NEW PaperArtsy {2013} Products: Lin Brown Eclectica³ Guest Stamp Designs by

It's a big warm welcome to new stamps designer for PaperArtsy: Lin Brown!

This is an enormous pleasure, and very exciting, to bring some fabulous new products to you designed by my very good friend, crafting partner-in-crime, colleague and frequent mentor, Lin Brown. Lin and I like nothing more than to get our teeth into new ideas, products and dream up techniques for it all. 

Lin has created for a series of hand-carved stamp designs with matching dies. These fall under our new Eclectica³ Collection, which will, in the coming year, feature additional stamps from Several New Designers that we think make an interesting addition to the PaperArtsy brand.

The 'Lin Brown' Story 
Many of you follow Lin via her blog, facebook or twitter. She has had an immense impact on the Craft Sector in the UK over many years. (OMG I make her sound ancient in years ...she's gonna kill me! LOL) She set up (many moons ago - oops) one of the UK's first ever Craft Shops, and soon established an amazing reputation for new products, innovative classes with her own, distinctive, inimitable finesse embedded in everything she does. 

I enjoyed enormously working closely with Lin in recent years to teach ArtsyCrafts, our weekend workshop retreats from 2007 to 2012. And even though Lin 'retired' (I put that in inverted commas cos, we all know she isn't really old enough to retire) from her shop at the end of 2011, and we ceased to offer ArtsyCrafts events soon after, Lin is still an avid blogger, and spends nearly all her days crafting for pleasure. Clearly she is now living the dream, and is as passionate as ever to learn new things, and she still teaches classes every month. I am so excited to see what she does with these new stamps in the coming months, it will be beautiful!

Lin says...
...My inspirations for these stamps came from...
Following my retirement from running my own shop, with a bit more time on my hands, I returned to college and enrolled on a City and Guilds course in Creative Textiles. I loved every single minute of the course and my new found skills of hand carving stamps which I used at college to print fabric, are the inspiration behind my new collection of stamps.

...I think people will use these stamps...
My new found love of textiles will be at the forefront of my mind when using these new stamps but they are so versatile. I can envisage them being used a lot for Art Journaling, they would also be great for use with the new Gelli Plates that seem to be very popular at the moment. I think they will also be very useful for card makers for quick and easy cards as well as appealing to those who love to layer paint and images for a more in depth projects.

...People can find me...
Throughout my creative career, one of my passions has been to teach classes and I am lucky enough to still be doing this. My classes tend to be based on all my favourite products and are heavily focused on techniques. Details of my latest classes can be found at www.lbcrafts.com 

If anyone would like to follow what I am up to, my blog, www.yoursartfully.blogspot.com is where I post information about where I am demoing, teaching or just simply what I am creating. I can also be found tweeting using @yoursartfully as as my Twitter handle.

...Right now, my crafting passion is... 

So what is my passion now, compared to say five or ten years ago? I can honestly say that my love for rubber stamps and paint will never wain, I spent quite a few years working with metal, stamping on it, embossing it, painting it and incorporating it into nearly every project I made. Now I intend to use my love of stamps, paint, ink and metal  in a different way.  My interest in textiles is growing by the day and to be able to use all the things I love in conjunction with fabric is a whole new adventure for me.

Eclectica³ Stamps from Lin Brown
So lets show you the stamps! Lin has also designed a series of dies to co-ordinate, and these will be available in March. All stamps are shipping now to stamp stores around the world. Please, tell your local stamp store about these new stamps, they may not yet know about the goodness that PaperArtsy has to offer!

This bold style is fantastic for use onto fabric, card, wood or chip board with our Fresco Chalk Acrylic paints, but of course you can build interesting layers with inks too. We think these stamps are going to have lots of different applications.

I was talking to Lin last week, and she commented how much easier these are to stamp than the original carved designs; the softness of rubber backed to EZ mount foam makes a significant difference on the impression you get. Yay for that!

 ELB01 matching dies: the flower head (top right), and the large leaf in the centre

 ELB02 Matching dies:Leaf sprig, Butterfly Outline, and Butterfly Torso/ Small Leaf

 ELB03 Matching Dies: Large Tulip - 3 part layered set of dies

Eclectica³ Dies from Lin Brown
Each stamp set has some dies to match as described above under each stamp set. We suggest you die cut the shape first, then paint, and lastly stamp the image on top. You can stamp them with the coordinating image, or use other stamps (script etc) to create a different style. We like the idea of stamping script on the back of the large tulip, so a hint of the reverse of the petal is seen with different detail on the back side. Dies will follow soon!


A Project from Lin herself ...........

