ArtsyCrafts New Events coming soon

Hi bloggers I just have to let you know aout 2 more events that I am teaching with Linda Brown of LB Crafts.

Event 1: Gothic Arch, Sunday November 23rd, 9am-5pm.
At our first ArtsyCrafts weekend event in early September, this arch was so popular that we have had requests from many people who missed the weekend and even those who did attend, to teach this stunning class again. Here is your chance to come to a great one day masterclass

Class description: A Gothic Arch shaped wooden frame decorated with a variety of metal-working techniques, to surround a fabric-stamped interior with colour co-ordinated UTEE beads dangling from the base.

Class Content:
Metal techniques such as

• how to colour with paints, alcohol inks and glimmer mists,
  
• how to use metal with moulds, the cuttlebug and metalworking tools (like scootchy/ texture wheels, wire brushes and ball & cups to name a few),
  
• how to embellish metal with stamped and embossed images.

Stamping Techniques such as

• how to stamp onto fabric, and colour the images,
• how to embellish your stamped work with stitching & beads

UTEE Techniques such as

• how to make your own beads from UTEE (Ultra thick embossing enamel)
• how to make beads with extra pizazz (metal leaf, perfect pearls, wire)
• how to fix these beads onto your project or onto bracelets

How to book your place:
Click on this link, download the information sheet, complete the booking form and return it to LB Crafts ASAP.


Event 2: Altered Arts Weekend Event, March 21 & 22, 2009
Another great weekend opportunity to learn loads of stamping, metal working and altered arts techniques. For beginners and experienced alike, the most important thing to bring is a pair of non-stick scissors. We'll provide all the other supplies you need! Yes really!

Linda Brown (LB Crafts) and Leandra Franich (PaperArtsy) are both innovative, experienced teachers who will teach you many ideas with stamps, metal, paints, inks, glimmer mists and beyond! We will explore many techniques across a variety of projects and surfaces which will leave you excited and confident to incorporate these ideas on all kinds of other items you make in the future.

Comments from previous attendees:

"What a fantastic weekend, I don't know where the time went! Crammed full of technique fuelled projects and I have learned so much. Thank you Lin and Leandra I've had a blast" (L.G.)

" Leandra and Linda were so helpful and showed so many great techniques. Definitely value for money. Wouldn't hesitate to come again!" (M.T.)

"The whole weekend was a fantastic event. Well organised, great company, and we made the most gorgeous projects. Can't wait till the next one" (J.G.)

" Wonderful weekend, especially for a senior citizen and novice in the world of Arts who only came because a friend wanted company!" (G.M.)

"Fabulous weekend, it was evident huge planning and preparation had gone into the event, and this paid off in terms of great organisation and enjoyment for the attendees! It was brilliant to try so many techniques I had read about in magazines but have been too nervous to try on my own!" (A.H.)

Booking information: Please click on this link to download detailed information about this event, and instructions on how to secure you place.

Weekend at Ally Pally

This weekend I had a very enjoyable time demoing for LB Crafts at the Alexandra Palace Big Stamping and Scrapbooking show, North London. It only takes me about 40 mins to drive there from our East London location, so it is probably one of the closest shows to us.

Lin has lots of exciting things to demo on and with, so I was given abundant goodies such as glimmer mists and Glimmer Screens, Distress Inks, Ten Seconds Studio metal, the Cuttlebug, shrink plastic and lots of PaperArtsy stamps to play with too (of course).

In most of the samples I used the same basic background technique: smooch a pale distress ink DTP (usually Scattered Straw, and a secondary colour at the edges), then spray heavily with 2-3 glimmer mists. Dry.

Now you have a base on which you can use a Glimmer Screen. Position the screen (stencil) across a corner, and spray over it with a darker Glimmer mist. Blot with a paper towel, then remove the screen and dry.

Now add some background stamping. I love the new script mini MN44 it is very classic, and looks fab no matter what you stamp it on! I also used Squiggly Mini 15 (the bubbles), becasue with the bubbles you can punch through the holes, or colour the spots in with white gel pen, or add bling onto spot....or do all three!

On to this background I would either stamp and often emboss an image in black, or lay another image on top, like this green and blue sample.

I have noticed the sparkly mica in glimmer mist backgrounds often prevents dye ink images from stamping up as brightly as normal. One way to overcome this is to stamp your feature image(s) in black pigment ink, and then emboss with clear Embossing Powder. note the difference in black on this "partridge" sample. The script was stamped in archival Jet Black, then dried. "Percy" Partridge was stamped in Pitch Black Adirondack Pigment Ink, then embossed with Clear EP, as were the dragonflies in the other sample.

