New PaperArtsy {2013} Products

So here we are into the last of our New for 2013 Product posts. And there is quite a lot to tell you with even more New Products! This is always the time of year when UK/ EU and Global Craft product manufacturers release all their new items to the shops they supply - which is why we are letting you know about everything that is new. THen you can ask you local stamp shop to get our products in stock!

It's been an exciting week, and today we are actually at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham to launch all these products to the shops we supply at the 'Stitches' Trade show.

In addition to all the new stamps and dies from Lin Brown, stamps from Sara Nauman and the wonderful additions to the stunning Jo Firth-Young Collection, we also have:

New Lynne Perrella Stamps

Think about steam-punked feminine Geisha. This is the tone of what is coming very soon from Lynne. 

When I first started stamping about 20 odd years ago, Lynne's Acey Deucy line of stamps were my absolute favourites, and still are. The iconic style of that collection shines through in all her designs she has created for us.

We are absolutely thrilled that we are entering another year with Lynne designing for PaperArtsy. She has a beautiful way of designing collage style stamps, and her designs truly stand out from the crowd.

As soon as these are available to show you we will!

New Paint colours

Fresco Chalk Acrylic paints, launched this time 2 years ago have been a big hit with Crafters. The large 50 ml size bottle, and the affordable £3.95 price tag, with the matte, chalky finish, and the interesting mix of high and low coverage makes them the most versatile and easy to use paint on the market and arguable the best value. We are extending this stuning paint collection to a total of 52 colours, 6 glazes and 2 metallics.

Some of the sets have been re-shuffled, so we now have a more extensive light/ medium/ dark/ super-dark paint chart. We still have plans for more colours, but for now the additions are explained below

Here is a chart showing how the new colours fit in with the existing ones.  First to market will be the paints with a star beside them. These are completely new colours. You can get a sense of what they will be if you are familiar with the existing paints, and via the colour charts below.

The shades that are underlined in the chart are getting very minor tweaks to fit into their families a bit better. These will not be released immediately, but, as existing stock runs low, the replacements will gradually be introduced over the coming months. Look at the colour charts for an indication of the new colour with the old one underneath. Most are a little bit darker than they are right now. Mushroom is less pink, and more...well ....more Mushroom!

Glaze samples are not on the charts, the 2 new ones are matte glaze, a sealant, and adhesive, and we have a Pearl Glaze, which enables you to make other paints pearlescent, whether mixed in, or via a thin coat on top - your choice.

Discontinued colours are: Autumn Fire, Pea Coat, and Butternut. Ironically, those 3 shades all work really well together, it's always sad to cease any colour. But at the moment, they either don't fit the master-plan, are not overly popular, had other colours similar enough to what they offer or perhaps there remains ways to re-create that shade within the palette.

If you have not experienced these paints yet, here is an extensive list of Fresco Chalk Acrylic characteristics:

• High coverage on all surfaces, wood, metal, glass, paper, card, chipboard, Crackly Tissue, Crunchy waxed paper, Metal Card, Smoothy stamping card, Metal charms, plastics, ceramics, fabric...you get the idea...they can be used on any surface
• Perfect for indoor and outdoor use...so they are hardy and UV stable!
• Water- based acrylic means clean up in water is easy.
• Extremely matte, chalk finish is perfect to stamp over with all kinds of inks, pigment, dye , and yes, as they are chalk, even distress inks can be used over these paints as they happily sink into the 'tooth' of the chalk.
• A variety of opaque, semi opaque and translucent colours allows you to enjoy the features that high, medium and low coverage paints offer. eg high coverage means one coat is all that is necessary, or use the low coverage for building depth, shading, or blending both wet in wet or wet on dry and for colour mixing.
• No need for undercoat, gesso or primers, use direct onto any surface.
• Bang-on-trend, appealing colours specifically to designed to work together harmoniously
• Frescos are suitable for altered art, mixed media, journaling, interior design, fine art, scrap booking, card making, textiles and general craft / mixed media projects.
• Ideal and easy to write directly onto for journaling or add additional colour and detail with a huge variety of colour options: pens, pencils, crayons, water soluble colours, dye sprays, mica sprays, inks etc
• Can be diluted with glazes or water and the colour pigmentation maintains its integrity.
• Permanent once dry on all surfaces and can be mixed with textile medium for permanence on fabric for washable items.
• Fast drying and durable
• Fully Compatible partner for use with Grunge Paste, either to mix wet in wet, or to use on top. 
• SRP £3.95

