2023 Topic 11: Monochrome {by Asia Marquet} with Purple & Seth Apter stamps

Hi everyone,

It's Asia here with you today (Lemon Creation Art) here with you today.

I would like toshow yçou how I created an art journal page on black background. We do not usually use black papers for our projects, but lately I got to loke creating on black and playing with opaque colours. Some of these colours look better then others on the black background and I am always happy to experiment!  That's why the topic Monochrome spoke to me straight away. PaperArtsy has so many opaque acrylics, which are just perfect for it. Plus, there is an addition of Topography theme this quarter and I am crazy about letters and numbers! In all- just a perfect theme for me.

Today I am going to show you some of the opaque purple colors, make an art journal page perfect for beginners, but with some cool technique for advanced artists as well and  tell you about the common problems when working on a black paper.

Here are the supplies I will be using today, but let me first start with the paints and my black paper.

The first thing while working on a black paper is to choose well your colours (in my case one colour, so it was even more important to choose well). Why I choose purple? I love purples and I have to say that PaperArtsy has a lot of opaque purples, so it was just a question of finding one and get the most of it.

To this end I decided to do the swatches and I strongly advise you to do the same when working on black paper. As you know  the colors will look differently on black and a lot of them will not even be visible. That's why the opacity of colours is so important here- the more opaque colour, the better will be visible on black paper. So chose wisely and you will create surely a beautiful art!

Out of all thses beautiful purples I decided to go with Berry Nice Fresco Finish Acrylic- I love this particular shade of purple and I found it really opaque and, well, sort of cute :) Cute goes nicely with grunge projects. It will soften the effect of grunge a little and as it is quite bright, it will be a good contrast to black. I will also add a little bit of white with Snowflake Fresco Finish Acrylic.

Of course I can't live without some beautiful stamping and my choice fell today on Seth Apter's stamps: ESA35 and ESA23- amazing choice of grunge!

For grunge project a little bit of mess is necessary. That's why I will start with some random stamping in the background. I will use parts of both stamps and for stamping I will use Snowflake Fresco Acrylic. The stamping will not be perfect, as it will be done with acrylic paint, but it will create grungy background. 

When stamping with acrylics you can either use brush to add the paint to the stamp as I did here (the stamped image will be more precise), or you can just kind of "dump" the stamp into a pool of paint and then stamp it onto the paper (image will be quite blurry and messy). One more thing you need to remember when stamping with acrylics  is to wash your stamps in the soapy water straight away, to avoid permanently damaging them.

Here are some examples of my acrylic stamping- as you can see the images are a little bit messy (what I was aiming for anyway), but also quite visible (you can still see the letters). When doing grungy stamping, you do not really need to keep your stamp on the acrylic bloc, you can just as easily keep it in your fingers and just stamp this way.

Numbers and letters are my "go to" very often when doing grungy backgrounds, so since I have in my stash another one of Seth's stamps- ESA24. I used a part of it to add more interest to the page. 

I did the same with part of his other stamp- ESA23.

If you are wandering what is missing, it's splatter, of course! I had some leftover paint and it was just enough to creat some beautiful splatter.

Now, let's move to the focal point, or rather few focal points.

 

For the focal point (points) I will be using the circle elements from Seth Apter's stamps: ESA35 and ESA23. Circles are such a beautiful form to work with and since Seth's stamps are definitely on the grunge side, they will work perfectly with my background. This time I decided thought to stamps them not on the black background, but on the background coloured in purple.

This colour- Berry Nice Fresco Finish Acrylic-  is just so amazing on the black background and so vivid!

When the background is completly dry, I will emboss it with WOW white embossing powder. The white powder will be contrasting nicely with white stamping on the background (stamping is very mat, while embossing has a glossy feel to it). Thanks to that and the stamping on the purple paper, the focal points will be well visible.

Since I was not sure which elements I will use as focal points, I stamped and embossed few of them. This way I will have a choice.

And of course the last part of this process was to fussy cut them all.

Even though I made my focal points, I was thinking that there is something missing.I wanted to add more purple paint to the page and make the focals a little bit more varied. I was not totally sure if I am making the right decision, but I decided to, once again, do some stamping with acrylic paint. This time with Berry Nice Fresco Finish Acrylic and the smallest  part of the stamp ESA35.

I think it was a good decision. The stamping worked really well and it gave a little bit of different feel to the whole project, which you will see in the close-ups. Sometimes it's really good to mix up techniques to create different layers. Here I mixed embossing and stamping with acrylics, stamping on the black background and on the purple one. These are all simple techniques, but at the end the effect is just so cool. And grungy.

Time for the nicest part of the project- putting it all together! I love this part and today was no exception. There were moments during this project when I was not so sure if all will work at the end ( too much grungy stamping in the background? Too many focal points? Not enough focal points??? ), but now, looking at the finished page in frony of me, I am trully happy.