I also found that colouring these images with a wet paint brush dipped directly onto distress inks is a nice way to make the featured images pop on the background. Look at the dragonflies and Percy in some of these examples.

So what did I do to that red dragonfly? A few posts back I talked a bit about the texture technique i discovered using glossy accents and gold EP. So this time I put glossy accents on the red wings, sprinkled heavily with polysparkle EP, then heat set until the glossy accents fizzes, pops and crackles and finally sets hard. I rubbed over the texture with a tiny amount of Gold Acrylic Paint Dabber. The cool thing about this idea, is that if your ink is still wet from colouring the wings when you apply the glossy accents, the glossy accents will also become stained by the Distress Ink.

So the last phase of these creations is to add some embellishments. And this has quickly become my totally favourite part of the card because we now have so many flower stamps to choose from, and i keep finding more and more things to do with them.

1. Stamp flowers onto shrink plastic: clear, transcluscent, cream or canvas white. I sprayed the shrink with glimmer mists before shrinking, and added bling centres after shrinking!
2. Stamp flowers onto metal, either coloured metal, glimmer sprayed cream metal, alcohol inked metal or simply shiny metal! Use stazOn solvent ink as it dries fast, and won't smudge when you cut out the images.
3. Stamp flowers onto acetate.Again leave it clear, or colour with alcohol ink on the reverse side. try metallic pens on the reverse too.
4. Stamp flowers onto GrungeBoard. This flexible thick product becomes soft when heated, so its easy to shape the petals when the grunge is warm. They will hold their form as it cools. Grunge can be inked, painted, sprayed, so a family of grunge flowers is lots of fun!
5. Stamp flowers onto canvas. Ranger has a new product from Claudine Hellmuth. It's a sticky backed white canvas. You can ink, paint and spray with Glimmer Mist, and stamp flowers onto the canvas. Try sticking the stamped canvas onto scrapping paper. I love sticking the canvas onto metal, because then you can shape the leaves, you can also add texture to your metal-backed canvas flower by running it through a cuttlebug embossing folder! How cool is that!
6. Stamp flowers onto backgrounds you have specifically made to match the colours of your piece.

Now you have a cazillion flowers on all kinds of layers, and all kinds of sizes, you can have a ball layering them either onto each other, or using them individually.

All of these samples have been made using stamps from PaperArtsy's Squiggly Ink: Egg & Nog or Tops & Tails stamp plates. I hope this helps you with some ideas to get cracking on this year's Christmas Cards!

Enjoy your creativity, and try something new today!
Leandra

Weekend at The Craft Barn

Last weekend (13/14 Sept) I was at the Craft Barn along with 15 other demonstrators for their demo weekend. It was so busy, that i didn;t get a chance to look around at what everyone else was demoing, but it was heaps fof un to see so many familiar faces, and to meet many news ones too!

I was asked to demo our new Egg and Nog stamps from the Squiggly Ink Collection which we just released at the start of this month. There are 10 stamps in the collection, and like the rest of the squiggly family, the more you use them the more you get addicted to them!

First I want to show you a layout I did...yes that's right...I did a L/O!!! We often get asked for photos of Mr & Mrs PA for magazines, so mark put a sign up on the outside of PA World HQ, set up the camera and then we stood there and mostly made dumb faces at each other. This was about the only normal pic...and so I said I'd scrapbook it!

I used My Minds Eye Christmas Papers in blues/ browns. The gorgeous large scroll-style tree is from SIEN8, and is actually stamped onto cream metal which had been sprayed with glimmer mists. Then some xmas bling had to adorn the trees. All the flowers are from the new Egg and Nog stamps (Plates 2,4,7 & 10). I stamped onto the papers in black pigment ink (Ranger) and then embossed with clear EP, cut out and layered up. I adore these flowers, they work so well on grunge, metal, acetate, shrink plastic and also you should try them on Claudine Hellmuths sticky backed canvas, a new product from Ranger Industries. In fact, if you put metal on the back of the flowers you can form the shape really effectively like this sample.

So now to some of the samples I made while demoing this weekend.

In this one featuring flower stamps from Egg and Nog, and the Dragonfly from SITT2, you can see the flowers stamped onto acetate or shrink. I find with the shrink, you can spray it first with an ink diluted in a mini mister, or with a glimmer mist spray. These pale sprays will certainly intensify quite a lot as they shrink and dry, and while hot they can be moulded into nice shapes. I also find you can nestle 2 different sizes inside each other, then let them cool. Bling looks nice in the centres too. Glossy accents will secure bling, and shrink to the card.

