Introduction by Leandra
Alison has been prolific this year, working so effectively to build a significant series of educational, informative, and beautifully relaxing tutorials to absorb over on her YouTube Channel. If you haven't subscribed yet, you really should! I'm sure you can all appreciate how soothing it is to listen to her express herself and her joy in creating art.
At the foot of this post there is a fabulous step by step tutorial for a journal page where she builds an absolutely stunning wreath. I know those of you with a collection of her stamps and stencils will be able to pull something similar together, it looks like a must-do and super fun project to me!
let's take a look back at this wonderful year, and some exciting new about Alison teaching at our ArtsyCrafts retreat in Spring 2026(June) is also revealed below too!
Leandra
Hi everyone, Alison here, with a look back at a very busy 2025 - nine new botanical stamp sets, my first ever stencil designs (nine of those too), in-person workshops in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK (several times!), a flourishing YouTube channel sharing tips and techniques, and a wealth of stuff going on behind the scenes ready for big adventures in 2026. I'm not sure how I fitted it all in!
So this post is a lovely chance to reflect on the year's journey. Come with me to take a look, but you might want to grab a coffee or a hot toddy before we set off...
Spring Blooms
February Release: The Spring Blooms Collection
EAB45, EAB46 & EAB47
PS450, PS451 & PS452 (Large)
February Blog post launch post here
My designs have always been connected to the seasons, so February's collection of botanicals takes us from the earliest spring crocuses and the still-bare branches of trees and hedgerows - perhaps with a few last berries or seedheads for the birds, through to late spring, with blossom and foliage appearing, and early lavender filling the air with calming fragrance. In my head, this trio of stamps is also known as the "text textures", as each of them has a fabulous script/font stamp for adding detail and texture to your projects.
A piece of real tree bark seemed like the perfect setting for these beautiful EAB46 Apple Blossom sprigs. I had EAB31 Blackthorn Blossom in the collection already, but with blackthorn the flowers come out before the leaves. With apple - and many other fruit trees - the foliage comes first, so you get both together when the flowers finally emerge. My favourite moment is when you have buds, blossom and foliage all in one go. And I adore this poetry fragment, by 17th century poet, Robert Herrick - it seemed perfect with this fresh-faced youth, ready for life's adventures. I loved creating his accompanying dimensional scroll with the script stamp from the set.
Mags Woodcock created this fabulous tag trio with my spring designs just after they were released. (You can read all the details here.) I love the rustic texture of the torn corrugated cardboard, the perfect way to display the soft, glowing colours of the delicately tinted flowers. And these are also a brilliant showcase for the Gothic font texture stamp.
Later in the year, I had a glorious time combining all these springtime stamps and stencils with the vintage book illustrations from some of France Papillon's sets for a blogpost here at PaperArtsy. This handmade book - with oodles of stamped Mattint-ed ephemera and Printed Tissue PT08, as well as lots of vintage photos - is full of stories, and definitely one of my favourite creations of the year. (You can see the completed book and all the details here.)
Summer Flowers
June Release: The Summer Flowers Collection
EAB48, EAB49 & EAB50
PS471, PS472 & PS473 (Large)
June Blog post launch post here
The summer collection started a journey into "twistiness". Well, I've been on the journey for a while, but it started to make its way into my stamp designs with these sets. Florals - full-on florals! - with a hint of decay just creeping in, twisted petals and a sense of movement and dynamic shapes, plus some fabulous vintage advertisements. These are perfect for creating ephemera pieces, and they're all related to either words or pictures - pens, typewriters, cameras and photographic studios. And the stencils are full of foliage delights!
I really wanted to celebrate that sense of dancing flowers in the breeze, so with some fussy-cutting and layering, the twisting petals of the poppies come to life in this frame. And the "pointy leaves" of the PS473 stencil are designed to capture the darting, dynamic foliage of these summer flowers. I dived into my back-catalogue for the poppy seedheads on the kraft background (EAB37 Poppy Edition rather than this one which is EAB48 Summer Poppies!), and added some real poppy seedheads from my garden.
But you know me and red... I can't stay there for long! And these Ghost Poppies in blue and brown took me to a real happy place. I shared them in the mini-Live session shortly after the launch, and it seems they took lots of you to a happy place too. The how-to video is now back up and running over here on the PaperArtsy People FB group if you'd like to create some Ghost Flowers of your own!
