2021 Topic 14: Mash Up LPC EGL EEV EAB {by Alison Bomber}

2021 Topic 14: Mash Up LPC EGL EEV EAB

Ohh this is a pretty special post. Not only do we have the talented Alison Bomber letting her muse loose, but she does so with 4 designer stamp sets to a particularly icy theme, with her wonderful storytelling weaved throughout for good measure! This is a grab-a-mulled-wine-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-and-enjoy kind of post!!! I am VERY tempted to make something similar for my wintry interior decor!
~ Leandra

Hello all, it's Alison here from Words and Pictures, and I'm thrilled to be part of this Mash Up topic including my word stamps.  It's so amazing to see the different approaches and hugely varying results from post to post!

I've got a wintry offering for you.  The moment I saw Lynne Perrella's new collection, these Monarchs of the Ice drew me in, and I knew they would pair perfectly with some of the words from my Winter Edition (EAB05).  And it was such fun creating icy shards and drifts of snow with both Ellen and Gwen's textural detail stamps.

I got caught in a few snow drifts and on some thin ice as I went, but I'm very happy I finally reached this Kingdom of Ice and Snow.  It's another of those projects which is really hard to photograph effectively, but I hope by the end of the post (with a little video snippet along the way) you'll get the idea! 

I was toying with what possible substrates to use... tags (of course), or an art journalling page? But when I was chopping things back in the garden I was left with some twiggy branches, and suddenly I knew what I needed to create a kingdom for my icy king and queen - a reverse canvas.  When I put the stamps in place to see the effect, I knew I was on to something...

Those are the incredibly detailed Lynne Perrella stamps in their full rubber glory - it's the depth of the carving on a PaperArtsy stamp that gets you such clarity of image when you are working - they really are amazing.  This Lynne Perrella set LPC052 is one of her most recent releases.  (A stockist list is at the foot of this fabulous launch post.)

And I needed to test out that my other main idea was going to work.... I wanted to create some icy shards using Ellen Vargo's zigzags and diamonds to create the Jack Frost patterning I've been starting to see on my windows now the frosts are arriving in the Czech Republic.  This is Eclectica Ellen Vargo (EEV07).

 

 

And here they are stamped and overstamped, criss-crossing and overlapping in places, on acetate packaging (I have boxes of the stuff hoarded from crafty purchases!).  Some are stamped in clear embossing ink, and some in Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in Snowflake. (I paint a thin layer of paint straight onto the craft mat, press the stamp into it, and then stamp onto my surface, making sure to wash the stamp thoroughly right away when I'm done). Then they are all embossed with Wow Clear embossing powder.  I wanted maximum texture, so I used their Ultra High formulation.  Definitely pleased with the results...

 

Next I tackled my canvas.  I wanted an icy tundra feel for the whole thing, so I chose my Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic colours accordingly.  What better to have in the mix than some of Seth Apter's Tundra and Midnight alongside some favourites old and new?  Seaglass has shot into my top five since it made its debut; I thought the vibrant green-toned turquoise of the Paua Shell would be perfect for some icy depth, and I can never be without French Roast!

 

I blended them onto the frame of the canvas, starting from darkest Midnight at the top, down via Paua Shell and Seaglass, on to the earthy Tundra and French Roast at the bottom.  I also gesso'd the inner canvas and blended some Midnight into the still wet gesso to start building the skyscape. (The reverse sides of canvases aren't prepped, even if the fronts are, so it's worth a coat of gesso so that they don't soak up all your precious paint.) Don't get too attached to this look...

... because the next thing I did was add a coat of PaperArtsy Crackle Effect Glaze to the whole thing, and Snowflake over the top.  I wanted that crackled land of snow look.  And I loved how the acetate ice looked once I had cut it up into random shards and started to play with positioning them.

As I looked at it now, I was missing the darker framing, so I reapplied the same paint colours in the same order but in a subtler way, using plenty of water to get a drippy look over the top of the crackle.

Okay, now we're cooking (in very cold water!)... time to invite the Ice Queen and King to join the journey.  I used a stamping platform to stamp them in a combination of Archival Inks, Potting Soil and Night Sky, and then painted them with the same palette as before, but adding the icy Wolf Eye to the mix.  I then stamped again to revive some of the clarity (thank you stamping platform).  At first I cut them in these palatial arch shapes...