While we're on the topic of Dragonflies for a minute, this one turned out quit nice and bright too. The background was brayered Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink and then overstamped with SM08 in the same colour. The flower from SIEN4 was stamped in Aged Mahogany. This was also stamped onto a scrap, applied as a mask, and Aged Mahogany was softly smooched around the edges to make the flower pop gently. Next the dragonfly from SITT3 was stamped in Pitch Black pigment ink, and embossed in clear EP to make it pop. The small dots on the wings were random;ly highlighted by the Inkssentials White Gel Pen (Ranger Industries). Paper Flowers and buttons from Making Memories embellish the edges of the card.

The Birds on a wire is a delightful stamps from SITT2. On this sample the background was Distress Inks smooched DTP onto the card (Scattered Straw, Spiced Marmalade). Then glimmer mists were sprayed over the top and dried. A tree mask (Tattered Angels), was positioned to the right, then Glimmer Mists darker than the background were sprayed over the mask. Blot, then lift the mask and dry. Now stamp the birds in black, dry, and colour with Distress Inks and a paintbrush dipped into water. The door is a bit like a Narnia door into another world (I stamped small trees behind it) and the door in the lower part of the house from SILK1. It was stamped onto copper metal. Again, you can see the flowers have been stamped onto shrink plastic. Too cute!








Now for some Christmas samples. A few of these have elements as accents that have been stamped onto copper metal and added to the cards. This is a great way to introduce a contrasting texture into a card , layout etc.

Thanks for dropping by, This coming weekend I'll be demoing at Ally Pally on the LB Crafts Booth, so come by and say Hi if you're going to be able to make it to the show in London. It's on both Saturday and Sunday, and is one of my favourite shows on the UK calendar.

ArtsyCrafts Weekend

It was only 3 weeks ago, but I must tell you about what a fantastic weekend event we jointly organised with Linda and Mark from LB Crafts. Called ArtsyCrafts, we had 40 enthusiastic women come and learn loads of ideas and techniques with all kinds of products. We have anohter planned for early 2009, so if you want to know about that stayed tunded to this blog!


We had 9 sessions planned for the weekend, and made some very stunning projects if I say so myself! I would have loved to be a participant at this event! Linda and I had so much fun designing these projects together, so it was cool that each project had in put from us both.

This is the 'birdcage' inspired by a project Sue Roddis taught at Katy's Corner Stamp Camp earlier in the year. Sue did many more layers to the sides of her box, and had a different feature on the top, but the core of this idea was certainly inspired by her.

You might just be able to see the colourful birds from Tops and Tails plate 2 stamped and coloured on a tall strip of acetate insdie the box. the acetate was formed into a circle so the birds looked as if they were sitting on a piece of twig inside the 'cage'. That sits on a metal plate secured in the base of the box, and metal- stamped windows also give the box good strength. The little house on the top is a new squiggly mini (#18), I'm loving that stamp a lot these days!

Another fun class was the metallic niche. This cute little slide mailer was stamped and embellished. The cover was texturised with a technique developed by linds for which you must own a 'gloopy stick' - one of those terms coined by me.......a 'Leandra-ism'. Those of you who know me will understand all about my weird words for items that have no name. Anyway, once armed with a gloopy stick, some paint and embossing pwder you can make this background.

Inside we decorated with SILK plate 1 (shrunk of course) ...one person's house shrunk in a really wonky manner and we loved it! Reminded us of the crooked man in his little crooked house!

The central piece was the 'Gothic Arch'. Using metal, we made pieces to cover the Arch-shaped frame. Each piece was a different technique incoprorting metal moulds, stamping, the cute little cuttlebug, alcohol inks, paints and more. For those ladies for whom metal working was a new experience they were really thrown into the deep end and they loved it, and totally got into it. It was so exciting to see people take our ideas, and then use the technique but doing it in their own preference of colour, pattern and layouts. The one on the left her is my sample distressed with black paint, and touches of blue alcohol ink.

Everyone was so pleased with their frame as it took shape, and no 2 frames were the same. Mark got some fantastic photos of this class in progress. Some of which are featured here. Some people did less colour, and others more, but they all looked totally stunning!

The finishing touch to the frame was a row of UTEE beads to dangle across the bottom. A lot of people thought these were bought beads, so when they realised they were going to make their own fro this frame they were amazed! So we each made our own blobbie-balls to dingle from the frame. Brilliant! Instuctions for making these beads will be in the next issue of Craft Stamper magazine (UK) out in shops the first week of next month.

We also made a great Xmas canvas, but a slightly different version of that will be a project in a future Craft Stamper Magazine, so I'll keep that one under wraps for now.

We are already planning the next event sceduled for March 2009, so start saving, you won't be disappointed! We'll be making an announcement in the next few weeks with all the nitty gritty details.