The coneflowers (a.k.a. Echinacea) of EAB49 have become firm favourites. I love the movement of their twining petals, and how they seem to dance against this inky sky. I'm not much of a card-maker, but when I do, I love creating coordinating envelopes, and with stamps this detailed all you have to do is ink and stamp and you're good to go!
The layered foliage stencils in the background start to tell the story of this young woman, fascinated by nature in all its forms, longing to study botany and biology, but prevented by her gender from pursuing academic studies. So she turns to other means to record and reflect her love and deep knowledge of the natural world... using early photographic equipment and her painting skills, as well as writing prose and poetry about the natural world. She is surrounded by EAB50 Vintage Advertisements as she scours her magazines for the latest equipment. Words and pictures, you see... it's a great combination.
Riikka Kovasin created this amazing pocket album using my designs just after they launched. You can read here how she created wonderful patterned papers with the vintage advertisements and constructed folders, pockets and postcards for journalling during her summer travels. A floral treat, this one!
A little later, I had a glorious time letting loose with both the spring lavender stamps and the summer florals - poppies and cornflowers. After all, lots of lavender flowers in the summer too. These vibrant tags were created with Distress Inks and Oxides, using a "watercolour effect stamping" technique. There's a full process video on my YouTube channel, if you're interested.
Autumnal Botanicals
October Release: The Autumn Botanicals Collection
EAB51, EAB52 & EAB53
PS486, PS487 & PS488 (Large)
October Blog post launch post here
The "twistiness" continues into my October designs. The EAB51 Cosmos Edition completes the trio of florals begun in June - still with those twisting petals adding interest and movement to the flower heads. There are twisty, windswept umbellifer flowers (yes, more umbels... I have a number of umbel stamps sets, and these might be my favourites of all of them so far!), twisted leaves just starting to decay, and a trio of stencils - botanical and organic shapes full of versatility and movement.
All three of the floral sets come with four sketches - in different scales - so that you can build layers of luscious flowers in abundance. This postcard panel is directly inspired by photos I have taken of the November Cosmos in my garden, dancing against crisp blue autumn skies. By using masks, you can create depth and distance with the multiple flower heads.
I couldn't resist silhouetting these EAB52 windswept umbels against the Tim Holtz Moon Mask. At first, I thought I was creating a midsummer night's dream - but I took another look and realised it was a perfect Halloween make too! A friend said it reminded him of the work Japanese artist, Hokusai (you might know the famous wave painting). So all in all, I'm rather proud of this Distress Ink tag!
These magically misty EAB53 Twisted Leaves are stamped on a salty watercolour background, and then painted with Distress Inks for a translucent glow. This image grew out of one of my favourite watercolour paintings from Inktober a few years ago. I'm so happy to have it as a stamp to play with, to save having to do the difficult drawing part of the artwork. As with almost all my stamps, it works multiple ways up, so it needn't always look like the same leafy branch. The tone-on-tone ephemera stamping adds subtle detail to the background.
Amanda Pink worked wonders with the Cosmos Edition shortly after the launch. Do check out how she used the stencil to create the amazing texture on the backgrounds of these subtle grey-toned cards here...
And Amanda also did a bright version - which you'll find in the same blogpost. These vivid panels remind me of Warhol's pop art paintings - and it's such a treat to me to see these stamps in a whole new way that I would never have imagined myself!
The twisting "falling leaves" PS488 stencil (which can also be used to create foliage still on a tree, or butterflies or birds in the sky, or - as a student brilliantly discovered at one of my workshops - wisteria blooms... I didn't know I'd made a wisteria stencil!) takes a starring role on this autumnal handmade decorative tape, with the EAB52 Twisted Umbel flowers and the smaller leafy stem from the same set also playing a major part.
Such a joy creating the layers (the full master board process is here), and some of the tapes went on to be part of some rather magical Toadstool Tape Rolls...
Returning to my much-loved neutrals, I was a little surprised when my Vintage Photo Distress Ink became a muted rose pink over the gesso in this page spread. But the soft romantic look I ended up with is perfect for the delicate EAB52 umbellifers and tiny leafy stem layered into the background.
The round-up so far has mainly focused on the stamp sets, but I promise you the stencils are about to come into their own in my end of year project! And I have been using them in all kinds of ways over the year, as you'll have seen on Instagram and YouTube, and especially if you were able to attend any of my live workshops, where we've played with them a lot!
One of the greatest joys for me is combining multiple stamp sets and stencils for a luscious botanical feast, as we did at some workshops towards the end of this year...
