2020 #14 All Made Up with Tracy Scott stamps {by Lucy Edmondson}

 2020 Topic 14: Fused

We're always looking out for new ways to use our stamps, and pencil colouring on fabric is such a great idea. The softness of the blending and colours is really lovely and yet, the vibrancy of colour Lucy has attained makes it a real standout project.

~ Keren

Hi everyone, it's Lucy from Lucy's True Colours with you today, and I'd like to share with you a make up bag I have made using a fusion of the vibrancy of Inktense pencils with the softness of a wash of Fresco Finish chalk paints, finished off with a matching Brilliance ink shrink plastic charm.

I like to make make-up bags as they make great postable presents which can also be used to store paint brushes and small crafty items. I adore Tracy Scott's stamps and I feel they suit a very vibrant medium, and I also of course wanted something that would work well on fabric, so I thought I would try Inktense for the first time, as they are permanent when heat set. Here's a close up of the dangly shrink plastic charm.

I learnt a lot whilst making this project as I had used Inktense before and had struggled a bit with them, and had never used them on fabric. I'm not sure actually why I made life so difficult for myself! I found the secret was to use the Outliner which was part of my main set. Over the years I have added supplementary colours, as I am colour obsessed, which were in odd tins. I also found I had to try out the colours on a spare piece of card, as the end of the pencil isn't a very good indicator.

I started off by stamping Tracy's butterfly from ETS39 in Versafine Clair Nocturne onto the make up bag. I think a lot of us are in love with this stamp! I also stamped the flower from ETS17, masked it, and stamped the end of the leaf sprig from the butterfly around the edge of it. I heat set the Clair as it's a very wet ink but it gave a good image even on fabric. Both a good ink and a good stamp! I then went around everything with the Inktense Outliner with a sharpened point.

For the background, I used a wash of Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints in Limelight, Banana, South Pacific, Zesty Zing, Cherry Red, and Coral. The Outliner prevented these seeping into the design.

 I then used a dark grey inktense pencil to add my shading.

I then coloured the butterfly and flower in using a selection of brightly coloured Inktense pencils and a water brush, heatsetting with my heat tool at intervals as I went along. To add the white centres, I used the end of a paintbrush dipped in Snowflake to create dots. I also dry brushed a little Snowflake to create some white highlights.

I used Fresco Finish Snowflake through a stencil (Kim Dellow PS034) around the edge of the bag to frame it and to break up the background colours. I also used the Snowflake around the edge of the design as a highlight.

Now for the charm, which will hang from the zip. I used white shrink plastic and I wanted a medium that would adhere to the shrink, so I used Brilliance inks. For the leaves, I applied the ink with cut n dry foam in Pearlescent Ivy and Pearlescent Thyme straight onto the plastic and then stamped using Brilliance Graphite Black (or you could use Jet Black StazOn), punched a hole, then cut them out and shrunk them.

For the flower, I wanted the colour in specific places, so I stamped it first, then painted using a fine brush using the reinkers in Pearlescent Poppy and Pearlescent Orange, to perfectly match the flower on the bag. I then attached them to a mobile phone clip using jump rings.

Here's a close up of the final bag charm.

On reflecting on the finished project, I am torn between being thrilled with how it turned out, and frustrated with feeling, well it just looks like I stamped something and coloured it in! I seemed to spend ages highlighting, shading, and back again. I would have made life much easier for myself if I had used my usual Prismacolour pencils, but I was determined I wanted something really intense for Tracy's stamps, and I found the Inktense pencils quite hard to control, particularly when using the dark grey. I think I learned more about the technique by giving it a go and would definitely use Inktense on fabric again, as I think I got my wish of a truly vibrant project!

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2020 #14 Topic Introduction: Fused

  2020 Topic 14: Fused

Hello everyone! It's new topic day. For a while, the culinary world has been intrigued with fusion cuisine and here, we're going to look at fusion art, or at least, art inspired by some type of fusion. As usual, we'll wander down a myriad of avenues, stopping to pause at artistic examples along the way. 

Fused. What sort of techniques does it bring to mind? Fusing disparate things? Joining substances together. Permanently bringing things together. Whatever your definition, we have plenty to show you and the PaperArtsy blogger's and designer's 'cupboard' has more than a few ideas to kick us off.

