August 2014 New Products {Elizabeth Borer}

Tonight we have a brand new stamp designer to introduce. Elizabeth Borer. You will have already seen Liz's work featured on the blog as a guest designer in the past, so you will be aware her style is beautifully feminine.

Liz has a long history working with paints, and has taught many people how to use them to colour images with depth and exquisite shading. She is also extremely competent at drawing images herself, and particularly likes faces as the focal point with scrolls, vines and such. These stamps reflect those well-honed skills, and if you follow her newly established blog, I am sure you will see her using these images in extremely creative ways with paint and more besides.

The style of these 2 sets has a subtle hint of Christmas. Look closely and you will see holly, ivy and mistletoe, and a Christmas Fairy has wings just asking for a touch of sparkle.

Welcome to the PaperArtsy family Liz, we are thrilled to have another designer on board with another unique style to offer our customers!

EEB01

EEB02

Here's Liz herself to give you a taste of what she's created so far, but it's just the start, I'm sure you'll see more of her in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Well done Liz on a beautiful release of stamps!

Hi there everyone , Liz Borer here with a few projects made from stamps from PaperArtsy that I designed. It’s very exciting to see my own designs as stamps and I hope that you enjoy them too.

by Liz Borer: Canvas Frame

Is it a Wall Hanging or a parcel ? This canvas developed a life of it’s own and ended up looking a bit like a parcel! 

I started by painting a couple of coats of Antarctic onto the canvas and when dry I blended Bora Bora, Hey Pesto and South Pacific onto the canvas. I kept the colours to the sides and corners.

Next I took a piece of tissue paper and stamped using Archival Black Ink with the ivy from EEB01 randomly over an area that would cover the front of the canvas. I coloured the leaves on the back of the tissue. The tissue can then  be stuck to the canvas by painting a coat of Matt Glaze onto the canvas and carefully putting it in place before painting another coat of glaze over the top. Be careful while doing this as the tissue can tear, but if you paint gently it is possible to brush out any folds in the paper. 

When dry cut off any extra paper and if necessary use a little more glaze to stick the edges down. I found a stencil that fitted the theme of the project and used grunge paste mixed with a little colour from my palette to create a raised image on two of the  corners. When dry I blended a little more of the base colours around the corners.

Using some ivory card I stamped the fairy in black archival ink and several of the two rounded baubles in Cranberry pigment ink (EEB01). I coloured the fairy with frescopaints mixed with matte glaze which makes them more transparent. I cut out the baubles  and stuck them together to create flowers. 

I cut out a frame for the fairy image and rubbed some TreasureGold onto it. I also rubbed the treasure gold over the raised areas of the canvas and around the edges. Finally I stuck some gold lace to the canvas and arranged the flowers and framed image before sticking them onto the canvas. You could add more embellishments but I liked the stamped ivy showing in the background.

by Liz Borer: Little Canvas Treasure Bags

I found these little bags in a shop and felt that they were in need of some decoration. 

They are all made in much the same way using tissue paper to stamp the image on before applying it to the fabric.The backs of the bags are all done in the same way – cut a piece of tissue a little bigger than the bag (and I found that it was better to cover the whole of the bag because otherwise there is a line showing where the tissue ends). Paint the designs on the reverse of the tissue paper and then stick the paper to the bag using matte glaze in the same way as the canvas. When everything is dry I trimmed the paper and stuck down any loose edges with more glaze.

One of the fronts of the bags was decorated in the same way, stamping the fairy from EEB01 and the ivy from EEB02 onto tissue paper and colouring before sticking it to the bag. 

The other two bags I decorated slightly differently. Again I stamped and coloured the image onto tissue paper however I then stuck this onto a small piece of fine cloth which I had frayed around the edges. When this was dry I stuck the square of cloth onto the bag to create the front of the bag. When the whole item is thoroughly dry it is possible to pull the drawstrings closed but don’t try before it is dry.

By Liz Borer: Winter Treasure Box

I like decorating book boxes and this little one with its recessed center is perfect for a treasure box . 

I started by painting the whole box. The inside and outside were Antarctic and the sides were Nougat. I lined the inside of the box with paper but it can be left painted.  I then blended Bora Bora and Space Cadet onto the outside of the box by dabbing the paint on with a wet wipe. I find this works better if I use one colour at a time and drying between colours. The last colour that I used was Nougat which lightened the whole background a gave it a little warmth.

I thought I would mix one or two of the other new designer's stamp sets into this project and so I stamped the script from ESN11 in Eggplant pigment ink and then the blobs from ESN09 in Denim pigment ink over the cover to create a background. I did this quite randomly and also stamped around the spine and the back of the box. Finally, using black archival ink, I stamped ivy and mistletoe onto the box with EEB02. The mistletoe was coloured with a wash of South Pacific.

