2019 #16 Stamp Carving: Tiptoe Through the Tulips with ELB {by Lucy Edmondson}

2019 Topic 16: Stamp Carving

Some more stamp carved loveliness from Lucy whose use of vibrant watercolour crayons really make Lin Brown's images burst from the book pages. She's got some great uses for gesso too.

Hi everyone, it's Lucy here from Lucy's True Colours, bringing you a card for the stamp carving theme using Lin Brown stamps and Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watercolour Crayons.

I am a huge Lin Brown fan, so when I heard the theme was carved stamps, I immediately thought of the earlier stamp sets Lin had brought out in this style. I thought it would be fun for a change to look at some of the different techniques you can do using Neocolor II crayons, which are the watercolour ones. I love how the colours become so vibrant and easily blendable when water is added! As you will see, it can also be subtracted with a stencil. My choice of stamps was easy: I love tulips, and I particularly love to see them in gardens as they flop so quickly in a vase. They have such an immense colour range. My Mum bought a random bag of bulbs from a magazine and the two of us were fascinated every year when some incredibly dark purple, almost black, tulips, as big as wine goblets popped up every Spring! This informed my colour palette today, although I took artistic licence and had to go quite a bit paler as the stormy black looked terrible!

What I found in making this project is that brushing a layer of gesso over your watercolour card will further aid the blending of your crayon background.

I picked out my crayon colour choices to give a graduated effect, starting with earth colours to ground the tulip, moving through the yellows, peaches, oranges, and reds, and scribbled them in overlapping lines across my gessoed watercoloured card.

A wash of water back and forth on my brush to bring out the vibrancy. Love this bit!

I stamped the tulip from Eclectica ELB03 onto book text and added three shades of purple crayon.

Then a touch of water on my brush to bring it to life. I used the same colours for my text.

I stamped the tulip stem from Eclectica ELB03 in Fresco Finish Hey Pesto and Hyde Park onto the crayon background. I used Lin's circle stencil 001 and a baby wipe to remove a little of the colour. I added the word Tulip from Eclectica ELB23 and the words Flowers Whisper What Words Cannot Say from Eclectica ELB05.

To finish off, I matted and layered the watercolour piece onto a black and white piece of cardstock and then onto a black A4 card. In this close up you can see the book text on the tulip.

It was so great working with Lin's stamps and the Neocolor crayons. You can also experiment with using the crayons directly onto the stamps, spritzing, and stamping, for a watercolour effect. I definitely want to use them more often!

Blog: Lucy's True Colours
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Twitter: CraftyLuce

2018 #16 Reinkers: Colour-Mixed Tag with JoFY {by Keren Baker}

2018 Topic 16: Reinkers

How lovely to have Keren here today! She's been super experimental with re-inkers and Grunge Paste and...shhh.... glitter!! But we'll Totally allow her the glitter as it's a post using the delightful new JoFYChristmas stamps, so that is totally OK!! ~ Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Keren Baker with you today, and I'd like to share with you making a coordinated colour combination by using re-inkers. Truthfully, I was blown away by Jo Firth-Young's stamps and wanted a technique that would be in the background so Jo's stamps could shine!

Sometimes its easy to pick two colours to work together and then at the end of the project, something doesn't quite click. I've used the reinkers both to be an undercoat colour base for the crackle and also to colour the Grunge Paste!

I began with a fun find from the Works - a giant wooden tag purchased for just a couple of pounds. I started off by gessoing it. 

Mixing the reinker with Fresco Finish- Snowflake produced a marbled effect. What was really fascinating was to see the changes once I added the Crackle Glaze. 

I tried using just the reinker ink as the undercoat before the crackle and it didn't work, but mixed with a Fresco, it worked beautifully. You can see in the photo below. This is because the crackle glaze needs to be sandwiched between 2 coats of paint. So if you tint the paint for the base coat - tadaa! Success!

