{3UP} Night 3: PaperArtsy Chatsworth 12x12 Papers

Hi Everyone, it's Leandra here for the third night of this semester's 3UP challenge. 

3 volunteers were selected to be featured each evening this week on the blog. This is a perfect opportunity for us to feature the work of you, our blog, twitter and face-book followers, and for you to show us your personal style with our newest products.

Tonight's #3UP volunteers are working with our new Chatsworth 12x12 Papers released in February. These papers have been a big hit so far this year; supplies are dwindling fast. Again we have used our favourite local printer, and the paper is the same smoothy cardstock that copes brilliantly with ink, paint, and everything else we throw at it. The papers weigh 240gsm, a really useful weight, not to thick, not too thin. In a pack you get 4 each of the 6 double sided designs, so 24 sheets in total. This means you can actually use them, not JUST stroke them!

FIRST UP: It's Jacqui with a fabulous mini book

So much wonderful detail has gone into Jacqui's project, and we can only show you a small portion, but if you go to her blog here, you can see more detail of the other pages. She also has a link there to a YouTube video she made of the book.

Name: Jacqui Chimes
Blog: jacquesjunque.blogspot.com
Twitter: @jacquichimes

Jacqui Says: I’m Jacqui Chimes in real life and have been ‘making things’ as far back as I can remember (a long time!). Stamping, Mixed Media, Papercrafting and Scrapping (in the form of mini albums) have been my main love for about 15 years. My style generally is quite ‘neat and ordered’ and not too ‘frilly’. I’m currently looking for a day job to fund my addiction to all things ‘art and crafty’ after recently giving up a too stressful career as an occupational therapist.

I received the beautiful Chatsworth papers...

...from PaperArtsy together with stamp set HP1009.

The papers are gorgeous – double sided and a real heavyweight good quality – they are great value. The box-packaging that my papers arrived in looked interesting too – lots of lovely corrugated card.

The papers make a lovely substrate for mixed media pieces but I wanted to showcase them, so I set about constructing a ‘mini album’ using the cardboard packaging which I cut to size for the cover. This was covered in black paper and then the Chatsworth papers. 

I then made the mixed media pieces for the front cover. I used a piece of 3” x 7” matboard. Fresco paints in Nougat, Pumpkin Soup, Vintage Lace, Hey Pesto, Blood Orange and Toad Hall were used to colour it to tone in with the  papers. I used a baby wipe to apply and remove colour and just kept blending and drying the layers. Once the colours looked good I added PaperArtsy Grunge Paste through a flower stencil in a couple of places. The flowers from HP1009 were stamped using Jet Black Archival ink.

Further layers of paint were added over the Grunge Paste and then a little subtle stamping using Coffee Archival ink and stamps from PaperArtsy set ESN03. Aquamarine Treasure Gold was added to the grunge paste areas. Then I re-stamped the flowers from HP1009 onto various red papers that were in my scrap box and also onto some book paper for contrasting accents. These were cut out to paper piece the flower stamp and to add extra flowers to the front of the album as shown. Red complements the Chatsworth papers beautifully. The title was stamped directly onto a piece of the Chatsworth collection and die cut with a Spellbinders labels die. I layered this up onto several pieces of black card to give it strength. All I had to do then was construct my inner pages and decorate them with papers from the collection.

If you want to see more of the pages and how the interactive elements work check out my Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhmEYNf7rYg.

Thank you 

Jacqui Chimes

SECOND UP: Gail from Norway with a wonderful snowflake
Often seen at Christmas, this 'snowflake' paper challenge looks wonderful in the Chatsworth papers, and is embellished perfectly. Not just for Christmas then ....

Name: Gail aka ionabunny
Blog: http://craftynomad.blogspot.no/

Gail says: Hi, my name is Gail, known online as ionabunny.   I've got an 'ology and an 'ography and in my former life I worked in a lab testing materials used in road construction.  Nine years ago I gave it all up and moved to Norway to pursue the good life.   I spend my time gardening, looking after rabbits and chickens, working now and again for a local farmer and of course crafting.   I enjoy trying new ideas, learning new techniques and mixing and matching it all together in a simple style.  You can find me at my own little corner of blogland http://craftynomad.blogspot.no

In my 3up package I received the gorgeous Chatsworth Paper Collection and two PaperArtsy dies, Spotty Dragonfly and Moth.   After recovering from the shock and the happy dancing I had a few ideas but decided I wanted to keep the focus on the papers, so no stampy painty extravaganza here.  

I have used all 6 paper designs to a greater or lesser degree in this project to make a snowflake. I found good instructions at:

http://www.theinspiredhousewife.com/2011/12/christmas-craft-reveal  

I made my pieces 15cm square.  I didn't want a crease across the papers so I drew the cut lines on each piece with a pencil, cut with a knife and then rubbed out the pencil lines.