Base Tag Preparation
Take 2 tags, and cut a 3cm strip from the bottom of one of them. Cover both with the Tim's Tissue Wrap using Multi Medium. Allow to dry.
 
Water down some Pumpkin Soup and Brown Shed Fresco Finish Acrylic Paint and wash over the Tissue Wrap.

If you can no longer see the text on the tissue, the paint is too thick, this can quickly be removed with a baby wipe if need be.

Using a small piece of Cut'n'Dry foam, apply an even layer of Snowflake paint to the leafy sprig from ELB01 and print randomly over the tag and strip. Dry with heat gun.

Paint another layer of the watery Pumpkin Soup and Brown Shed over the top of the white leaves, blending the colours. This will tint the Snowflake paint and intensify the colour of the background at the same time. 

Word Details
Stamp "Artful Blooms" using Jet Black Archival ink on the strip of card and "The Beauty of a Garden" down the side of the large tag. Sponge a small amount of the black ink around the edges of the tag, strip and flower stem. (see picture top for placement)
 Cut a piece of smoothly cardstock big enough to stamp the flower stem from ELB03. Water down some Beach Hut Fresco and tint the card with it. Dry.
 

Sponge an even layer of Hey Pesto over all of the stem stamp and then carefully add some shading to the edges of the leaves and stem with a small amount of Holly Fresco. I find this task easier if I use a small piece of Cut'n'Dry foam, about a 2cm square should do the trick nicely.

Print the image on the Smoothy card and carefully cut out when dry. I like to leave a narrow border around the stem to give a highlight of colour the same as the colour peeking through the leaves, it makes the image look more balanced. (NB in the picture above, the beach hut paint under the leaf is barely visible in this particular photo)

Using the watered down Beach Hut paint, brush a wash over the cotton fabric which should be large enough for a front and back of the large tulip head on ELB03. Allow to dry or dry with heat gun.

Preparing to stamp on Fabric
I have discovered that when I am stamping a solid image onto fabric, I much prefer to use one of the opaque paints. However, I wanted to use both Beach Hut and South Pacific which are both translucent. To solve this issue, I mixed a small amount of Mermaid into the Beach Hut and a small amount of Little Black Dress into South Pacific and this rectified my issue. 

Using Cut'n'Dry foam, apply a layer of Beach Hut/ Mermaid mix over the whole stamp and add the darker, South Pacific/ Little Black Dress around the edges and then print on the cotton fabric. When stamping on fabric, it feels necessary to press harder on the stamp in order to get a good image, but this is not necessary, all it will achieve is a blurred image. The secret to successfully stamping on fabric is to simply leave the stamp sitting on the fabric slightly longer than you would normally and the fabric will suck the paint or ink from the surface of the stamp.

When the tulip is dry, sandwich a piece of wadding between the tulip and the backing piece of cotton. Use pins to hold it in place while you stitch around the edges of the image. 
Add a few seed beads to the flower for added decoration and then trim away excess fabric, leaving a small border. You may find that the fabric frays a little bit, but I think this adds to the charm. If you don't want any fraying at all, you might like to back the fabric with some kind of interfacing product but be aware this will make it harder to stitch through all the layers of fabric.

Assembly
Hole punch and secure eyelets to the bottom of the tag and top of the strip and tie these together with some waxed lined, string or ribbon. I used Matt Medium to adhere the tulip and stem to my tag, some of my ribbon embellishments are stapled on and the lace at the bottom of the project is attached with brads. Final step, mount on to a piece of black card, I chose to mount mine with 3D foam tape so that the edges of the card didn't lift where the brads and eyelets are.

More with these stamps from our Designers....

Last week we asked our Designers to create some samples using Lin's new Eclectica³ collection, despite the short notice, they have all been busy bees, and here is what a few did with Lin's stamps. Please, go to their respective blogs to see the full nitty gritty of what they did and how.

Joanne Wardle
Amazing at creating super quick, stylish yet beautifully minimalist cards, here Joanne has a simple, restricted ink colour palette, with her trademark masked blocks. Ideal for that gift card you need in a flash. This is just a couple of several, go check her blog for more!

Helen Chilton

Frescos paints and all things bright are on Helen's desk for this one - she's got her colours out! Go and check out what she's done over at her blog.

Sue Carrington
Blue and orange is always a striking combination, and Sue has used it to great effect, but of course check out her blog for the low down and the real detail of all the beautiful samples she has created!

Don't forget to drop by Lin's blog to see more of what she has been up to with her own stamps!! She has been literally bursting at the seams to say something to you all. i know she's going to have an awesome time on her blog and in upcoming classes with these!


See you same time tomorrow....we have another new designer to announce! Eeeeek!