Liz Borer {Special 10th Birthday Post} ....

Tonight we have a very special guest in the form of Liz Borer. Liz has risen to fame since winning the 2012 Craft Stamper of the Year accolade, and now in 2013 we get to see regular contributions from her in Craft Stamper magazine.

However, I spied Liz's talent many years ago. She was a regular attendee at our ArtsyCrafts weekend retreats right from the start when we started way back when, and was also a long time regular in Lin Brown's classes before and during that period. Liz always manages to turn any project we taught into her own, and has a distinct style that is femimine, very delicate, huge attention to detail, and well designed, and generally involves a perfect touch of blue or purple somewhere !

Liz has a long history of working with paints, and you may not realise, but it was she that created the gorgeous blue-green shade that was a mix of Guacamole and Sky with a touch of South Pacific. Originally it was called (by Lin and I) 'Liz's blue', but of course, you all now know it as one of our most popular newer shades, Bora Bora (see what we did there). So I think of Liz every day when picking that shade of paint for orders! LOL

I am utterly thrilled she agreed to contribute a Birthday Post for us this month! And here she is:

Hi there everyone, I’m Elizabeth and this is my first PaperArtsy Blog so I’m very excited . I’m particularly excited because this is celebrating PaperArtsy’s tenth  birthday, so I have made something special.

I’m never quite sure where my projects are going to end up, so I just start with something from my stash and go from there. This time I picked up a house shaped frame with a bird shape cut out of it (its actually a place for an apple to be skewered onto to hang in the garden). But I couldn’t work out what to do with the cut out section, so I simply covered it with grey board on each side and went from there ! 

It has occurred to me that if you don’t have something similar you could make the entire item out of grey board (Stick 2 or 3 pieces of board together and cut the house out – it’s 7 inches tall by 5 1/2  inches wide and the roof is 1 1/3 inches wide by 4 ¾ inches from the peak).

I then made a drawer unit for the base  - it’s size is 8 inches wide by 1 3/4 inches tall and 2 inches deep.

Then I created two drawers to fit into the base. grey board is easily secured together with PVA glue, and makes a sturdy working surface.

To attach the house to the base I needed to create a slot. So I stuck two pieces of board together to make a double deep piece of grey board, and then cut it to fit on the top of the base (keep the offcut).

I then measured the width (front to back) of the base of the wooden house and cut this off the board. I then cut the remaining piece in half and stuck the two pieces onto either side of the base leaving a gap in the middle that the house would perfectly fit in.

The house can then be stuck firmly into this slot  and pieces of the off-cut  from before can be used to fill the gaps at each end.

Any small gaps can be filled with a filler (to my shame I used a tiny bit of grunge paste because it was handy). { Leandra says: I'd call that resourceful ! }

Next comes the fun bit . Paint everything with Nougat Fresco Finish Paint and allow it to dry.

Take a piece of heavy-weight card and paint this with Nougat as well (I found it needed 2 coats to look really solid). When the paint is really dry stick strips of magi-tape or masking tape about ½ inch apart to create stripes. Using Versacolor Ash Rose ink colour the gaps between the tape. A pigment ink such as this will colour the Nougat paint nicely, but you could use a permanent dye ink too. Remove the tape carefully.

            
I used the Flourish from HP1005 stamp with Versacolor Sky Grey ink to complete the background paper which now looks like wallpaper. The pattern repeat works really well on this flourish. 

{Leandra says: the new mini MN96 might also work really well for this technique}

Cut this  to size and attach it to the front of the house, the fronts of the drawers and the sides of the base.

I lined the drawers with paper from the Thorndon Hall paper from PaperArtsy (now no longer in print) and decided to cover the roof and the top of the base unit with it as well. However I felt it was too brightly coloured for the roof so I put the paper through an embossing folder to give it texture and then rubbed Treasure Gold onto it to catch the raised areas.

This is where things got interesting – First I tried Onyxite but that was too dark – so then I tried adding some Classic Gold, I didn’t like that so finally I tried some Aquamarine. This achieved the effect I wanted !

The picture shows what happened (from left to right)

Now for more fun – the embellishments. First I stamped the Bustier from HP1213 twice, onto a piece of card painted with Nougat, then I used Perfect Medium and embossed it using Black embossing powder. You could also stamp the image in Graphite Black Brilliance pigment ink and emboss in clear fine detail powder for a similar effect.

I then die cut a mannequin in black card using Tim Holtz Alterations Sewing Room die. I embossed this with black embossing powder and cut off the top and bottom to create a stand for the Bustier. I cut the top off one of the stamped images so that I could stick one on top of the other  (like decoupage) to create some dimension. Then I attached the die cut pieces. In the picture I have also tried the same with copper embossing powder but in the end I felt the copper was not the right colour.
 



I painted some wooden cotton reels with Nougat and rubbed a little Aquamarine Treasure gold onto the edges. Again using some card painted with Nougat I stamped the line of buttons from HP1213 using Versacolor Grape ink and cut some out to stick to the tops of the cotton reels .  I wrapped different ribbons and thread onto the reels.
 

More embellishments – firstly a little paper mache basket painted with  Nougat . I stamped a piece of tissue paper with Grape ink using PA Mini 20 and stuck it to the basket ( I decided not to use this but you may prefer it as seen in the picture below). I painted a wooden heart and wooden plaque from my stash with Nougat and stamped and embossed with black powder using PA Mini 66 on the plaque and ‘sewing room'  from HP1213 on the heart.  Aquamarine Treasure gold was tickled onto the edges.
 

As I said, I didn’t use the basket as it was – instead I covered it with a scrap of stripy paper to match the wallpaper background and then covered the handle with lace.
 

Lastly I stamped and embossed with gold embossing powder a little plaque from HP1214 onto white card (twice) and stuck buttons onto them. I found a piece of ribbon marked like a tape measure and coloured it with the ash pink ink and stuck it on a coffee stirrer (!) to make it stiff.

I also stamped ‘egg eyed sharps' and ‘stitch’ from HP1212 and stamped (and embossed with gold powder on black card) the scissors from HP1213, which were cut out so they could go into the basket . I stuck a few pins into the little card. You can see the arrangement coming together below in the close up pictures.

Finally  all the embellishments were stuck onto the house unit  including some bottles filled with tiny beads , a pair of scissors with Treasure gold on them and some folded up pieces of fabric in the basket and a few extra buttons dotted about.
  

I really hope you enjoyed the project. It's feminine, but if you are not a 'pink' person, you could easily take the concept and decorate in a completely different colour way or style. I really like how the PaperArtsy haberdashery stamps are such a great fit for this.

 Leandra says: Well this is quite fitting. You probably don't realise it Liz, but stitchery was always my first craft of choice and I took to it like a duck to water. I quickly and easily sewed my way through skirts, nightshirts, aprons and even smocked baby gowns and embroidered from age 11-15 at school. I then went on to sew most of my clothes through university, and as a young Mum learned how to quilt (by hand and sewn), make teddy bears, and then progressed onto curtains and such. If I hadn't come across paper crafts, I think I would certainly be a mixed media fabric mucker-abouter by now. SO as a birthday project, for me this is certainly where my roots are. Thanks for the wonderful trip down memory lane!

Gillian says: Great to have you join in the celebrations Liz:) Fantastic project full of detail, adore dress forms so for me this is a winner.

Wow, what a great project! Now its your turn. If you were inspired by Liz, and want to try out one of the many ideas she has presented to us today, then make something, and share it with us via inlinkz on this post here. You will go into 2 draws to win a set of A5 PaperArtsy stamps of your choice. Good luck!