Once I'd prepped the crackle, I just needed to get on with the rest. If you look carefully at one of the close ups, the Oxide Reinker changed with the top layer of Fresco Finish-Snowflake - the vibrant colour (presumably the dye part of the ink) really shot to the surface and actually was wet pulling through to stain the cracks in the drying top layer. I dabbed it a little and just left the blue to dry by itself. 

I then did something sacrilegious and added both Snowflake Fresco, Reinker AND glitter to Grunge Paste. I'm fairly certain it wasn't designed for this - but the mix helped loosen up my leftover bits at the bottom of my Grunge Paste pot!  Now onto the best bit...the stamps

JOFY65 

(see this blog post for stockists of JoFY 2018 Xmas stamps)

JOFY68

Once I'd added snow-like dots of modified Grunge Paste, I started stamping lots of stars, baubles and a candle. The beauty of the way that Jo has designed them, is that you're able to cut apart the images and still retain the individual full images - so that certainly makes the sets super versatile.

I coloured in using alcohol markers and felt the candle flame didn't work as I was introducing orange and yellow which seemed out of place, so I trimmed it off. The candle also looked too much in the foreground, so I knocked it back by adding some more Grunge Paste mix which just combined the images better.

I did chicken out of stamping the gorgeous scripty words directly onto the tag as it was going to go onto the paste and crackle so I stamped on the tissue paper that came with my PaperArtsy order and simply added with PVA glue. I just had to add the sequins, Nuvo drops, bead edged wire spirals and attach all the other stamped images.

I think that using the Distress Oxide Reinkers will have varied effects when using with other products as a mixative. Due to the combination of types of ink in the Oxides, they will react differently. I truly love the way they worked with the Frescos as a base in the Crackle Glaze- the vibrant colour rising in-between the crackle. I'd like to see next time whether mixing two colours of oxide reinkers means they separate through the Crackle Glaze or remain mixed. I certainly will be going back to purchase more giant tags too!

Thanks for joining me tonight- I hope you love Jo Firth-Young's stamps as much as I do !
Keren x


Blog: Kerenbaker's Blog
Facebook: Keren Baker
Twitter:@craftstampink
Instagram:@craftstampink
Pinterest:craftstampink

To join our challenge and win a £50 PaperArtsy gift voucher:

Simply make something arty relevant to the topic, and link your creation from any social URL (eg. Instagram, Pinterest, Blog Post etc) sharing your original make to this challenge page.

The current topic link Topic 16: Reinkers will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, September 30th 2018, and the winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

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Good Luck! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

2016 #16 Buckle To Beauty {by Helen Chilton}

2016 Topic 16: Beads,Charms and Dangles

Hi everyone Helen here. Tonight I'd like to share with you this evening with a post about making jewellry.
I was digging through my stash and found an old belt buckle that I picked up somewhere just waiting to be altered. It's quite ornate so makes a lovely frame for a pendant - a bit of Snowflake paint and Treasure Gold shabbies it up beautifully.

I always like making miniature art and working out how to fit things together so this was an ideal project for me. I'm using Vintage Ink and the Dog stamps which also coordinate well.

Rub the buckle with Snowflake paint (I don't know where the middle prong went!):

Roughly colour a piece of silver metal with your chosen colour of alcohol ink:

Sand it back lightly:

Stamp the images from ID02 in black StazOn:

ID02

Frame with the buckle and start rubbing in some Treasure Gold (I used White Fire and Pewter):

Draw round the buckle with an embossing pen and cut out:

Glue buckle to metal, flip over and emboss the back with a paper stump:

Then you can start adding twiddly bits:

I inserted a wire headpin top and bottom to make loops for the chain and charm:

This is very easy to make - it would also work well with the owl head on the same stamp plate. When making something small like this you need to have an image that is clear - I chose the face because it's quite open and the background can shine through. You only need tiny amounts of metal/embellishments - it's a good way to use up scraps.
After making this I was on a roll and made a brooch with the same stamp set:

Hop on over to my blog to see how I made it!
Helen
Oh Helen I just love this, the buckle was lovely to start with but you made it extra special, it turned out amazing. All the twiddly bits look like they were just meant to be there. A great image to choose too, the vintage stamps really compliment the jewellery pieces perfectly. ~Darcy

We would love to see how you interpret this Beads,Charms and Dangles topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #16: Beads,Charms and Dangles, on this page HERE.
All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas, particularly if you were inspired directly by their post. All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Beads,Charms and Dangles link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Sept 4th 2016. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

2016 #16 Hello Beads {by Anneke de Clerck}

 2016 Topic 16: Beads,Charms and Dangles

Hi everyone Anneke here.

