2016 #19 Woodland Nymph {by Donna Gray}

2016 Topic 19: Die Cuts

Hi everyone, Donna Gray from Inky and Quirky here excitedly joining you this evening with a post about Die Cuts. I love using an assortment of die cuts to add interest and texture to a creation and when I saw the new Seth Apter one’s it set the little arty cogs in my brain whirring away with possibilities! So I thought I’d use them teamed up with some wonderful Lin Brown stamps to do an Autumnal theme with a woodland nymph keeping to all the russet colours. 

 Step One:​  Use a large piece of That’s Crafty white/greyboard and start to brayer on the colours of Fresco paint in Tikka,Tango,Zesty Zing and Chartreuse randomly to create a light background for the stamping. Start adding some stamps from the fab ELB29 set using Archival ink in Coffee, this keeps the background muted as I didn't want it to overshadow what comes next. 

ELB29

Step Two:​  Next it’s time to start drawing the wood nymph…...yes she does look a bit strange at this stage but don't worry it gets better! Use Fresco Nougat as the base of the skin colour, Fresco Tinned Peas for the eyes and Fresco London Bus for the lips, define the features using a brown Faber Castell Polychromos pencil. The body was painted with a mixture of Fresco Zesty Zing, Seaweed and Brown Shed, I wanted to create a sort of tree trunk effect.

Step Three:  Take a sheet of PaperArtsy Smoothy paper and sprinkle some lovely Infusions on, use a mixture of The Sage, Lemoncello,Orange County and Are You Cerise and spritz with a good spray of water until the colours start to mingle, dab with a kitchen towel if needed before heat drying. Now it’s time to start stamping up some leaves using the leaf stamp from ELB29 with a mixture of Archival and Memento inks, still sticking to that Autumnal colour palette, lots of lovely fussy cutting there! At the same time I also cut one of the Seth Apter dies (Drip Drop set cut from more Smoothy paper) and used the same mixture of Infusions.

Step Four:  I ​used some more die cuts, this time from Tim Holtz’s Sizzix Garden Greens die, and coloured with more Infusions in the same colour range as previous. In the end I only used the leaf pictured on the right as the other one just didn't work for me and as you'll see on the picture of the final creation I substituted it for another Seth Apter die (Ring Around) which I coloured with Distress inks in Barn Door, Vintage Photo and Spiced Marmalade.The same Distress colours were used on the die cut from the Drip and Drop set with a little bit of stamping with the circle stamp from the ELB29 set.

Step Five​: Now you start pulling all the pieces together. Use the drip drop die cut to form a circle around the wood nymph’s head and then layer up the leaves around that (I added a little Barn Door to the leaves to redden them up a bit). I used stencil PS002 Lin Brown and pounced Mowed Lawn Distress ink through it to create a little more depth on the background.

Next take a couple of stamps from ELB23 and ELB29 and use on the nymph’s ‘body’, stamp and cut the leaf stamp separately and pop behind the leafy garland. Take the gorgeous tulip stamp from stamp set ELB23 and colour with a mixture of Zig clean colour pens in red and orange shades, fussy cut out and again place one in the nymph’s garland and attach one on top of the die cut leaf. For a finishing touch add a couple of Tim Holtz chit chat stickers and use one of the new Ranger Enamel Accents in white to add a little pop here and there against the Autumn colours.

 ELB23

Step Six: ​ Here’s a close up of the face and some leaves. I added a couple of drops of Decoart Media Liquid Glass to the leaves so they look like they’ve just caught a little rain drop.

I really hope this has inspired you to get out your stash of die cuts and use them up, they are so versatile and can be coloured and textured with a whole range of products depending on what you want to create. How about drawing your own wood nymph too and maybe create one for each season, now there’s an idea ;)

Donna Gray 

Blog:Inky and Quirky

Ooh just gorgeous Donna, these colours are stunning and Lin's stamps are perfect for this, they really fit well with the die cut shapes and over all theme. ~Darcy

We would love to see how you interpret this Die Cuts topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #19: Die Cuts, 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 Die Cuts link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Oct 16th 2016. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

Summer 2016 #3UP {Hot Picks}

Hello Everyone, Leandra here

So here we are on the final night of #3UP. 
The end always comes around so quickly, which is tinged with sadness. Every time we do a #3UP, the content seems to offer so many ideas with new stamps, colour combinations, techniques and the like. It leaves me itching to try something different, and I hope you too!