But before this happiness happened, there were still some steps to take to finish it off.

Firstly I placed my fussy cut circles on the page and tried few arrangements until I was satisfied with it.

Of course I ended up not using all of the fussy cut elements, but it's always better to have too many, then not enough! I cut off the part of one stamped circle (it is a nice thing to add some elements coming a little bit out of the page, it gives more interest to the whole project).

A little bit of purple splatter:

 

And a little bit of white thread placed under one of the circles. Plus a glue to hold it all together.

Here is the finished page:

I do believe that when making any kind of grunge project,  you do not have to stress too much. Maybe this is why I love it so much! In this case I was happy to make it on black background,  as I feel that black gives more of this grungy feel. Plus, I had to use some kind of typography elements on the project and this is one of my all time favourite elements to go to when I am stuck with my background, or when I just fancy adding some random numbers or letters.  But as I mentioned earlier- working on black can be tricky sometimes. The choice of color  you use on the black background is very important, so is the making of swatches beforhand. You need to be sure that your colour will be visible on the paper. Opaque Fresco Fisnish Acrylics will do the job beautifully! Translucent paints won't work on black and you may also get problems with semi-opaque colours, so just make your life easy and go straight for opaque paints (PaperArtsy acrylics has the opacity of colors mentioned on each bottle at the front, so you can be sure what you are using).  

The most difficult part for me while making this project (and any other project on black background) was taking photos. My black art journal paper has a mat finish to it and even despite that a lot of my pics finished in the bin! But it is a question of habbit and I am getting better when taking photos (at least I hope so!). Also, in the period of the year when Sun is nowhere to be seen, working with black paper could be difficult. So do not be afraid to turn the page around, turn the light around and take few pictures, just  to be sure you going to get at least one which is beautiful. I can tell you honestly- it's worth it!  Despite all of this small issues, black journal pages are so beautiful and fun to make!

So just get a piece of black paper, create and share with us your amazing makes!

Happy crafting!

Asia

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2023 Topic 7 : Art Dolls {by Asia Marquet} with Zinski Art stamps

Hi everyone, 

it's Asia Marquet with you today (Lemon Creation)

I don't really remember last time when I created something which isn't an art journal page. This is one of the reason why I choose the topic Art Dolls- I decided to make something more elaborate, off the page and with different embellishments. It helped that I always found the topic of Art Dolls very intriguing and full of possibilities. In this post you will find my own interpretations of this topic, a little bit surprising maybe, but I hope also a little bit funny.

So let me introduce you to free form ATC- that is: Dolly, Molly and Holly- my 3 very, very elegant, beautiful and  fashionistas sheep.  Are they really dolls-  you may ask. Why, of course they are! At least in my imagination! 

Let me explain you step-by-step  how I covered those funky sheep in fluff, put on them a truly beautiful make-up (lol!) and add some beautiful, transparent accents (I heard transparency is very popular in fashion nowadays!)

I am not very big on fashion, but this project definitely helped me to show my true clothing/make-up potential and I think this is something definitely worth trying. I had fun and I hope you will too :)

In general, when choosing project I am going to make, what speaks to me are at the very beginning are the stamps, then the colours. The sheep I choose to use are simply adorable! You can just look at them and you know you gonna have fun! Hence my stamp choice- 2 sets of stamp from PaperArtsy Signature designer Elena Zinksy: ZA21 and ZA26.

As for the colours- the choice was simple. I wanted bright, happy colours, but the only ones I could use were the ones which would match the flock I have at home (such a cool material, btw!) I needed: green, blue, turquoise and yellow and I've chosen Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics simply because they are bright and happy and you can do so much with them in way of application or colour mixing. Here they are:  Blue Lagoon, Banana, Southern Skies and for sheep faces- Blah Mange.

So let's see how my happy, colourful sheep came to life!

To make project more interesting and of course more in synch with the main theme, I knew I am going to fussy cut the sheep and make free form ATC (Artist Trading Cards). Well, it wasn't an easy task as the sheep are full of really tiny legs and hands or whatever it is sheep have. But fear not- I got a solution for that, which I think goes really well with  Art Doll theme.

First things first- I stamped all three of my Ladies on a piece of mixed media paper with Versafine  ink (Onyx Black). I find it useful to stamp them at least in doubles to have an extra just in case. Then I decided which sheep gets which colour and what kind of embellishments I will give them. The names came at the very end, after I got to know them better:)

Once stamped, all they needed was a touch of colours. I used a round brush for that and to make them look more like sheep, I made sort of tap movements while applying the paints, which created a wool-like  effect.

