Hi everyone, it's good to be back with you again.
It's Keren, here with you today.
I've been lucky enough to get Gwen Lafleur's most recent release all inky and I've created a few projects using her 3 new sets. When I first saw them, my mind immediately went to the Victorian era, those Darwin-esque text books of nature drawings from places like the Galapagos Islands and so I mused on creating an animal based Victorian puppet theatre.
It really was a case of working out some simple paper structures, but then I wanted to create something a little more modern, which you can see at the end of the post.
I wanted to use colours that were indicative of the later Victorian period. These colours went so perfectly together. I did lament later on the lack of a yellow and blue, but I think it worked out ok.
Once the initial step of basic sketching was done, I got to thinking about how I could use the stamps to create the theatre frame. The henna inspired images from EGL48 were architectural enough to create a whimsical top for the theatre.
I needed to create a stage, which was a simple box bottom, and I found some paper that would do the job (and worked rather well as faux curtains later). I decided to create faux stage boards but embossed on the wrong side so couldn't sand the top bit off.
This part was just painting all the elements and colouring. The copper was such a great highlight because of the metallic reflective quality of the paint.
You can see some of the structure of the theatre- a pretty simple make!
I also created a few extra projects using the amazing sets from Gwen.
The fish from EGL48 looked fabulous stamped onto acetate. I coloured the flamingo with Copics and added another acetate stamped layer, added some glue and glitter to make a sandwich. I wanted a sentiment so used the bold alpha from EGL16 to say 'Happy Birthday' in short.
This last one was done using elements of EGL47 & EGL48, and using lots of the smaller details to create tiny embellishments. The tree from EGL47 makes for such a striking 'wallpaper' that I coloured in with watercolours.
I hope that my samples show just how versatile style-wise Gwen Lafleur's stamps are. Whether you like, vintage, boho, modern or more, there's something here for everyone.