Tonight Donna, Chirs and Nikki have pulled out all the stops and given us an awesome array of ideas with Hot Picks Stamps and the popular product of 2016 Distress Crayons. Of course, similar results can be achieved with crayola Slick Stix or Portfolio Oil Pastels (also water soluble) and Gelatos etc.

I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy their ideas!

~Leandra

First up this evening we have a project from Donna Gray.

I'm Donna Gray and I'm thrilled to be here! I adore all things mixed media especially drawing and carving my own stamps, hope you like what I've made.

It was so much fun working with 3 sets of stamps that were pre-chosen for me and getting to mix and match them up....way out of my comfort zone there I think! I coloured all the stamped images with my beloved Neocolors II.

I love this method of smearing crayons on top of Gesso then taking a stencil and a moist baby wipe and removing some of the water soluble crayon through the stencil... makes for a really interesting background don't you think?

A close up of one of my favourite little techniques, covering with glossy accents then allowing to dry, place in freezer for a few minutes, remove and then crack, gives a really good 'broken glass' effect.

To see the full project please visit my blog post HERE.

Places to find Donna.

Blog: Inky and Quirky

Next this evening we have Chris Cresswell

Hi everyone. Chris Cresswell here, aka artmadnana. My love of art journaling, mixed media and bright colours is well suited to tonight's project challenge. I have really enjoyed exploring these different art crayons together with the the fabulous Hot Picks I was given! 

As soon as I saw my Hot Picks selection: I fell in love. I immediately made a decision about my colour theme. Seeing those gorgeous butterflies made me reach for blues and purples; not my usual choices. I also decided that I was going to only use parts of stamps in all three sets. But how to combine them? I love the poppy but it had to fit in with this very definite colour theme! I limited my crayons to: portfolios, Gelatos and Crayola Slick stix, choosing similar colours from each range.

Here, I borrowed an idea from Donna Downey to emboss the poppy head several times across the canvas before 'spraying' several of the Gelatos over the entire surface. Once the Gelatos are dry you simply wipe over the embossed image to make the white flower pop against those sprayed colours. Delicious.

Here is a close up of the poppy on the frame. I mixed different portfolio crayons with water and sprayed onto heavy PA smoothy card to create these. I cut out four and overlapped them to form a larger flower head. I then put Ranger crackle glaze on top and finally sealed them with a sparkly varnish. A few beads were added to complete the effect. I love finding different ways to use these crayons.

To see the full project please visit my blog post HERE.

Places to find Chris

Blog: Loops and Lines

To finish the week we have one final project from Nikki Killinger

Hi, I'm Nikki K, been crafting since around the age of 14, mixed media is my passion, love to create bright bold or grungy, no style is my style!

I thoroughly enjoyed creating this bright vibrant cover for my own Art Journal, it makes me smile each time I open it. The stamps were a pleasure to work with and gave crisp clear images easily.

The stamps and Portfolio crayons worked beautifully together, and toned with the inks I used for creating the background stamping. The colours just pop! The crayons were creamy and easily blendable. 

Each of the stamp sets interact perfectly with each other, I love the steampunk moths and butterflies, and all the fab texture and background stamps. The sentiments are just perfect. A complete favourite in my book.. literally! xx

To see the full project please visit my blog post HERE.

Places to find Nikki

Blog: Crafty Ramblings

Whew! what a week! Our guests have surpassed themselves and everyone has produced stunning work, incredibly inspirational for us all!

Darcy and Leandra would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that took part. It is amazing, actually such a thrill to see so many different styles and approaches. We hope that you have all enjoyed the week as much as we have.

So that brings #3up week to a close.

However I hear that behind the scenes, Leandra has a few surprises planned for next week. We are taking a break for a week from the traditional blog format, but Leandra will be dropping some sneak peeks on the blog, and {TIP} you might like to check that your Periscope app is updated! We might even give facebook live a whirl too.

So keep your eyes peeled for announcements on all social media as well as the blog as we are planning to mix things up a bit. There will be some special 'reveals' when you least expect it.

The next challenge will be Topic #14 and that will begin on Sunday 24th July at 19:00.

~Darcy