Hearts & Flowers with Tracy Scott stamps {by Mags Woodcock}

Hello everyone

Mags  here with you today and I'll be showing you how I created an art journal page using a Tracy Scott Lace Booklet, stamps and a stencil.

For quite a while now I've been intrigued by the Tracy Scott Lace books (TSLB04) and wanted to use one. I also love the floral stamp set (TS009). My idea was to combine the two, along with a stencil (PS386). Choosing a quartet of Tracy's Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics would hopefully also allow for some nice contrasts and combinations of colour.

My idea was to create an art journal page, combining all the supplies. As Tracy has quite a distinct style, clean cut and vibrant, with lots of pattern building and symmetry, I wanted to create something with a different style and feel. Bold but asymmetrical, and with a painterly feel.

So lets take a look at how I started

My initial idea was to use the second layer of the Lace Book as a stencil to lay down colour onto a gel plate, but also to add colour to that second layer. The gel plate was great at grabbing the laser cut card of the book, and I used several sponges to apply the Fresco Finish chalk acrylics, Bermuda (FF224), Butternut (FF02), Deep Sea (FF198) and Lily The Pink (FF218). I allowed the texture of the sponge to show in several areas, but also blending the paint in other places.

When I was happy with the coverage on the lace book page, I removed it from the gel plate and set it aside to dry. To pick up the paint from the gel plate I applied a thin layer of Snowflake (FF15) Fresco finish Chalk Acrylic. Whilst this was still wet I pulled a print using a sheet of Smoothy Card (SCA4).

Here you can see the resulting print from the gel plate.

It was now time to work on the top layer of the Lace Book. I wanted a bold contrast to the colours I was using, so Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic , Little Black dress (FF19) came into play.

I placed the top layer of the Lace book onto a sheet of Smoothy card and completely coated it in the black paint, including the gaps. This gave me another stencilled page to use later.

It was now time to create some lovely focal flowers for my page. As I said previously, I wanted a painterly look so I had an idea on how to create that in a very simple way.

I chose a sheet of Smoothy card to work on and using a large brush, applied small amounts of Frescos in a circular pattern. Combining a couple of colours on each circle gave me lots of variety. I soon discovered that a drier brush, with hardly any paint gave better results.

As with a lot of mixed media techniques, the first layers often look very messy, this was very true here. But as I stamped the flowers onto the the painted circles with Versafine Clair Nocturn ink, and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder, my idea began to take shape.

I wanted to add some more details to the flowers and also more contrast, so my trusty Signo Uniball white pen was ideal. It transformed the look of the flowers. The final stage was to fussy cut the hearts, swirls and flowers, leaving a small border around each image.

If I strayed over the black lines with my white pen, A cotton bud soon removed the excess.

Now it was time to bring everything together, but first I needed to add some details to the Lace book layers. I bit of penwork on the black painted layer.

Now I bet you think I had forgotten about the stencil I chose ? Well it was time for it to add some random details to break up the symmetry a little. Again using my white gel pen.

As you can see, I had previously used the stencil to try out another idea, and there was leftover paint still on it.

The final lot of penwork on the layered up lace pages with a  base layer of black cardstock.

Now to the exciting bit ! Adding the flowers and hearts using 3D foam pads and PVA glue.

At this point I decided the page needed a word or sentiment. Stamping Bloom from one of Tracy's other  stamp sets  (TS029) was exactly what was needed and completed the page perfectly.

So let's have a look at the finished page.

Here you can see the completed page

The grouping of the flowers to the left of the page adds asymmetry, and also notice that the page is in landscape format , not portrait , nice and unusual.

The hearts drift across the page to encourage your eye to follow.

The painted, stamped circular swirls are layered over the centre of each flower, adding dimension and a colour contrast to the surrounding petals.

The distressed, painterly look of the hearts adds visual texture and interest.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and it has given you some ideas to inspire you.

I still have the two bonus pages from the project to play with, the gel print and the black stencilled page. Watch out in the PaperArtsy People Facebook page over the coming weeks, and I'll share what I create using those.

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Happy crafting

Mags x

Colourful Journal Pages with KC {by Katy Norgate}

Welcome everyone, Katy Norgate here with you; I'm delighted to be back, and showcasing Kate Crane's wonderful new stamps and stencils released last week. I have decided to get rather messy (again!) with paints to create colourful backgrounds to feature Kate's, unusually for her, BIG stamps! I just love them.

