Summer Party Pennants with ESC {by Jenny Marples}

Hello everyone, Jenny here with you today to share my ideas for creating fabric pennants, perfect for decorating your garden at a Summer party. Fabrics are such forgiving surfaces to work on so it's actually easier than you might think to get great results! 

The new collection of stamps and stencils from Raquel Burillo (Scrapcosy) are just perfect for this purpose, with beautiful floral images, lovely words and clever accent pieces.

Here's a peek at what's coming up...

The stamp sets used all come from the latest release and include ESC56, ESC57 and ESC58, combined with stencils PS528 and PS529. These are all available from your local stockists now.

The pastel palette of colours used for these pennants include PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints (Cloud 9, Sand, Lemon Meringue, Guacamole, Spring, Cloudy, Mauve and Dolly Mix) which combine so well with Mattints (Acid, Fern, Bellflower and Foxglove).

To get started on these pennants you need to raid your fabric stash, ideally looking for non-patterned pieces in complimentary shades. I chose a neutral, vintage selection, dying some scraps with diluted Just Walnut and Lemoncello Infusions, though you may decide on a different colour scheme to suit your party theme.

Now grab those stencils and get to work, repeating patterns if needed to fill space. The fabric may absorb more paint than you are used to with paper so lift the corner of your stencils to check before you remove them completely.

I find ironing my fabrics before stencilling really helps to achieve that crisp finish. You can also re-iron them once the paint is fully dry. I know, ironing, but it's the fun sort!

Tear apart your stencilled fabrics into smaller pieces and begin to assemble them into rectangular pennants, adding in other scraps as required. A piece of muslin and a damaged lace tablecloth did the trick for me.

Make sure to overlap your pieces and I highly recommend temporarily attaching them together with a fabric glue pen.

A quick running stitch along the edges helps to make those joins secure and you can add extra translucent layers over the top to break up some of the larger areas.

Now it's time to add some colour with those floral images.

 

I felt nervous about stamping directly onto the fabric pennants so decided to make use of PaperArtsy's Blank Printed Tissue (PT10) using grey permanent ink to transfer the images onto one side.

It's a lot simpler to paint in blocks of colour on the reverse of your stamped images - the tissue allows for the colour to show through.

On the right side add a touch of shading with your Mattints.

Try adding a coat of Acid Mattint to the centre of your unpainted glass to make it look like it's been filled with an enticing beverage!

The Acid Mattint with also add that pop of yellow when painted over Cloud 9 paint.

You end up with a much larger range of colours to play with by adding Mattints over your painted images and it's worth experimenting on a scrap of tissue if you are unsure about any of the combinations.

With coloured images at the ready it's time to add them to your fabric pennants.

Use a matte medium like PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Matte Glaze to stick your tissue images to the pennants. Be generous with your application because the fabric will absorb more than paper. And notice how the colour becomes slightly stronger with the glaze applied.

Your tissue images will take longer to become fixed in place so allow for drying time. The upside to this is that you have a small amount of 'wiggle room' to reposition your images needed.

 

The ticket image from set ESC56 is perfect for letting you add some lovely sentiments. I added some extra pieces of lace trim to the pennants and repeat stamped the Greek key motif from set ESC56 on grosgrain ribbon to join them together. You can disguise the joins with little flowers for a seamless look!

And with that these Summer Party Pennants are complete.

Let's give you a closer look at my finished examples;

You can divide your images up to extend across several pennants - I did this with one of the butterflies, some tickets and the mixed flower clusters. 

I'm now thinking this could look good with a warm colour palette, possibly even more vibrant! Which colours would you choose?

Thank you for joining me today.

Jenny

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December Diary with NEW PaperArtsy products {by Jenny Marples}

Hi everyone, nice to be back with you again. Jenny Marples here with you.

This year on the blog, we have free reign to do a deep dive into a PaperArtsy product range of our choosing. For this post I have been exploring the new Hot Picks Xmas releases.

If you watched Leandra's recent video launch you'll have seen there are three new sets of stamps and some new Paper Tissue, great for making your seasonal cards. I decided to use them to create a way of recording the memories, activities and important details from each day leading up to the festivities on Christmas Day.

Rather than go down the usual route of creating a journal for this purpose I opted to make a set of index cards and challenged myself to use every stamp available. To find out if this was achieved and see how I created these cards keep reading.

The PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Paints chosen for this project leaned into a 'Scandi style' colour palette.

Let's get straight into building the background for the cards beginning with base layer, a random patchwork of Tinned Peas, Hey Pesto and Zucchini Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paints. It's worth having three brushes on the go at the same time for this part.

I like to add extra layers in decreasing amounts and find scraping the Blue Moon and Marbles Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint from a gel plate with a spatula onto the background works well. It also means you can pull a print with any remaining paint from the gel plate 'palette', so no waste!

To finish the layering take turns with 'highlight' colours, Sand, Peachy Keen and Cloud 9 Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paints rolling a small amount of each in turn across the gel plate with a brayer before running it lightly over the background.

Chop up your background into the size of cards needed, retaining some to decorate your box. Now it's time to start decorating the individual diary cards.

It can feel pretty daunting to be faced with 25 'blank' cards so break it down by using some of the new Printed Tissue PT12 'Script', tearing off pieces and adding them using Mattints which coordinate with the paint colours. Here you can see Fern Mattint produces a subtle look which is to be expected on a mainly green background.

Then try Shark Mattint to echo the blues already used. You'll notice I blended the tinted tissue into the background by scraping a little more Sand, Peachy Keen and Cloud 9 Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint over the top.

Ladybug Mattint again echoes the salmon pinks in the background but definitely provides more contrast.

Finally try using Nutty Mattint, again to provide more contrast. In hindsight I would have been less heavy-handed with this one but still like how it picks up some of the browns in the colour palette. Now it's time to get stamping with that challenge to use every image provided.

 

It was a joy reaching randomly for each stamp in turn from the new PaperArtsy Hot Picks sets HPXM10, HPXM11 and HPXM12. I recommend using a stamping platform for this part as it allows you to re-stamp with extra ink if needed (we are stamping onto an uneven surface after all). It also means you can paint in the details and re-stamp over the top with ease. Along with the colours already used I added Chocolate Pudding and Scottish Salmon Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paints into the mix.

You'll notice a simple 'faux stitched' border has been applied around the cards; it's my favourite 'no sew' option which involved running a pattern tracing wheel along the edges before following the lines with a permanent black pen.

Try stamping directly over the Printed Tissue sections to enhance each image. It means you can get away with using even the smallest images individually to help decorate each page. You might spot I even used the PaperArtsy car image which is included on the sheet of script.

To add visual impact with the tiniest images try repeat stamping them. I also used part of the sentiment from one set inside the decorative cartouche from another.

Since the idea of this project is to create a record of each day in December adding the dates is always helpful; I used the PaperArtsy Stencil PS021 for this, adding that slightly uneven look in the corner of every card.

To finish the set mount your decorated cards onto slightly larger plain ones, enabling you to add lists, reminders, photos, receipts and memories on the back. You can also make a few blank cards with pockets on the front to store these. For my diary box I used a CooKatzCraft kit which has a co-ordinating die set to cut the holes in the bottom of the cards.

Now your diary cards can be loaded into their box in readiness for December.

Here are some more of the completed cards;

I loved creating this set of diary cards and did indeed use all 26 of the stamps contained within the three new sets. As well as making your own record in a box (or book) you could also use this method to create cards, tags and gift bags.

Thank you for joining me today.

Jenny

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