A Bewitching Banner with Eclectica³ Clare Lloyd {by Ann Barnes}

Hello everyone, Ann here with you today, and I am sharing a fun paper doll Halloween banner that I created using the fabulous PaperArtsy stamps and stencils by Clare Lloyd.

As soon as I saw the PaperArtsy Clare Lloyd Stamp Sets 07 and 08 (ECL07, ECL08) I knew they would be perfect for creating holiday themed paper dolls. I wanted to create something festive and fun; and while maybe a little spooky, not too scary.

I created five witch paper dolls, each one with her own unique look and personality. The five panels of my banner each contain a different witch. In order for the banner panels to be cohesive, I used PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic in Little Black Dress (FF119) as the base for all of the witch's dresses and then used brighter themed colors for accents.

I love the way that the dresses turned out. Using the stamps and changing the details gives so many possibilities. I could have even used one stamp but different color embossing and each would have looked vastly different.

To create the different dress patterns, I painted pieces of PaperArtsy Smoothy Cardstock (SCA4H) with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic paint in Little Black Dress (FF119).

Once the paint was dry, I selected a few of the small detail stamps to use for dress patterns. For the bat dress, I wanted an ombre effect so I used two different colors of embossing powder.

You can use any small stamp. At first I wasn't sure about the words, but this "spooky" dress turned out to be one of my favorites.

For four of the dress patterns, I randomly stamped with embossing ink, then covered with embossing powder and heat set.

I loved the star pattern from PaperArtsy Stencil 173 by Clare Lloyd (PS173) and used the stars from it with embossing ink to create the fifth dress background pattern.

I wanted each witch to have their own unique look. To achieve this with only one or two head/face stamps is easier than you may think. First, stamp as many of the heads as you will need, plus a few extra.

 

Then, imagine some chic stylish haircuts that can be created using the lines of the stamped images. You can use a pencil and mark up the stamped image with your ideas, or you can simply modify the hair as you are fussy cutting out each head.

Another way to do this would be to mask off the hair portion of the stamp when you are inking it and then the possibilities would truly be endless. I wanted to stay as true to Clare's designs as possible, therefore I worked with the lines that were there as a base.

Voila! Achieving different personalities with limited stamps is fairly simple, once you give them different haircuts, and even more so when you add color. I used colored pencils and paint pens  to vary the skin tones, eye colors and hair.

Now that all of the heads are complete it's time to create some of the other pieces. The best part of making paper dolls is have a lot of pieces to play with. First, let's finish the dresses.

Stamp the dress outline onto a plain piece of card stock and cut it out. This will be used as a template. Trace the outline of the template onto the backside of each piece of painted and stamped/embossed patterned paper, then cut out the dress shape.

You can embellish each dress as much or as little as you want, have fun with it. I used pieces of ribbon, string and tiny trims to fancy up my dresses.

Stamp multiple images of the hat onto Smoothy and fussy cut. I wanted the hats to match the base of each dress, so I used PaperArtsy Chalk Acrylic Little Black Dress to color them.

Each witch has her own cat. Stamp multiple cat images and color each one with colored pencil, then fussy cut, being careful at the neck. If you have any trouble, you can always glue the head onto the neck. I intentionally angled the head on a couple of my cats.

Here are each of the completed individual banner panels, I love how each witch is unique.

Some of the cats have their heads angled to appear as if they are looking at something.

The black and orange dress bottom is trimmed and layered with black tulle.

The dress length can be adjusted by simply adding layers of deep trims.

Each of the cat's collars has small gemstone embellishments.

This witch, I call "Red", has her own pair of batwings.

I had so much fun playing paper dolls with these stamps. I am thinking about creating a version of my banner for the winter holidays. PaperArtsy Stamp set 08 by Clare Lloyd (ECL08) has wonderful wintery and angelic details that would be perfect. Thanks for stopping by, hopefully you are inspired you to pull out your stamps and get creative.

Ann x

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3 Things - Not-so-usual Christmas Cards {by Ellen Schrik}

For this challenge, PaperArtsy sends the same three items to 3 people from the blogging team. It is really interesting to see how each maker comes up with different ideas and techniques with the same 3 items. They have no clue what PaperArtsy HQ is going to send, the whole idea is to do something crafty in their personal style restricted to these 3 items.

