2024 Topic 3 : Vintage PaperArtsy Stamps {by Autumn Clark} on the PaperArtsy Blog

Hi everyone!  It's Autumn Clark from SewPaperPaint here with you today.  

I've been super excited about the Vintage Topic, as it's by far my favorite of creative styles.  With our underlying theme for the quarter being Glazed, I began thinking about how to incorporate a little "trash to treasure" in with a vintage glaze concoction using the new PaperArtsy Mattints...

The reason I'm enamored with Mattints is their gentle ability to transform the color of the surface on which they are placed, especially tissue paper.  It's magic to see the tint and glue abilities work simultaneously!  

I thought long and hard about a mash up of designers and chose to work with PaperArtsy Hot Picks 1507 (HP1507) as my focal imagery and a beautiful background Eclectica stamp set 03 by Courtney Franich (ECF03) to compliment.  

I pulled together a super simple palette of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics in Calypso and Mulled Wine with Stone as my neutral.  My goal was to create an earthy brown glaze from Mattints in opposing colors: Squeezed and Dragonfly and I hoped to add some Just Walnut Infusions for good measure, since this is a Vintage Topic after all.  

You might tilt your head a bit when you see this color palette.  As beautifully styled as the photo is, the colors just don't go together do they?  I really had fun with this experiment and hope you will enjoy it just the same.

We've shown a lot of tissue paper techniques lately with the gorgeous range of PaperArtsy Printed Tissue evolving to include designs by Jofy, Tracy Scott, Alison Bomber, Seth Apter, Scrapcosy, Hot Picks and even Frames.  I decided to go old school and make my own Hot Picks tissue by stamping stamp set 1507 (HP1507) onto plain white upcycled gift tissue.  

Some tips on stamping your own tissue: always stamp over scrap paper to absorb the excess ink and always use permanent ink, which you heat set. The fun thing about working with tissue, whether stamped or printed, is having the ability to paint the reverse side for unusual effects.  I colored my tulips and butterflies with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics in Calypso and Mulled Wine with a detail paint brush over scrap paper.  I did make the mistake of painting the front of some of my images, so I learned to tape down the tissue as not to confuse the front/back along the painting process.

A couple of years ago I shared another Hot Picks post, found HERE, where I showcased stamped tissue.  With the addition of Mattints to the PaperArtsy line, I've since posted on the beautiful stain/glaze facet of Mattints on THIS post and fallen in love with the tintability concept of glazes, which previously I had used untinted (i.e. ModPodge of matte medium).  I saw a post by our Mags Woodcock on the PaperArtsy People FB group mixing the various colors to create an unlimited array of tints.  Thanks for the inspo Mags!  I wanted to create an earthy brown, so I picked Dragonfly and its opposite on the color wheel, Squeezed, knowing that blue mixed with orange creates brown.  

Next, I tore the flap off of a cardboard package and used my mix to adhere my painted stamped tissue.  Waste not, want not, right?  If this was a total failure, what had I lost?  I did an equal mix of each color for this first test and found the Dragonfly was more dominant in pigment.

I thought some 3D embellishment would work well on the panel, so I fussy cut the butterflies, which I had colored with pencils on kraft card and given the same coat of mixed Mattints.  I stapled them over some sisal fibers.  Then I used the pencils to add a bit of highlight to the coloring work on the dried glazed tissue and edged the panel with Colorbox Chalk Ink in brown and black.

To add the final vintage touch, I dipped the panel in watered Infusions in Just Walnut for some good splotches of deep brown.  The sentiment is from a piece of printed music I found in the recycle bin at the church where I work.  :)

I wanted to use the other two pieces of painted stamped tissue I had created earlier, but was at a loss for a different type of substrate.  While procrastinating, I looked through my own blog posts labeled "vintage" and found a cool post from when Distress Oxides had just been introduced.  In the post, found HERE, I created an unusual effect by dipping my card into Oxide, then brayering over it with Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics.  The result was the Oxide bled up into the painted layers.  I thought this would be fun to recreate.  I dipped a couple of kraft panels (to tie in with the brown from the cardboard) in Distress Oxide in Vintage Photo, then brayered with Fresco Acrylics in Stone.  After the paint dries, you can mist the panel and the Oxide will bleed up.  What a fun, mesmerizing process!

Now, in all honesty, during my procrastination a day had gone by and my Mattints mixture had dried up completely.  I thought it was a good chance to even out the brownness of the color and remixed using one part Dragonfly and two parts Squeezed.  You can see below how much warmer this mixture is and hopefully notice how the Oxide blends up into the glaze.  Now the cool part to me was that the Mattints glaze sealed in the Oxide.  When I misted these dried panels the Oxide did not bleed through.  And as I said in my last post, the paper like texture of the dried Mattints is AMAZING!  It's as if there is nothing on the surface, no glaze at all.  100% totally matte!  

I decided to add some embossing to all of these projects using the peeled paint texture stamp from PaperArtsy stamp set 03 by Courtney Franich (ECF03).  I used an old PSX brass embossing powder for this and love this color for a vintage vibe.  I added some sticker sentiments and sewn crinkle kraft paper.  