Here are all Kate's new stamps and stencils. They really are fabulous! While the focus of my two journal pages here features KC018, I have also made similar versions using the same techniques shown below, to feature KC019 and KC020.I have also used the mandala stencil PS503. All these items are available now from PaperArtsy Stockists

For my gel printed backgrounds, I have used a selection of Tracy Scott Fresco Finish Acrylics as seen below, for the first set of prints that will create my background pages: Flamingo (FF226); Cerise (FF136); Firebird (FF210); Cherry Red (FF86); and Banana (FF91)

Followed by Dirty Lime (FF197); Slimed (FF137); Bermuda (FF224); Sargasso (FF135); Shutters (FF207) and Pea Coat (FF27) on a second set of prints.

This is where I decided to get messy with my 8 by 10 inch gel plate to make my journal backgrounds! Smearing paint onto the gel press with my fingers is a very satisfying occupation, it has to be said! I kept pages to the same colour families to avoid making mud. Although Fresco Finish paints are fast drying, they still take a bit longer to dry on the gel plate, especially as I was applying it quite thickly in places. 

I began with some white Snowflake (FF15) as this helps blend some of the subsequent colours. I then applied the other colours from light to dark. Remember that as you apply colours to the gel plate,  your initial layers (the first colours applied) will show most as they will be the top layers when you eventually take the print. A tip is to flip over your gel plate to look through from underneath and you will get a sense of what your print might look like.

Below are the stages of building up my smeared layers....

I allowed this paint to dry completely before taking a 'lift' print. A good time to go make a cuppa. To take the print I used a brayer to apply a thin layer of white acrylic paint, this wet layer of paint behaves like a glue between the now-dry paint and the paper you will print onto. with a bit of practise, you wait for the paint to grab both the paper and the dried paint, then it should help the gel-paint transfer onto the paper. White is most commonly used for this technique.

Here is the print, with all it's yummy gorgeousness!

With the amount of paint applied to the gel plate, there will usually be some paint that does not lift off and remains on the gel plate. Don't worry, at some point it will grab in a future print, often giving some unintended delicious effects, so don't be too quick to clean your gel plate!!!

A fun way to take more prints to make complementary papers is to follow a technique demonstrated by Kate Crane for a YouTube Gel Press, Print to Project video, here is a link Expressive Painted Layers Part 1 This involves making painterly marks over the gel plate with a contrasting colour. Here I have used black, much like as shown in the linked video using a brush and other mark making tools. I then applied a thin layer of white paint as before to make the 'lift' print.

Here are the prints I ended up with: From the left: the original; a second pull using a pale pink acrylic paint; note the fun marks with specks of the original left over paint; and then a final page using pink paint again to 'clean' the plate. 

I then followed the exact same techniques, using the blues and green paints as listed above to make contrasting pages.

It is fun to try different colour combinations for this technique, so I thought I would use Tracy Scott's newest Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic colours: Watermelon (FF236); Peach Fuzz (FF238); Zinc (FF235); and Coastal (FF237)

These paints combined to make the lovely muted background pages above. You can see the journal page I created with these later in the post: here is a little teaser ....

So to compile the pages and prepare the main feature of the stamped images. I began cutting to size the background papers and contrasting strips. 

Since the pages are still quite raw, I used the Mandala stencil (PS503) to apply complementary 'flowers' using the same paint colours

I then used the small spiral stamp from KC019, as well as mini stamps from various sets to apply further colour and texture to the paper strips and background pieces (KC015; KC017; KCM021 see PaperArtsy Stockists) I like to keep these little treasures in a pot on my desk as I use them so much.

Fresco Finish Gold (FF20) paint was applied next using texture tools such as a bottle lid and edge of a credit card for a touch of bling. The strips were weaved together, and secured in place.

The main birdie images from set KC018 were stamped onto a white copier quality card stock, and fussy cut. I stamped again onto left over prints so that I could paper-piece the images These too were cut out and adhered to the base image. 

(This is another technique recently demonstrated by Kate on a PaperArtsy Live video )  

I used a little watercolour to paint the legs and lollipop. And used my sewing machine to add black stitching on the strips; attaching the birdies with some dimensional foam tape, and some additional hearts in the corner. After adding glitter glue for more dimension, we are complete. 

Here are the two completed journal pages. I'm really pleased with how the contrasting pages complement each other so well.

Here are some images of other pages I made with Kate's new stamp sets KC019 and KC020 , using the techniques described above, as well as utilising the pages made with Tracy's new colours as shown above.

I hope you have enjoyed the processes I have followed and will let yourself get messy in a similar fashion. If you don't have a gel plate, you can finger paint directly onto card stock, to get very similar effects, but you just won't get those additional pages from left over paint etc. personally I like the unpredictability of the results the gel plate gives you.

Keep crafting.

THE END!

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