The fairy from EEB02 and the words from ESN11 were then stamped onto smoothy card painted with nougat and the fairy was coloured. I cut the fairy out of the ivy frame around her and mounted this onto a gold card. I found a frame in my stash for the words which I painted with a mix of Inky Pool and Eggplant and then rubbed Treasure Gold over the raised areas. This made a perfect frame for the words. 

The background in the recessed area was made from Smoothy Card which I put through an embossing folder and then painted with the same mix of paint. Rubbing Treasure Gold over this made the embossed areas stand out. Finally I assembled the whole project as shown and added some loops of ribbon and flowers to the front of the box.

I have tried to show that these stamps can be used as they are or with other stamps to create a variety of projects for different occasions and I really hope that you will enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed designing them. Bye for now.

~ Liz

We also asked Penny Nuttall to create a few items with Liz's stamps. In her unique way, she has managed to design 3 fabulous projects, and sneak in an Ellen Vargo mash up too!

by Penny Nuttall: Fairy Garden

This diorama or shadowbox is constructed using the PA Chatsworth collection papers, with some added stamping of textured shapes from Ellen Vargo's EEV08 set in Fresco colours Slate (JOFY limited edition set 2), Evergreen (Lin Brown limited edition set 2) and Haystack.

All the fairy, leaf and bauble elements from Elizabeth Borer's guest designer stamp set EEB01 are stamped onto PA Smoothy card and coloured using a variety of Fresco paints, mixed with a small amount of glaze to keep the beautiful detail of these images. They are then glued into the box at different levels to create 3-D depth.

by Penny Nuttall: Fairy Mobile

The framework of this hanging piece is a wooden embroidery hoop, painted first with Hint of Mint Fresco (ELB Ltd Edn Set 2) and then dry brushed over with a wood grain effect in Turquoise Fresco (JOFY Ltd Edn Set 2). The Elizabeth Borer fairies and words are stamped with Black archival ink onto PA Smoothy card and coloured with water based marker pens (eg fibralo).

Each element is double sided, stamped and cut twice and glued back to back. The beaded danglies at the bottom are stamped with Stazon ink onto the plastic packaging of the special edition Fresco paint set! (Waste not....)

by Penny Nuttall: Winter Fairy Canvas

The icy blue-green colour choice gives this 'fairy' canvas a frosty winter look. 

I stencilled PA Grunge Paste to suggest a cracked ice background and shredded a strip of hessian fabric into a bare tree shape, then brushed on Fresco Finish Marlin, Hint of Mint and Turquoise from the latest Lin Brown limited edition paint set #2. 

After stamping and colouring the three peeping fairies I made the canvas even more icy with a rubbing of Fresco Metallic Glaze.


Tonight we also have Lesley Ebdon as a support artist with Liz's stamps. One of our loyal #PATwits, its so nice to have Lesley's creativity featured here!

by Lesley Ebdon: Fairy of the Heart

Hi Everyone, I’m Lesley and my first project using Elizabeth’s beautiful stamps uses a MDF heart onto which I've used stamps from EEB01.

On the heart itself I’ve painted with Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics, stamped into Grunge Paste and onto the crackled surface, adding colour to both with Fibralo pens and also adding Treasure Gold to the GP area.  The main image was stamped onto heavy watercolour paper and coloured with Fibralos applied to craft mat with lots of water added and a very watered down Fresco Finish for the background area and skin tones.

To finish the fairy I ‘painted’ on some PaperArtsy Matte Gloss to her wings and dress and sprinkled very fine glitter.  For the die cut flowers I made my own mica sprays with Fresco Finish Paints.

by Lesley Ebdon: Luminary

I painted the wooden frame with Fresco FinishChalk Paints, sanded lightly then stamped a trailing ivy from EEB01 (without using a block) and embossed with gold embossing powder. I also applied a little Treasure Gold to the frame.

I stamped the two fairy images from EEB02 onto heavy vellum and used Fresco Finish paints to colour on the reverse.  I used the lovely bauble stamps from EEB01 to create the other two vellum panels. These pretty images call for sparkle which I rarely use but I dug out my Gelly Roll sparkle pen to add it to the baubles, fairy wings and the ring around the Mistletoe Fairy.

I also added Treasure Gold to the metal corners and the wooden feet.

Wow, triple inspiration tonight! It's so fabulous to ad another new designer to the mix of talented people we represent. Please take a minute to leave Liz lots of encouragement via the comments section, I can't begin to tell you how nerve wrecking it is for these guys when they put new stamps out there for you to use. It's a lot more scary that you might think!

Thankyou ladies for another wonderful night of inspiration. All these stamps are available from your favourite PaperArtsy stockist now. Enjoy!

So who's up tomorrow night then??? Well, you'll have to wait and see!

~ Leandra