One of the first people I thought of when musing about this topic was Seth Apter. He is known for his multi-layered art and using texture and paint to create wonderful pieces. Having his own range of embossing powder (which is not your usual embossing powder) results in some amazing art. This piece is a great example and fits in beautifully with our fused theme- note the fused powder on the circles and the fusing of colour, paper, ink and paint together.

 

Seth Apter

Dounia is known on the PaperArtsy blog for her love of experimenting. This post covered using PaperArtsy Rusting Powder and she tried a myriad of ways. I think my favourite was using Rusting Powder in a lemon juice solution sprayed on leaves and put through a die cutting machine. You have to read the blog to see what else she did.

PaperArtsy Blog

Taking the idea of fusing literally, I thought that combining a powdered texture and glue is a form of fusing? Anneke de Clerck did just that in this gorgeous piece.

PaperArtsy Blog

When searching around for examples, you often find hidden gems using PaperArtsy products. This artist used PaperArtsy paints and embossing powder to create this wonderfully grungy and textural piece.

Dee Adams

If you pop in 'fused art ' to most search engines, you'll be presented with a whole host of beautifully glass art. This is probably the most 'fused' of all. Glass art covers decorative items through to stained glass, and this set of windows in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral is magnificent. Thankfully they were spared during the awful fire last year, but it'll be a while before the cathedral is restored to its former glory.

Notre Dame Cathedral

Let's try a different tack- how about fusing things together that aren't natural partners? This artist, Alfred Basha has a talent for fusing his pen-drawn subjects together.

Alfred Basha

Solder is a fusible metal alloy used for making permanent bonds. You might not think of it in an artistic context, but there are plenty of artists using it to make quirky pieces. I thought this next piece blended fun and function.

The CraftsMan

You could argue that sewn items are fusing fabric together- but it's more joining than fusing. This piece however cleverly 'fuses' separate elements together with thread and just about squeezes into the definition!

Lisa Kokin

One fabric based discipline certainly doesn't need 'shoe-horning' into this topic is felting. Using wool roving, water and often soap or detergent can create mesmerising fabric. Renatos Veltinis is a textile artist who draws with wool. Her detailing is exceptional.

Renata Veltinis

Many of us will have messed around with melting plastic (or is that just me!). This next artist has fused plastic bags together and stamped on them. She's sewn the finished plastic together to create a bag.

Something Created Every Day

A little while back, using metal tape and fusing elements (sometimes with embossing powder) using slides or glass pieces was really on-trend. This is taking it a whole step further to make a piece of wearable art.

Art Studio 522

I thought that this next piece was clever; fusing two things that don't normally go together. I wonder if the artist removed anything that wasn't worth reading?!

Kirsty Whitlock

For a further blast from the past, anyone remember the fad for Angelina fibres? Hot fix type fibres that fuse together and you stamp or emboss the new 'fabric'. My attempts certainly never looked anything like this!

Alysn Midgelow-Marsden

How about some examples a little more akin to papercrafting? You can fuse pages by wetting, moulding, sewing or introducing interfacing that fuses two substrates together. I wonder which of these this artist has used?

D J Pettitt

This next piece isn't papercrafting at all, but I was hunting for cool ways to use fuses in papercrafting. Guess what? I couldn't really find any. These vintage fuses turned into handles were the best I could find. The internet needs fuse based art projects, so the gauntlet is well and truly thrown down for you all!

3 Sun Kissed Boys

Fusing paper is actually a thing and dates back to the ancient Korean art of Joomchi. One of its best known modernisers is Jiyoung Chung and she produces stunning pieces of artwork.

Jiyoung Chung

It wasn't easy to find a myriad of examples of fusing to show and inspire you all. I just know that the PaperArtsy bloggers will have some ingenious ideas so I can't wait to see how they interpret the topic too.

If you want to create along with us, please share on our social feeds so we can see what you get up to. The best places are Instagram @paperartsy or post in PaperArtsy People Group on Facebook. Make sure you tag us in your contributions, we love to see what you get up to in your creative world!