Here's what a cut piece looks like before and after folding.  You need six of these.  The Chatsworth papers have a white core so I have inked all the cut edges with VersaMagic Jumbo Java chalk.  As long as the white edges were covered it didn't matter if there was a bit extra here and there.  All adds to the look.  I also worked each of the cut areas between my thumb and fingers to stretch the paper a bit in the direction I wanted to fold them.   You can also see some of the moths and dragonflies I have cut using the dies.  

I put the six folded sections together to make my snowflake using three of the six different papers for this.  I love that these papers are of a collage style.  Each side offers a variety of patterns and shades.  If I was doing this again with these papers I would probably make each section at least 20cm square as they were quite rigid and I had a few sticky moments trying to balance the tension once I put them together.  At one point I thought I would be sharing a hat or a fruit bowl but after a little tweaking and twiddling.........   

I've used all the different design papers to cut the moths, dragonflies and also for stamping the sentiment on.  The moth and sentiment are from PaperArtsy USNT4. NB this is an A6 size stamp set.

The dragonflies are stamped with modern girl from LPC022...

...and stuck to both sides of three layers of die cut cardboard.   The sentiment was mounted both sides on PA heavy greyboard.  The chain was from a PA monster box I bought last summer.  Thanks to PaperArtsy for giving me this opportunity and thanks to you all for looking and reading.  Hope you liked it.  

THIRD UP: Craftyfield with a fantastic scrapbook layout
It's been great to see such a wide array of ideas tonight, and a scrapbook layout bring to a close tonight's #3UP, is most fitting, as technically that is what scrapbook papers are for! I love the utterly mixed media approach to this layout, so much to look at.

Name: Craftyfield 
Blog: http://craftyfield.blogspot.co.uk/
Twitter: @Craftyfield
Craftyfield says: I have been crafting for a long time, but until 10 years ago it didn’t fill up my spare time quite so much! My main crafts are card making and scrapbooking, and stamps are my favourite crafting items. You might be surprised to hear I involve Excel spreadsheets in my crafting and I have created a digital jar of ideas that pulls up random combinations of techniques/materials/stamps for me to use. I can also tell how much of my yearly budget I have spent so far (58% i.e. no spending until August - who am I kidding!) and what I spent most money on last year (stamps 36%) with pivot tables and pie charts, sad I know…

I used one of the darker Chatsworth papers as the backing. With so many beautiful designs in the collection, some only missing a photo, title and a few embellishments it would have been easy to make a quick layout but… I had other ideas! I wanted to use paint, texture, stamps and put the paper through its paces!

So for my top layer I settled on a subtle coloured background with a circles design and proceeded to add a colour wash with diluted Frescos in Claret and Smoked Paprika. I stamped in various inks with the script stamp MN30, cheque from ID02, “Joie de Vivre” and camera from Hot Picks 1205, and the small seal and the “Photographie” from ESN07.

Next I used the PaperArtsy stencil PS001 with Paprika and Claret paints as well as with Grunge Paste mixed with a touch of Limelight Fresco. The papers were sewn together along the edges leaving the punched areas open (hidden journaling)

Embellishments as follows:

• Feathers (MN97) on vellum embossed in black
• Film strip (MN87) on acetate with Archival which when dry looks more like celluloid than a craft ink or paint would.
• Leaves fussy cut from another Chatsworth paper.
• Faux lace die-cut from material and coloured with Frescos

To show more of the backing paper, I cut an aperture in my top layer instead of creating a mat for my photo. This is a technique I came up with, trying to use my punches more and in a different way.

First cut a rectangle slightly smaller than the photo.... but big enough to insert the punch through it! Align the punch centrally first, it's easy with the scored lines on the punch as shown in this picture:

Then punch left and right as far as you can aligning the already punched design as usual. Repeat for the other 3 sides and optionally use a corner punch, as long as you don’t mind losing some of the design and finishing with scissors. Here I have done this on 2 corners.

I can’t tell you how pleased I was to have been drawn for this challenge and how much I enjoyed working with the Chatsworth papers! Thank you Paper Artsy!

Thanks to all of our 3 upsters tonight, please make sure to visit their blogs and follow them! Thanks once again for your enthusiasm and participation. We love to see you all featured on the blog.

If you would like to play along with our #3UP volunteers this week, then feel free to link up by Sunday May 4th at 5pm and go in the draw to win a surprise prize at the end of the week. As it's the end of the semester, the prize will be a extra special goody bag with a variety of items to the value of £50. 

Each entry generates you a ticket in the draw to win. Maximum number of entries per person is 3. Your entry must be a new creation made this week, and explain which person's 3UP entry inspired you to play along. Good luck, winners will be announced on Sunday May 4th, 7pm.