2015 Topic1: Fragile Papers {Challenge}

2015 ... It's ALL NEW !

Hi everyone, Leandra here

For several months, behind the scenes we have been working on a totally new format for the blog. After 3 years of its current format, we feel very ready for a significant change. 

We feel:
- there needs to be less content, a post every night is a bit too overwhelming
- the 'challenge' should be fortnightly
- the opportunity should be to fully explore techniques, products, ideas... as you wish 
- the ideas presented can be adapted to whatever YOU prefer to do; tags, cards, journalling, scrap-booking, mixed media, textiles, clay and more.

Our blog contributors are all wonderful volunteers who have opted-in to the various themed ideas we have coming up. We love these contributors because they offer you a wide variety of strengths, styles and skills. Many of them are people we have met through this blog, through twitter or from seeing them participate in our challenges regularly. I'm sure may of them will be familiar to you.

So read on to see how it all will work for 2015....

• Every second Sunday (ie. fortnightly), a new topic, theme or concept will be introduced by Leandra at 19:00 (London Time). The the challenge link will also be found in that same Sunday intro post.

• The theme or topic will be explored by 3 blog contributors on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the fortnight. In the weekends you can look forward to posts from our Signature Stamp Designers. We hope that this format, and less content will give you more 'space' to explore the ideas presented. Your challenge link can explore any of our contributors ideas, or you can present your own as you wish.

• The challenge follows much the same format, except we will now have a £50 prize every fortnight. The challenge is open to all players worldwide. You can use the voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. (Think of it as £40 prize with £10 to cover the VAT and postage costs, worldwide). You need to add your link by 17:00 (London time) on the Sunday evening, and the prize will be announced in the 19:00 blog post later that night. Challenge guidelines are below.

• Throughout January you may see random sneaky snippets of some of our brand new 2015 products. Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks, our blog contributors are itching to show you what they have been up to with the new stamps they have literally only just received in recent weeks. New products will be filtering their way through to the shops we supply from February.

2015 Topic 1: Fragile Papers

Take a minute to think about what fragile papers mean to you. Do you already use them when crafting?

Perhaps you made some decorations for Christmas?

Starting with a base of book pages is an invitation for colour to be added...

...or maybe you might be more deliberately constructive in your endeavours?

how about stained tissue, adding some wax and resin?

Vellum used to be a huge crafting product and it's doing the rounds again...have you still got some stashed?

 ...how about making your own handmade papers ? Gorgeous for books!

...what could you do with old crumbling papers? Trap it in resin maybe?

...telephone books... all wrapped up?

...or all stacked up?

...foreign dictionaries always seem more exotic...

think of all the amazing things you might try with fragile papers...

Using fragile papers like these often is step one for mixed-media go-to techniques. You can add texture, depth, text-contrasts or several translucent layers with ease.  Layers of fragile, soft, inked or painted papers fixed to calico, softly painted or dye sprayed, can create fantastic book covers. Darcy does a similar thing when she makes her amazing fabrics to convert them into handbags or pencils cases, or even water pots!

When you reinforce a fragile paper, suddenly its not so fragile anymore, yet its delicate properties can be utilised in unique ways. Here is a quick introduction video to get your thinking. We hope that you will find a chance to use the challenge this fortnight to share what you prefer to do with fragile papers. You don't have to be led by our designers, you can do your own thing entirely!

This idea of utilising Fragile Papers is the theme we are exploring over the next fortnight. 

We look forward to seeing what our blog contributors come up with, and your responses too! Link up your photos, blog post or other links below using the linky tool.

Have a great fortnight...
Leandra

Challenge Guidelines:

1. The challenge is a chance for you to show how you have been inspired by a particular technique of the fortnight. Your entry should contain:

- a mention of which post inspired you and why, and 
- a link in your blog post to that original post on the PA blog.
The whole concept of this challenge is 'play along with us'. You are encouraged to put your own twist on ideas you see on our blog, don't feel obliged to copy an idea exactly, but if you prefer to replicate, of course that is fine too. We love to see how you are inspired!

2. The link you put on our linky page must lead directly to the specific post on your blog where you have explored the technique/ idea mentioned in point 1 above. Don't link to the home page of your blog, or we will be unable to find the post to leave you comments.

3. Spam links will be deleted.

4. We prefer your challenge post is created exclusive to our challenge. Multiple challenge links in one blog post often creates a conflict of interest between the different challenge hosts.

5. You are most welcome to use stamps/ products/ substrates you have to hand from a variety of companies, we do not expect you to exclusively use PA products - but of course it's lovely when you do!

6. You can enter as many times as you like in the fortnight. We don't want to restrict your creativity or participation! Link closes at 17:00 Sunday

7. The winner of the random draw will receive a £50 credit to be redeemed on the PaperArtsy Website, the credit includes VAT and postage. We request that one of your purchases is an A5 rubber stamp. You can add any other items to your basket, but the final total should not exceed £50

8. Each Sunday fortnight the winner will be announced at 19:00, also, in the same post, the link for the next fortnight will be posted. It's your responsibility to claim your prize coupon from Darcy: email her darcydotneedles@hotmail.com

Good Luck! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!