This one of those play by ear projects where I learned a lot.  The thing about playing this way is that the outcome may not always be our favorite work, but the techniques discovered usually become favorites indeed.  

These simple projects showcase some of my very favorite Hot Picks stamps and I hope the simplicity will inspire you to play with similar imagery, even if these stamps aren't part of your collection.  And I hope you will experiment with your own mixed glazes and paint combos.  After all, don't we all have a cardboard box lying around these days?  :)

It's always a pleasure to join you on the PaperArtsy blog.  Until next time...

Autumn

Blog: SewPaperPaint

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2022 Topic 14 : Colour Study: Triads {by Jennie Atkinson} with Ink and the Dog Mini stamps

Hi everyone, it's Jennie (Live the Dream) with you today, and I'm here to share with you a small book box using some fiery colours and a selection of stamps from the Ink and Dog Mini Stamps Collection.

For those of you that know me I am very much a neutrals/pastels creator and so when I was asked to consider taking part in this Triad Challenge I wasn't too sure what I was letting myself in for! I spent ages looking at colour wheels and decided to choose my Triad from colours which were not main primary colours but a "step" away. This gave me the choice of a turquoise (Calypso) instead of blue, plum (Professor Plum) instead of red and an orange (Autumn Fire) for my yellow.

The resulting painted colour wheel was extremely interesting particularly the lilac in section 6 but the green in section 11 seemed very odd ! and in fact I mixed it twice to make sure it was correct. However, Autumn Fire is transluscent and I was mixing this with an opaque so the latter must have "won" the battle of the mix!

I decided that the colours had a real Moroccan Market feel and decided to experiment first with paints on my Gel Plate before deciding how to use them ..... the result was a small book/box which can be used for trinkets or other finds.

Whenever I want to experiment with colours I nearly always turn to the Gel Plate. I love the way colours can be combined but also the way not everything blends together well so there appears to be little spots of lighter/darker mixing and due to the waxiness of the plate the odd little bit of white shows through. This gives a feeling of "texture" without adding anything into the mix at all.

I did try some random mixing of colours which didn't quite have a "feel" to them but once I decided on landscape striped areas of colour the feeling of an early evening Marakesh market square came to life!

I turned next to the stamps and had already fallen in love with the pattern of MN122 which again had a Moroccan carpet feel to it. Random stamping with some matching Archival Ink along with the text of MN124  started to fill in some of the areas.

New PaperArtsy Mini Ink & the Dog

However .... I did turn to two favourite Ink and the Dog Mini Stamps which I tend to use in ALL my backgrounds. In fact MN72 never leaves the block and sits on the craft table all the time.

                                                      MN23                           MN72

I didn't have any matching inks for the middle section but decided to go for a turquoise Archival ink which blended well with the Calypso but didn't look out of place on the Autumn Fire. As this was beginning to feel more like "sky" I used only the text and splatter stamps keeping a more open finish.

My main focus of my project had always been the beautiful new Mini Portrait stamp. I had instantly thought she was a "red head" so started by colouring with the hair and kept everything else quite simple.

MN118

She needed a frame ...... I tried different ideas from die cuts to wooden frames but then this little mask caught my eye and she fitted the aperture perfectly!

PM016

I new from the start that I would have to choose one of the three Triad colours as the main embellishment colour. As the frame would be located on the plum area of the paper I decided to go for the plum rather than adding in another distraction. I tried mixing Professor Plum Fresco with the Grunge Paste but it came out rather pink, so in the end used the Grunge Paste in its natural form on some thickish watercolour paper and once it had dried and was cut out, painted it with the Fresco Paint.

I used Eileen Hull's Skinny Mini Box Die to create the box as it is a good size for utilising an A4 sheet of gel plate print. I cut the paper in sections so it wrapped around the cover. However it would be easy enough to make a book cover in a similar way without the box.

I used one of my other prints to create a similar piece inside the box along with the quote from MN109.

MN109

This print was darker in colour and I felt worked better inside the box rather than outside. By this time the colours were really appealing to me and I was on a roll in terms of tying in other embellishments which focused on the Triad colours.... (I never thought I would feel so relaxed about bright colours!).

In keeping with the Moroccan feel I added some gold dry brush work on the frame. I felt the wooden embellishment worked better in the same colours as the frame but the little paper flowers painted in Autumn Fire Frescos added the contrast without being overpowering.

I experimented with other coloured embellishments but went for the contrast ribbon and hanging embellishment which felt more tonal ..... if you can say that with such bright colours!

Without the challenge of using the colour wheel I would not have put these three colours together or felt confident in creating with them. I cannot stress enough how "out" of my comfort zone this was, but being able to rely on a technical means of choosing the colours there was a reasonable acceptance that they should work together.

I am not sure that my random prints would have worked well but by isolating the colours into the three individual strips they combined better and gave me something which I felt I could identify with .... the Moroccan Market by night.

I shall certainly try this again in order to move myself away from my usual colours. It was exciting, terrifying, creative and satisfying all at the same time! I hope you give it a try!

Jennie x

Blog: Live The Dream

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