How cool are these?

Yes. I know, it's shocking that I haven't posted, but I have about a million excuses. Mostly I have been away teaching nearly every weekend since I last posted. I had Easter at home - a chance to see the family for some quality time!!

ArtsyCrafts was a highlight for me (and Lin) in March. We had 2 fun filled weekends with fabulous peope who each made a wonderfully unique cabinet full of all sorts of goodies, as well as a few other smaller altered art projects. I really enjoy these events, we put so much time into developing the proejcts, sourcing new supplies to work with, and sharing the techniques with all of you is the best bit.

The details for the new weekends in October later this year will be live at the end of this week, if you get a chance to come its going to be great, the theme is "time" and we already have many of the projects well under way in the planning.

Back to my travels, I was in Paris twice at SMAC, and then a few weeks later Version Scrap. Both events were very busy and my school girl French is coming along nicely! I also had a wonderful day teaching at Imagine That PaperCrafts in Upminster (close to us) a couple of weeks back, and a busy weekend demoing for Lin at Ally Pally here in London and lots of other bits and bobs in between. It's all been a blur!

So during all that going on, we also designed loads of new products. We have papers as seen on this paper spread, and also on the house book. They are called Squiggly Papers (Spring and Sprout) and there are 28 A5 sized papers in a pack, 4 of each double sided design. So that is 7 different double sided papers.

I am really loving these!! We used a different printer this time, so they are are different paper stock to previous papers we have printed, these have a matte finish, perfect for stamping on, the weight is 140gsm, and they are made from totally recycled paper, and printed with vegetable based inks. Very eco friendly!

We also got a bit carried away in the stamps department. We have created 9 "Crowns and Castle" Stamps joining the Squiggly Ink Collection. These I am enjoying loads! They are so versatile.


Here is a mini book I have made with them. I think I managed to use nearly every image!

Those hinges are stamped onto copper metal, then wrapped around the book. I can see these will get a lot of use! I like to crumple the metal, then smooth it out with a paper stump as best i can before stamping on it. This gives a great textural effect for the hinge.

For the base of the book, I started out with some large tags, covered them with Spring and Sprout papers, and then started decorating the papers. I stamped often onto metal, sometimes copper, and sometimes Pearl metal which I like to colour with dye spray like re-inker in a mini mister, or glimmer mists.

The Arch here is the new Mini 22 stamped onto pearl metal - it makes a great frame for a niche in an altered book, or here I used it as a peek-through to the next page.

The triangle shaped border is actually a diamond stamped several times to make a border. I also used the same diamond to either make page turners, or page numbers. On page 2 you can see another stamped border, this time square, it's from the same plate, Geometric Plate 6, from the new collection of Metal Xtra stamps. This collection is designed to be used with metal in mind, but its not necessary. I will have to show you more of this collection in another post

The birds on page 2 are not stamped, they are actually on one of the papers - they are slightly larger than the stamp from Tops and Tails plate 2. The little flowers dotted around are a variety of flower stamps from the Tops and Tails, or Egg and Nog collections, and are stamped onto shrink plastic - these make cute textural embellishments.

Here are a couple of the castle turrets. You can stamp them in such a way that the knobbly wall joins together, and then you add in a turret of your choice. Then you have side-walls to lengthen the turret , and you can add arches, windows, blockwork etc. I will also show you how this works more clearly in another post.

I am quite partial to a turret with a copper roof though!!

Another metal xtra border down the centre of this page, and these birds are stamped, and water coloured with distress ink.

You can see a sneak of the playing card symbols through on the next page. That stamp is actually a square, but i stamped them on pearl metal, distressed with black paint, and cut each one out individually.

Now the last page is my favourite.....

I adore this shield. I stamped it in metal, and embossed from the back to puff out the jewels at the top of the crown, and the swirls. If you make a pattern in the blank background and rub some black paint into the grooves, it leaves a wonderful pattern. The fleur de lys is a nice addition to the centre.

Well I hope that gives you a taste of what you might do with these stamps.
Whether is a little princess, a man, or a boy who like dragons, these stamps are sure to appeal.

There are some more ideas coming in the July issue of Craft Stamper.

And I promise, now that I am home and things settle down a bit, I shall blog more. Pease leave your comments and let me know what you've been up to!

Leandra