After the paints were applied, I fussy cut the sheep, not paying to much attentions to limbs as I knew they will be replaced at the later stage. All the small,  stamped elements (lips, flowers, etc) were then coloured with Promarkers.

The last part of this stage was to cut out the hearts from one of the Ladies- let's call her Molly. I will be making a sort of heart transplant on her at the later stage.

My Ladies are already so pretty, but I need to accessorise them tiny bit better- with a new handbag, new hearts or some lip gloss. So let's see how that went.

It is true- I could have left my sheep the way they are, but I really wanted to beautify them a little bit more.  For a nice transparency effect I was hesitating between piece of acetate or vellum (tracing paper). I found acetate a little bit too boring- for a lack of better word. Fortunately I found in my stash coloured vellum paper and then everything clicked. There was one which was rose, and the other, turquoise. The rose one was perfect for Molly's hearts, the turquoise- for Dolly's handbag. Holly got nothing- it seems she is definitely not my favourite one! I stamped both sheep onto two pieces of acetate, this time with better and quicker drying ink- Ranger Archival (Jet Black). Then I fussy cut Molly's shape and Dolly's handbag.

It was quite easy to glue the hearts as I could add glue to large surface- the hearts were to be the layer underneath the actual sheep. Adding handbag was a little bit tricky- small element, with all the parts transparent is harder to fix, as the glue may be visible even after drying. I used fine glue applicator and tried to add it only where the stamped lines are, but I wish I could have add some 3D tape underneath to create a volume effect. Unfortunately handbag was way to small for that. 

Once again- for more transparency I wanted to add to the project, I used Ranger Glossy Accents. Which was just a perfect choice for not only embellishing some of the elements like flowers, but also for creating lip gloss effect or accentuating the eyes or cheeks- just look at Holly below:

And Molly:

Here is the fluffy part- to make the sheep resemble sheep even more, I added to each of them a little bit of flock. I got it in one of my local craft shop and I haven't use it for a long while, waiting, it seems, for this particular project. To adhere the flock to the paper I used Ranger's Glossy Accent again, covering the parts I wanted to add the flock to, i.e. ears, hat, parts fo body. If you look closely at the picture, you will see that my poor Dolly was covered, by accident, with the same flock as Molly- the blue one. I realised at the later stage that she supposed to be turquoise, so I fixed the problem then. Mistake will be fixed and Dolly will be happy.

The very last thing left for me to do was to fix their legs and hands. Since they are Art Dolls, I needed to make them a little bit interactive, hence the wire. There was a moment when I thought about using elastic or thread, but finally I decided on something more. You. can still play with it, bend it or make the sheep hold each other's hands. I coiled the wire to make it look as similar to the stamped limbs as possible, pierced the holes where the legs and hands started to be able to put the wire through them and then I attached it at the back with tape. If you don't want. the messy back to be visible, all you have to do is to re-stamp the sheep again on. apiece of thick paper, fussy cut their main body and glue them at the back covering this way the visible wire and tape.

The project would have been finished at this point, but yes, there is the question of adding incorrect colour to one of my sheep. I could have leave her like that, but I am sure she would not be happy having the same sheepskin as her friend. Since the first layer (the bad one) of glue and flock were dried already, I could easily add another one with more glue and this time correct, turquoise colour of the flock. 

However before adding the flock, I decided to add some heart-shaped buttons to her legs and hands. As you may remember- she din't get any vellum embellishments, so I felt guilty. On the actual stamp image (ZA26) this sheep has small hearts instead of feet and hands. Luckily I remembered having tiny heart-shaped buttons in my stash, so I decided to embellish her tiny bit more.

Even though on the photo you can't see it too well, my other. sheep, Dolly got  hairy legs and hands. To get this effect I added a little bit of glue to the metal wires and dipped them in the jar of flock. 

My Sheep Ladies are done and it was a real pleasure. So let me introduce you to Molly:

Dolly:

and Holly:

Here is the whole, happy and beautiful, and very, very fashionable gang:

 

Well, it was truly a fun to work on this project. My very glamorous ladies are happy and so am I. True- they were a little time- consuming and working with such a ladies requires to have  attention to detail, but otherwise it was just one of this projects which you never forget. It's easy to work with such stamp designs- you can easily add colours, textures, embellishments and create your own and unique set of free form ATC. Or a small journal entirely dedicated to sheep or animals in general. The important lesson I took from this project is this- if you work with funny/ funky images, your imagination goes wild and you are relaxed and believe me- laughing  a lot in the process! This is, to me, priceless. I enjoyed this project so much so I gave the sheep names and I made few medium quality jokes here. Or at least I tried :)

So if you are stuck in your creative process, or feeling a little blue, create something funny and you'd be surprised how happy it. will make you!

Happy crafting!

Asia

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