Grunge Paste
I was going back through pictures from ArtsyCrafts the other day, and found pictures dating back to 2009 when we were teaching people how to stamp into texture paste, slopping it around metal, heating it and so on. That's almost 5 years of using this type of product! So we figured it's about time we had our own! Not one to settle for just any old stuff, we wanted one that does all kids of awesome things, at the right price!! SRP£6.00

So how does this stuff work? Well, it's amazing. Stir it up, and it gets looser...ohhh this is handy, you can drip and slop it on. Its quite dense, so it's easy to scrape over a stencil. If it seeps under the stencil (as these things tend to on occasion), you can scrape excess away easily - love that feature! Scrap it on thick or thin the choice is yours. Spritz your stamp with water and stamp into it for sharp detail. Heat it and it will expand to give you a fuller texture.

Apply and spritz to smooth the surface, then heat evenly, and look at how the top layer dries to create a faux crack effect - we love that too! And, you can carve into it, so take a pokey tool and get scratching. That is very cool.

Depending on how you apply it you can create a peaky-spiky textured effect or smooth as you like. For more height, just add a dash of puff paint.

Tint it with paint, there is not a huge white base to this, so most paints will tint the colour of the product relatively easily. It is fully compatible with Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints, glazes and metallics, so, painting over the top of it is a doddle with Frescos.


PaperArtsy Minis
The PaperArtsy minis are small stamps (approximately credit card size) pre trimmed to EZ mount foam. There is a huge variety of images: backgrounds, faces, elements, numbers scripts etc. Brand new to this collection are the following stamps that work well with themes represented already in our Hot Picks ,  Ink and the Dog, and Vintage Collections.

Box Canvases
Recently available online, these canvases are solid construction, extra deep box canvases, fantastic to work on, as seen in the video below.

A project from Leandra
Leandra is teaching a class at the Stitches Tradeshow over the next few days using the stamps featured in the last 3 days of blog posts. This was intended to be book covers, but as the class is limited in time just one of these will make a nice project on its own.

For this project you will need:

• A selection of JOFY flower stamps, and Eclectica³ stamps from Lin and Sara. 
• Fresco paints: Mermaid, Guacamole, Irish Cream, Nougat, Pumpkin Soup, Hey Pesto, Smoked Paprika
• Archival Jet Black Ink
• Flexi Acrylic Blocks
• Fine Paintbrush and Cut n Dry Foam

Step 1: Base Coat

Put very tiny spots of 2 light paints: Guacamole and Mermaid. Use the black side of your cut n dry foam to spread it down over the grey board in vertical or horizontal mannered they will blend into a blue-green where they meet. Add Irish cream in the same way. Until you have a blended background. It will dry immediately.

Step 2: Carved Stamps

You need one tall flower, and a few leaves around the edges. Its best to keep the leaves to the sides and top.

Apply mermaid paint to the white side of your cut n dry foam, and massage it in with a coffee stick. 'Ink' up the stamp with the paint, and stamp the background, again using the same colours.

Step 3: Script

Stamp over everything, except the main solid flower in 2 types of background script type stamps. Use again the same 3 colours of light paint again (mermaid, Irish Cream, Guacamole).

Step 4: Knock it Back

To make the base layer more of a softer background, we need to knock it back. Lightly spritz all over with water until just damp.

Apply a thin line of nougat across on end of the black side of the cut and dry foam. Drag it down through the water, and spread about. It will dry with the background showing through more than you expect. Repeat if background is still too dominant.

 

Step 5: Stamping in Black

(A) across the bottom: stamp flowers and grasses in archival jet black ink onto the dry board.

(B)  Stamp Sara's journaling words in black in the gaps at the top and around the flowers.

Step 6: detail colouring

Use pumpkin soup initially on some of the flower heads, then apply Smoked Paprika to build depth. For the grass pumpkin soup is ideal. For all colouring in, you want to make sure you are using translucent, low coverage paints. The high coverage opaques will knock back the dark stamped lines, and ideally we want to keep them as dark and sharp as possible. 

Availability

As we want to focus on getting these products out to the shops we supply all over the world, these products will be available wholesale only at this point until the start of March. Some of them will be available at the Stevenage show this time next week, and Lin will be with me demoing at that event. Also, next weekend Jo will be teaching with her stamps at the Craft Barn. The soonest we anticipate to add these to our retail site will be early March, but watch the site, we may sneak things on earlier!