2020 #13 Circle Minibook with Lin Brown Stamps {by Dounia Large}

 2020 Topic 13: Lines

Dounia's gel plate has been in overdrive creating some incredibly intricate pages. She takes us through the process really clearly and the layers are really well defined and finished with some contrasting lines. Her explorations have resulted in such a lovely project and we'll have to ask her for her home-made gel plate recipe, which works so perfectly!
~ Keren

Hi everyone, it's Dounia with you today, and I'd like to share with you a project mixing gel printing and line art.

Smooth lines on clean paper are always striking but I also like them popping out of a busy, even messy background. I therefore used this opportunity to mess with my gel plate then play mix and match on the theme of circles.

There are hundreds of ways to use a gel plate but after some experimentation, I found I prefer to build layers on the plate and on the paper. Among my favorite tools for that are rubber stamps as they can provide both background patterns and focal images. Lin Brown has an amazing line of stamps designed just for that! For this project, I used ELB29 & ELB34. The leaves are gorgeous and my lazy self likes making found objects textures without having to find the objects!

I like to start by adding color to the clean plate using the stamps with Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic paints. I don't worry too much about placement or colours, I just try to be fair and distribute patterns evenly. Here I had a blue palette in mind but I began with accent colours Butternut, Autumn Fire and Brown Shed.

(Don't mind the color of my gel plate, it is homemade and has been melted down and recasted a few times). Over that first texture, I brayered a layer of my main colours: Sargasso, Paua Shell and Smurf. I then used the stamps to take off some the paint layers.

I always try to mix bolder stamps with finer ones for more texture. The holes in this paint layer will let the third one appear. As the previous paints are opaque, I can use a selection of darker blues and greens for this last step before the print: Hyde Park, Space Cadet and Midnight.

Here are the prints. They are quite busy but I like trying lots of techniques, colours and stamps on the same plate. It gives me an idea of what works together and what doesn't. For example here I think I used too much of the contrasting colours, which muddled the palette.

I then repeated the process with new combinations and had fun! I like to keep my selection of colours relatively tight. That way the prints will form a coherent ensemble and can easily be used in the same project. In the next round, I focused on a cream look, using Buff, Sand, and Haystack, with a brown contrasting final layer of Toffee, Mud Splat & Chocolate Pudding.

Again, the prints are quite busy but they are only backgrounds so that's fine! They can of course be used as such but for something with a bit more focus, I like to print a separate, contrasting layer on top.

Of course I want to still see the beautiful background I worked hard for, so after brayering the paint on the plate, I take off as much as I can with the stamps.

Here is the result on the blue backgrounds. (But not using the layer picture above because I was focused on the time sensitive printing and forgot to take pictures consistently, sorry!) A good contrast between the background and the top layer is crucial for the focal image(s) to be visible. I had some struggles with that... (that's why you won't see the cream and brown background again).

Finally, it is time for the actual lines! I think they really play well with prints as they can isolate and emphasise the focal stamps that would otherwise be lost in the texture. I tend to stick to simple designs that will work on a bumpy surface: winding lines, hatchcrosses, simple geometric shapes... (little circles count as lines, right?)

Also, if the background is not that interesting, the line can be the focal point. I used that trick in some of the following pages. As I was planning to bind them together in a book, I chose a common theme for my lines. I went with circles, because they are quite versatile and go well in square pages.

I am really pleased with these even if some are, in my opinion, more interesting than others. I had some difficulty choosing the paint colours for the lines as I had no real way to know or test how contrasting they would look. In the end, some choices were not quite right, too stark or too different a hue. I think that for medium to light backgrounds, black would be a safer bet!

Here is the finished book. For the covers, inside and outside, I used by-products of my printing session: Papers here I "cleaned" my brayer and my stamps with. That way I am sure they will color match!

I hope this encouraged you to try lines on a busy background. It doesn't have to be on gel prints (even if those are fun!). I know I have pattern papers or scraps from masterboards with hidden gems that could be "revealed" by some contrasting lines, and you probably do too! They can make an easy focus element on a card or an embellishment on scrapbooking project so don't hesitate to give it a go!

Stay safe and creative

Dounia x