... but in the long run, I decided I had to go for the almost full fussy-cut option in order to have them really pop within the landscape.  (I only lost a couple of tiny twirly bits which were beyond my cutting skills, and I left in a little extra support around her looped crystal headdress fringe.)

You can see in that photo (as well as a couple of spoilers for what's coming) that they are mounted dimensionally within the frame.  I used the wooden stretcher struts that came with the canvas to support the Ice Monarchs, with an extra little letter cube for the queen's head. Let me share with you the behind-the-scenes glamour!

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll have noticed that I'm slightly obsessed with the new Tim Holtz Moon Masks... it was pretty inevitable that one of them would end up being part of my icy landscape, inked and painted onto a die-cut circle just the right size.

You'll also have noticed in the spoiler photo that it has started to snow. This is where Gwen's stamps come in to the mash up. I used the lovely snowflake pattern from this Eclectica Gwen Lafleur set (EGL19)...

I stamped them on acetate in Picket Fence Distress Ink and embossed with Wow Bright White. I love that you can still get all that detail, and the acetate plus glossy embossing gives them a sparkly presence which is really magical in the final mix.

Some of them are individually cut to drift down through the moonlit sky...

Some are still together creating snowdrifts and hillocks within the landscape, both foreground and background (if you peer through the icy peaks).

And this is where things started to get pretty tricky.  I wanted my shards of ice to be part of that dimensional look - jaggedly sticking up at different depths within the canvas.  But when something is see-through, you can't mount it on wooden blocks like the king and queen.  That's not going to look good!  I worked out that some of them could be glued to the backs of the Ice Monarchs themselves...

Cue more glamorous backstage shots... oh, the indignity!

Others are glued to the reverse side of the snowdrift pieces of acetate, sometimes with some twiggy support to help them stay in place, and a couple of foreground pieces are glued on the canvas frame itself.  There was quite a lot of clothes peg action needed one way and another!

It was messy and frustrating and a real juggling act at times, but I think completely worth it for the layered effect.

But where, I hear you cry, are the Alison Bomber word stamps?!  Ah, well, they are embedded into the wooden parts of the frame.

They're stamped on white tissue paper in Coffee Archival.

It must be Archival because they need to be smothered in glue to get them to melt into the frame.  Careful that the fragile tissue paper doesn't tear...

And it's pure luck that they're just the right size font to fit on the wooden frame where it's not covered by canvas!

These phrases are gathered from two different quotes at the bottom of my Eclectica Alison Bomber Winter Edition (EAB05), one by John Burroughs and one by L.M. Montgomery (best known for her Anne of Green Gables books).

And they all seemed just right to go with the night time scene...

... of snowflakes and icy shards...

... the wintry landscape of the ice kingdom... 

... and the moonlight.

You've been catching sight of the final touch all the way along in these photos... a strand of tiny lights bringing a glimmer of magical light to the scene.

I haven't made the lights a permanent fixture yet, as I do like the icy look when they're not there at all...

Perhaps in the end I will give in and bore a hole through my canvas to fit them properly and glue them in place, but it's just the work of a few seconds to thread them into position so, for now, they're a removable element.  And totally worth it for lighting up the fire of the frost!

Of course one of the real pleasures is seeing the light catch on those shards of ice and glimmering snowflakes as the canvas moves - I hope this quick video snippet will give you a taste of that.

I hope you enjoyed visiting this kingdom of snow and ice, and entering the presence of the Monarchs of the Ice.

I'm absolutely delighted with my Jack Frost textured shards of ice - it's definitely an effect I'll use again - and I love the snowflakes, both floating in the air and gathering on the ground.  I love how all of it works to echo the intricate snowy designs on the Lynne Perrella figures.

Do have a go with stamping and embossing on acetate - it can really give a different impact to an image, and allows you to build transparent or translucent layers for a lovely sense of depth, especially if you've got a reverse canvas to build it all in.

Thank you so much for stopping by today to see the results of my stamping mash up.  I really enjoyed working out how the different designers' elements would work together to tell the story. And I hope you'll be inspired to try out some unexpected stamp combinations to see where they take you.  Happy crafting all!

Alison xx

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