PaperArtsy Blog 2019: Year in Review Topics 16-20

 

Hello again from PaperArtsy HQ,

This is the final post for our look-back on 2019. These posts are all from the final quarter of the year, so they might be a little bit fresher in your mind if you follow the blog closely, however, this seasonal time of the year does get quite busy, so I'm pretty sure there will be some content you missed in all the Christmas rush!

Feet up, grab a cuppa and let's take one final look back before we move into a New Year and New Products!

Tonight I'm sharing my picks from Topics 16-20: Stamp Carving, A Vintage Christmas Shaving Foam, Cute Critters and A Bit of Sparkle.

The next time you hear from me will be tomorrow, Sunday (Dec 29th) when we commence the first of 6 New Product announcements. 

Leandra 

Topic 16: Stamp Carving
 

Stamp carving has always been something that people really enjoy to do, it's that satisfaction of making something that you can use in a variety of ways, and the better you get at it, the easier it is to master how to create surprisingly delicate details. I guess we all did potato carving at Junior School, and using a slab of rubber/eraser and a selection of carving tools, allows you to create all kinds of imagery. There are other methods too, a hot tipped tool into fun foam for example. Our bloggers had lots of fun with this topic as you will see!

This post by Dounia, who is always very resourceful, is a great place to start if you are newbie to stamp carving! She adds new stamps to her collection that chime with Ellen Vargo's collection designed for use several years back now.

Nikki Acton used Gwen's new stamps to great effect on a gel plate. Gwen has always been an amazing hand-carved stamp creator, and this influence is obvious in her stamps she has designed for us. Nikki uses wonderful colour combos and a gel plate to create these striking cards.

Kate Yetter goes in a different direction, creating a floral focal stamp for one of her amazing layered creations.

And Lotte also made her own stamp to feature atop a Fresco painted background, using the new paint colours from November (explained here).

Topic 17: A Vintage Christmas
 

It's fun at Christmas that you can choose to decorate your home, your gifts, your cards in so many styles. Brights blues, zingy lime greens, pinks and purples, traditional Christmas green and red, or subdued tones of Sepia all allow you to inject some personality in various ways. For this topic we thoughts we'd go a bit traditional, but some of the bloggers interpeted this genre with bright snazzy colours too! Now is a great time of year to update your pinterest boards ready for Xmas 2020, so you can plan early using this years imagery as inspiration.

Sara Naumann's stamps always hit the spot with that ephemeral Vintage vibe. Jenny  Marples has created a range of goodies for one lucky recipient!

Chris Dark pulled this snowman out of her hat with clever use of the Kay Carley matching stamp-stencil-snowman sets as her guide. The mask sections of the stencil are perfect for stippled painting using the stencil as a mask so you can get your paint in the right areas easily, right down to his nose and the trim on the brim of his hat! (More details here from Kay on this) Just look at the texture Chris achieves from the gentle stippling of the paint for shading and accents. Coloured pencils add the final shade effects.

Autumn made some Olde Worlde Vintage style cards with our Hot Picks and a good sprinkling of infusions for this post. Resists, words, music and snow sparkle are all the ingredients needed for a good Vintage card recipe!

And Raquel offered up one of her wonderfully detailed journal spreads, with a video showcasing her Christmas stamps from 2018. Her background has metallic glaze over infusions for the softest of shimmer effects, and those baubles evoke the perfect vintage touch!

 

Topic 18: Shaving Foam

Shaving foam was one of the first background techniques I remember learning about 20+ years ago when I first started stamping. We would tint it with alcohol inks, and ink pad reinkers. In the resurgence of this trend in 2019, people were using paints, infusions, spray dyes and more to tint the foam. Our heavy smoothy card is ideal for this as is won't buckle too much on you. It pays to check out a few techniques, and perhaps you may also want some gloves for this one too!! Lots of our bloggers gave this a go for the first time for this topic, so it's not hard to get results!

Corrie shares a few different techniques in her posts, including how to use stencils to pick up pockets of foam. She said it's a bit messy, but sure smells great! She used a stamp from the Pierrot series of our Ink and the Dog collection of stamps, images we released in 2003 and are still going strong!

Amanda Pink uses a gel plate with paints and shaving foam to pick up here shaving foam backgrounds. She did a 2-part post for this topic.

This is the follow up post with Gwen's stamps. I love how the vertical stencilling works over the background so well. She seems to choose interesting and vibrant colour combinations.

Nikki created a series of panels that she patched back together. I really love how the black dominant foam background worked out. I would not think to do that!! But it offers a stunning contrast to the beautiful blue.

Topic 19: Cute Critters

'Cute' is not a word people would normally associate with PaperArtsy, but we certainly have plenty of cute stamp collections under our brand-umbrella, and the Zinski Art series in particular offers some of the more obvious choices, although Lauren (above) managed to morph a Tracy Scott flower and bauble into Santa in her inimitable way!

Autumn chose Frescos that zing for her gorgeous background for these sparkly shaker cards. I really enjoyed how she stamped over and under the clear acetate windows putting her coloured-in elements over and under too for depth. The colouring of the elements was stunning. See the rest of the cards here from Autumn .

Keren made this arrangement with stamps from the Squiggly Ink collection. It is interesting how so many of our bloggers use their pencils, and alcohol or water ink markers to colour with such beautiful shading. It's these finishing touches that really can make a difference to the art samples you create.



I adored how Etsuko made these wonderful fabric dolls . She actually stamped and coloured the images, then scanned and printed onto fabric, finally cutting out, stuffing and sewing them together. Doing something a little different onto a fabric surface can really add a new dimension to the way you use your stamps!

Another fab infusions resist for Chris Dark when she made this. Again, her colouring of these cats sure makes them look cuddly and furry!

Topic 20: A Bit of Sparkle
 

Our final topic for the year and it had to use some sparkle for the most festive time of the year as they offered many pre-christmas treats to inspire you.

My first pick is Amanda who still kept it grungy, but used Seth's stamps with metallic glaze for that gentle sparkle.

This delightful post from Alison was wonderful to see the process involved in creating that lovely ombre background to her triptych. Snow capped buildings seem to glow in the flickering light from the candle.

Keren used green boughs wrapped in wire and attached her JoFY stamped and coloured floral elements very artistically to create this gorgeous wreath. There is plenty of sparkle within her embossed flowers (hard to photograph).

Carol made a fantastic stocking with sparkly shrink plastic bauble-embellishments. I love it when the bloggers stamp and paint onto fabric.

It's been lovely to look back over the year with you the past 4 posts!

I cannot thank our bloggers enough for the input they have made into inspiring us all this past year. You will find links to them on the right hand menu on our sidebar so you really should follow them to see what else they do with their talent! 

I will be back tomorrow with the first of several New Product Announcements for the start of 2020. We have been shipping products to our stockists over the past 2 weeks ready for the week ahead, so get ready!

Thank you for taking the time to comment on the blog posts over the course of the year, we appreciate it and you taking the time to do so.

All the best for a fantastic 2020, we have a lot of changes planned for the year to come and look forward to taking you with us on a brand new adventure.

Love and seasons best wishes to you all!!

Leandra, Mark and the team.