Tonight I'd like to share with you a post about beads, charms and dangles. I have tons of beads in my stash and I love making cards. No wonder I use beads on my cards from time to time :)

I've made a set of cards and worked with a simple technique for the background. I layered colors of paint on top of each other using my gel printing plate. For this project I've chosen an older Squiggly Ink stamp set, one from the Flora and Fauna series. Love the shape of the stamps, it's a very versatile set. At the end I'll demonstrate a few possibilities to add beads on cards.

Let's get started.

Step One: Gelli Printing

I worked with my 15 x 15 cm gel printing plate and Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics Zesty Zing, Limelight, Caribbean Sea, Mermaid, Lake Wanaka, Ice Blue, Pixie Dust, Candy Floss, London Bus, Prawn and Bougainvillea. I've cut 4 cards from a sheet of PaperArtsy Smoothy 340grs cardstock.

I started by spreading a small amount of Candy Floss randomly  to the gel printing plate with my fingers. I made a monoprint on each card. Next I repeated this step with Prawn. I changed back and fort with the order of the cards while printing so each card received the same amount of paint during the printing process.

I continued printing, one color at a time. By using this technique the colors are sitting on top of each other, they do not blend together. So there is no chance to end up with muddy colors. It's a simple technique I learned from Kate Crane. Not a lot of thinking involved, just playing!

Step Two: Stencilling

After the monoprinting was finished I added dots by applying Mermaid and Zesty Zing through a stencil (Donna Downey Signature stencil 'Halftone Dots'). 

I created white dots using Snowflake and a the Donna Downey Signature Stencil 'Grunge Halftone Dots'.

I added black accents using Archival Ink Jet Black and a stencil (Donna Downey Signature Stencil 'Mini Alpha Rerun').

Step Three: Stamping

I stamped flowers, flower centres and leaves from the Squiggly Ink Flora and Fauna 5 set on scraps of painted paper with Archival Ink Jet Black and cut out.

Step Four: Assembly and Embellishing

On each card I put together a flower, used a strip of painted paper as a stem. I stamped the same flower on gesso-ed vintage booktext as well, used these prints to further decorate the cards. I used the small stamps from the set to do some background stamping. 

Time to add some beads now :)

I decorated two of the cards with a row of dangling beads on a cord.

With my We R Memory Keepers Crop A Dile I set an eyelet on which I knotted the cord.

On this card I attached a strip of painted tissue paper to the bottom of the card using mini staples. I decorated the card with beads, charms and cord as shown. I make sure to only use small beads on my cards.

Here I glued small beads in matching colors to the bottom of the card. I added an orange one to the flower centre as well. I generaly attach beads with micro glue dots or with a very small amount of Tacky Glue. 

The complete set.

I'm sure you have lots of beads and charms in your stash as well. Go get them, give it a try and join the challenge. It would be lovely to see what you come up with!

Happy creating!

Anneke

My blog

http://somefiddlingonthekitchentable.blogspot.be

Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.com/anneke1/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/somefiddlingonthekitchentable/

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/anneke.declerck

I just adore the way you put colours together and the amazing results you create so easily! It really is a joy to follow your process, and so fantastic to end up with these perfect cards! Thank you! ~Leandra

We would love to see how you interpret this Beads,Charms and Dangles topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #16  HERE.

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas,  particularly if you were inspired directly by their post.

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Beads,Charms and Dangles link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Sept 4th 2016. The winner will be announced 2  hours later at 19:00.