant (CS09), magenta (CS23) and frankly scarlet (CS19) ; and PaperArtsy Smoothy  card (SCA4)  I had great fun getting messy. 

Smoothy card stock is perfect for handling plenty of water for great results with any wet media, and certainly for infusions. Some papers can blister when the water hits the card, but smoothy copes beautifully, so if you are not getting the results and movement you want on wet card with infusions, it's worth considering smoothy for any infusions-related techniques.

Placing a stencil loosely onto a piece of Smoothy card stock, I sprinkled small amounts of infusion crystals over the stencil.

Then activated the infusions by spritzing with water.

Here's a close up of the yumminess, notice the small droplets, so not too much water gives you that droplet texture on the card below

I then lifted the stencil carefully off the card. You can see there are lots of droplets on the stencil itself, so I gave this another spritz of water before placing it, ink side down, onto the card, to create a second print. I pressed it down by rolling kitchen roll over it to encourage to infusion droplets to soak into the card.

Here are some close ups of the positive and negative results I ended up with once they were almost dry.

I repeated this process using stencil PS530 with the same colours, and then repeated with both stencils with the green infusions.

And here is a view of the collection after a couple of hours of messy fun! I will use these pages as a main feature on the gift bags, in addition to using them to complement some of the stamped images.

Paper piecing. This is a technique that has certainly been visited before, but there is no harm in revisiting it. A video by Kate Crane is a perfect resource for this technique. If you check out the  link to Kate's website, you will find this and several other useful videos (Kate Crane resources).

Sometimes, I just don't want to spend lots of time carefully colouring stamped images, and this technique is quick, and helps to coordinate with background papers, made in the session, making a finished item look more harmonised. It is also a good way to use up some of those small scraps of papers.

 

Here I have stamped this cheeky mouse, from KC025, onto plain white cardstock with archival black ink. I cut the whole image out, leaving a small white border. I have loosely coloured face, ears, arms and legs with watercolour. I have then stamped again onto offcuts of my handmade papers. These have been cut out close to the stamped line. 

Then the pieces are adhered to the main image as shown. 

For good measure and added dimension, I have cut out and coloured a spare set of of ears! 

I have done exactly the same thing here with Santa from KS026

Once my papers were dry, I played about with them to see how I could use them as backgrounds or to paper-piece stamped images. The papers turned out very vivid and eye catching, so not quite right as subtle background layers in my opinion. (Not that I'm often subtle!!) Then I had a little epiphany with stencil PS532!! By drawing through the stencil shapes onto the papers, and using it as a template, I could create foreground features of trees instead! I was rather pleased with myself, as I believe the trees of this stencil work perfectly with the loose squares created with PS531. So this is what I did……

All cut out and ready to use

Using a small white gift bag, I stencilled complementary distress oxide ink through PS530, as well as onto a small die cut gift tag. I outlined the spots with a fine ink pen, as well as outlining the trees with a black pen. Topped the trees with a star drawn through the same stencil.

I repeated the same technique in a different colour way.

With the addition of a sentiment from KC024, some glitter glue and sari ribbon, here are two completed gift bags, with tags. This very simple technique can easily transfer to card making, and you will see at the end that I couldn't resist!! Those eagle eyed of you might also have seen a couple feature in Kate's live of the new release last week, as I have sent a couple to her as samples.

So I am far from finished, so please stick with me!

Now to add some of these wonderful stamped images to the mix. 

Here I have a larger craft paper gift bag and am arranging a bit of a snowy scene, using some of the trees and a paper pieced Santa from KC026.

I have stencilled (not so neatly!) Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in snowflake (FF15) through stencil PS530 with a sponge. 

I've added a bit of glitter glue to the edges of white card, cut out of cheap copy card, to look like snowy hills.

I've begun to glue things in place, giving Santa something to stand on with some paper scrap and vintage music paper.  I have attached him using one of my favourite new crafting toys, a wobbler!!

Here is another gift bag, using the same techniques, and the paper pieced mouse, featured above.

....And the beginnings of another ....

..... and another!

And so here are my gift bags with complimentary gift tags, using components of all Kate's fabulous new stamp sets and stencils. I have had great fun, especially featuring the stencilled trees on each of the bags; that was certainly my favourite element during this creative venture. 

Here are a few close up photos to enhance some of the finer details 

For example look at the wondrous colours in these infusions. 

Spot the googly eyes ......

Additional ears, colouring and glitter to add extra dimension, not to mention the 'wobbler' attachment .......

Some of the gift tags ......

Ways to adapt some of my ideas from this post are to make cards, as alluded to above. Here are some photos of some I have already made as promised!

Thank you so much for sticking with me. I do hope you find some inspiration here to get creative yourself, either with Kate's new designs, or with other items already in your stash. 

Keeeeep crafting .....

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