So I decided that for the end of year project created especially for this retrospective post, I would do exactly that - play with combinations!
End of Year Project: Festive Garland
We had a spring launch, a summer release and an autumn one, but I haven't designed any stamps specifically for winter this year, or anything deliberately festive. But I talked a lot during the autumn live launch about the designs being multi-seasonal.
Looking back over the year, it seemed to me that by mixing and matching, with a bit of creative licence, I probably had all the makings of a rather special festive wreath garland.
It's a bit tricky to get all the supplies on one photo, since I used seven out of my nine 2025 stamp sets and five out of the nine stencils!
So here's an additional shot of the Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics and Mattints I used... but the Distress Inks are still piled up out of sight, I'm afraid.
I decided to work in my Ranger Ledger Journal (I could have glued a layer of Printed Tissue into a plain journal, but I really wanted to get going as quickly as possible, and the Ledger was exactly the size I wanted). I used Snowflake Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in a watery wash to knock back the strong yellow tones of the paper (and the red ledger lines!), and then scribbled in a circle structure in pencil as a guideline for my wreath.
And then it was stencil time. I started with the PS487 Ivy stencil, using Peeled Paint Distress Ink with a blending tool, then adding a bit of shading to some leaves with Rustic Wilderness. By using all three ivy strands on the stencil, as well as flipping it over occasionally, you can get lots of variation in your foliage.
Next I added some of the PS473 Pointy Leaves in Rustic Wilderness Distress Oxide (poppy leaves suddenly becoming evergreen boughs), and some of the PS472 Little Leaves sponged in Hyde Park Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic. They have the look of that glossy dark foliage you often see in Christmas wreaths (privet, maybe, or bay?).
The PS452 berries are done in River Deep Mattint giving them a gentle transparency, and I couldn't resist adding some of the PS471 Grassy stems in Broken China. I think they add lovely detail. There's a little bit of added penwork on the berries (more of that to come in white later).
So that's where we are with just the stencilled layers... five stencils and multiple shades of blue, green and turquoise media - already creating magic. It's a lovely, soft, air-brushed look, and I think it looks beautiful against the vintage text of the background. Part of me wanted to stop right there!
Next I added some of the PS473 Pointy Leaves in Rustic Wilderness Distress Oxide (poppy leaves suddenly becoming evergreen boughs), and some of the PS472 Little Leaves sponged in Hyde Park Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic. They have the look of that glossy dark foliage you often see in Christmas wreaths (privet, maybe, or bay?).
The PS452 berries are done in River Deep Mattint giving them a gentle transparency, and I couldn't resist adding some of the PS471 Grassy stems in Broken China. I think they add lovely detail. There's a little bit of added penwork on the berries (more of that to come in white later).
So that's where we are with just the stencilled layers... five stencils and multiple shades of blue, green and turquoise media - already creating magic. It's a lovely, soft, air-brushed look, and I think it looks beautiful against the vintage text of the background. Part of me wanted to stop right there!
First up was the tiny leafy stem from the EAB52 Twisted Umbels, stamped in Peeled Paint Distress Ink - notice how different the same colour ink looks compared to when I applied it with a sponge through the ivy stencil.
Then I added lots of twiggy detailing in Speckled Egg (Archival formulation) with the small "tree" stamp from the EAB53 Twisted Leaves set. I love how, as well as being beautiful twigs, these have a look of icy cracks creeping across the page.
And pulling from the spring releases, I used the foliage from the EAB47 Lavender Edition as another evergreen bough - this one a silvery grey one, stamped in Iced Spruce Distress Oxide. I used a water brush to soften the stamped edges, colouring in the pine needles with their own stamped lines.
By now, I was really on a roll, stamping here, there and everywhere, and having so much fun. One thing I knew I wanted to include was white-embossed EAB52 Twisted Umbels, but I thought I should get my other white accents in place before deciding where to put them.
For the purposes of this festive garland, my EAB48 Summer Poppies and EAB51 Cosmos are playing the role of white hellebores (aka Christmas roses) and white winter anemones. If you google them, you'll see that you can just about get away with this casting, although you do want to exercise just a touch of creative imagination!
For the purposes of this festive garland, my EAB48 Summer Poppies and EAB51 Cosmos are playing the role of white hellebores (aka Christmas roses) and white winter anemones. If you google them, you'll see that you can just about get away with this casting, although you do want to exercise just a touch of creative imagination!