And for this month they invited me to be a guest designer for this challenge.

Hi, my name is Ellen Schrik (ellen_schrik_crea), I am from the Netherlands. I was so excited when the PaperArtsy crew asked me if I wanted to be a guest designer on the blog. Of course I said yes and shortly after that I received the items shown below.

So let's take a look at what I received from PA HQ ...

As I love quirky stamps, I was delighted to receive this Zinski Art Stamp set ZA35 by ZinskiArt. They are such happy and funny creatures! The stamps came with this deep orange Fresco Finish Acrylic paint Rusty (FF227) and a snow or confetti like stencil PS245 by PaperArtsy.

Here's a little sneak peak of what I came up with:

These items are perfect for not-so-usual Christmas cards, so let's see what I've created.

As one of the items was a Fresco Finish paint, I knew I wanted to go for gel printing. I discovered gel printing in spring 2013 and I immediately fell in love with the technique. I bought a gel plate and never stopped printing and exploring since.

For this post I made a bunch of gel prints using the Rusty colour I received and adding only a blue, Beach Hut (FF43) and a pink, Orchid (FF13). For texture all I used was bubble wrap. The effect of the different sizes of bubble wrap is simply wonderful, even with just one layer.

(Fun fact: I was published in Craft Stamper magazine in October 2013 with an article on gel printing, also using bubble wrap.)

For this project I used my 5 x 7 " and my 8 x 10" gel plates for a happy gel printing afternoon.

The Rusty orange and the Beach Hut (FF43) blue go well together and they make a wonderful green where they overlap. I did the same with Rusty and Orchid (FF13). It came out beautifully.

I just love the effect of bubble wrap! And it is only one layer!

Here you can see some of the masterboards/prints I made on both A4 and A5 sized paper. I used 160gms printing paper for this. I often like my prints so much that I don't want to cut them up, and just keep them, but I had to be brave this time.

Now on with the stencil:

The Stencil PS245 reminds me of falling snow, perfect for Christmas cards.

On two of the cards I used snow-like embossing powder from WOW Embossing with glitter in it. After all, Christmas and glitter go hand in hand....

I love how well the embossed dots work with the bubble wrap texture!

For the third card I didn't heat emboss; instead I added orange dots with ink through the stencil as a kind of confetti.

.Time to work on my focal critters!

I started by stamping all the characters from the Zinski Stamp Set ZA35 in black ink on white card.

At first I wanted to just stamp the images onto white card, cut them out and stick them onto the cards. I like the effect of a white image.

Then I decided to colour one of the images lightly, just to see what it would look like. I used my Derwent Inktense pencils.

As much as I like the striking effect of a white, fussy-cut image, this time I liked the lightly coloured version better. It was more in cohesion with the background. So I decided to colour all of them in.

I like this type of colouring: only some patches of colour here and there on the image. Kate Crane inspired me to try it this way and now I often use it, especially on these type of images.  Thank you so much for your inspirational posts Kate!

And here are the three cards I made. With one, two and three little creatures.

And each one apart:

So these are my not-so-usual Christmas cards. And as I have some gel prints and some cut out images left, I think I am going to make some more.

Extra layers and some easily overlooked details add depth and interest to your creations, even when you do not notice them immediately. Here's what I added:

I stamped two more layers onto the card: after the heat embossing I stamped with Kate Crane's set KC005 in orange and in dark brown ink. For some stamps I did not use a block to stick the stamp to, but held the stamp in my hand for partial printing.

But it did not all go quite as planned. On the tall card I stamped first and then heat embossed, but the dark ink was not totally dry. So when I sprinkled embossing powder over the snowflakes, some of the stamped background on the right caught some powder too. It was a kind of happy accident.

I also added some faux stitching and zig zags. I used an old tracing wheel, used for sewing, to track around the edges of the card, then slowly traced the lines with a black fineliner, following the little holes.

The text on the Zinski Art Stamp Set ZA35 is perfect for cutting up into strips. They were stamped on white paper, cut out and edged with black ink and/or a fineliner pen.

Paint, gel printing, a stencil and quirky stamps is a great combination for me.

I had lots of fun creating these. Thank you so much for your interest in my little journey here, I really appreciate it. And a big thank you to the PaperArtsy crew for having me. It was a great honour.

With love,

Ellen

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