I stamped them on a separate piece of watercolour paper, and used Mattints and some Vanilla Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic to colour them very loosely. There's Fern and Mojito in the flower centres, but most importantly, I used Shadow and Shark Mattints to add shading to those twisting petals.
A little bit of fussy-cutting, and I was ready to start arranging my flowers on the garland. I decided on large clusters at about 2, 5 and 10 on the "clock".
A little bit of fussy-cutting, and I was ready to start arranging my flowers on the garland. I decided on large clusters at about 2, 5 and 10 on the "clock".
That meant the white-embossed umbels could go somewhere in between those positions, at around 3.30, 7 and 11. (They're done with Wow Embossing in Bright White.)
When cutting, I'd snipped all the way down between petals to the centre (the pistil, if you want to be botanically precise!), so that meant I could do lots of lovely dimensional bending of the petals. As long as I don't crush the book shut hard, they seem to survive it being closed perfectly happily... I'll give them the occasional refreshing tweak!
In the end, I chose to add another three smaller flower heads at 12, 5.30 and 8 too, mainly because I had them sitting there, and it seemed a waste of fussy-cutting time and energy not to use them.
I added some ephemera stamping - the alphabet font from EAB45 Crocus Edition for detail, EAB50 Vintage Advertisements to give a bit of geometric structure within all this wild organic lusciousness, and some reference numbers (EAB52), airmail stamps (EAB51) postcard headers (EAB47) just for fun.
It's mostly subtle stamping in either Speckled Egg Distress Archival or Stormy Sky Distress Ink. While I was at it, I added just a touch of white pen work to the berries to give them glossy highlights.
I wanted just a couple of subtle words in the mix. It's just not "me" if there are no words with the pictures!
I wanted just a couple of subtle words in the mix. It's just not "me" if there are no words with the pictures!
CELEBRATE (EAB48) and JOYFUL (EAB51) seemed appropriately festive, but they're very much to the side of things. It's the layered foliage and flowers which take centre stage in this journal page.
So here is the final piece... I'm thrilled with how the spring, summer and autumn designs have adapted to being part of a very festive winter wreath. What a joy!
I know I've used a LOT of stamps and stencils here, but even with more limited supplies you can create a full, rich garland or wreath as long as you keep changing angles and varying the colour tones and intensity.
I know I've used a LOT of stamps and stencils here, but even with more limited supplies you can create a full, rich garland or wreath as long as you keep changing angles and varying the colour tones and intensity.
Since all my botanicals - stamps and stencils - work in lots of directions, those rotating positions will keep your project from looking repetitive, even if you are working with fewer images.
Of course, you could make yours a garland rather than a full wreath (I know I've used both words interchangeably in this post, but it was getting boring saying wreath all the time!). You could "hang" swags across the top of a page, or create a frame all the way around the edge.
And instead of a journal page, you could do the whole thing on, say, a 12x12 piece of card, and then you can frame it and hang it on the wall as part of your festive decor.
And instead of a journal page, you could do the whole thing on, say, a 12x12 piece of card, and then you can frame it and hang it on the wall as part of your festive decor.
I will be sharing the full process on my YouTube channel, but that won't be posted until later in the month, on 27th December. It's a long episode, so I knew you probably wouldn't have time for it in the run-up to the festivities. Instead, on the third day of Christmas you can settle down with the three French hens and your favourite festive cocktail, and watch the whole wreath come together!!
You might also be saving this very long post to come back to and enjoy once things are a bit quieter, but either way I hope you've enjoyed looking back over the year with me. It's been quite a journey - and there are many more adventures to come in 2026!
Thanks so much for your incredible support and feedback over the year. It's such a joy when I see people making amazing things with these stamps and stencils that I've designed.
And a giant thank you to the whole PaperArtsy crew, who have made this creative journey possible. It's brilliant to be on this ride with you.
Wishing everyone all the joys of the season, and a very happy New Year, all!
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3 comments:
What a year of gorgeousness! Absolutely inspirational.
What a wonderfully creative year your designs, stamps, and stencils have provided. It has been so inspirational watching all year! This garland/wreath really demonstrates how versatile your stamps can be. Thank you for such a lovely year! Cannot wait to see what next year brings! ❤️
Wow, inspiration and creativity in abundance. I will always be grateful for your wonderful stamps, stencils and tutorials they have opened up a whole new world for me to enjoy and explore. Here's to an amazing 2026. I look forward to seeing the tutorial and having a go.
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