2024 Topic 8 : White {by Ellie Knol}

Hi everyone

Ellie Knol from PAPER-STAMPS-COLOR here with you today.

This topic WHITE had me thinking about using a lot of white paint from the Fresco Chalk Acrylic Paints !

I also wrote down a range of ideas; not only the type of project, but also the products, and techniques I could incorporate. 

I'm looking forward to sharing with you today my experiments making fabric paper from tissue paper; adding pieces of lace, gauze, leftover die-cuts.  Have a look how it worked out: I assumed the decoupage glue would offer a sturdy base to form "lace-paper".

There's more to discover: grunge paste on tissue paper for instance... 

To describe this project in a few words it would be Grungy Fragile Nature  Art... 

FRAGILE dried flowers, NATURE stamps and the ART to put that together!

To create with just WHITE is a challenge to me; it's always a struggle to NOT use color. I need colorrrrrr... lol How about you?

Read on to see how I worked around that.... 

The two stamp sets are from Sara Naumann; Set 35 (ESN35) and Set 55 (ESN55).
I know these two stamp sets will be great when using lots of white, and the type of project I envisioned to make.

I decided on embroidery cloth as the base of the project. 

I had a leftover discolored piece of embroidery cloth and decided to give it a go at making it sturdy with a mix of white glue and a filler, like grunge paste.

I wet the cloth with water, added the mix of glue and paste and worked it into the cloth, creating creases on purpose. I left the strip with creases in the sun to dry.

When dry I knew right away where this was taking me. I cut it in three pieces, and made a hem on my sewing machine with white thread on both the bottom and top of each peace to form a loophole through which I could put twigs or other wooden elements! 

The process of making fabric paper from tissue paper, leftover pieces of die cuts, lace, gauze, and of course decoupage glue is so easy! I like to use a watered down white glue, so the glue will dry slowly. Start with a layer of tissue paper as the base, adhere it to a craft sheet on the edges. Glue and layer the elements mentioned above to the tissue paper; keep adding until the tissue paper is covered to make a sturdy lacy-paper and you are happy with the outcome.

Do not overlap too much. Two layers, max three is best to be able to keep the patterns differentiated.

I used PaperArtsy Printed Tissue Blank (PT10 available from a PaperArtsy Stockist).

When totally dry, peel the new creation off the craft sheet, and enjoy your DIY structured paper. Here I used a green craft mat for contrast to show you the dried 'paper'.

WHITE, right? 

It turned out quite nice; a very structured surface, and worth all the effort. It also gave me additional ideas for making more "fabric papers" in the near future, lots of fun ahead.

I cut three tags from the lacy-paper with a die cut frame.

Now for my struggle, a real one. To make a project with just whites is a challenge to me. I'd like to enhance the lace and gauze patterns. To achieve that I chose to use nature's main color: green.

Infusions Dye Stain Slime is my choice to gradually add a little depth to the die cut tag pieces. It will also make the stamped images pop more, as white on white does not show the contrasts that well. It gives the edges of the tag shape a nice frame. I love that there are different color green particles in the stain, and of course some brown too. Needless to say: I tried it on a scrap piece first.

Next step of course is choosing the composition of the three 'sturdy cotton bases' and lacy-paper tags; to be filled with stamped images, spatters maybe, and adding more detail like embellishments.

Some sprigs, maybe, white washed to make it suit the project more. So far so good, we'll see.

 

Seeing it come together is always the fun part!
What composition do I prefer? Fussy cutting stamped images is a good start...

Now, I need to change the color of the stamping ink. I want the stamped images to blend in more with the color of the dried foliage. I got my color swatches of permanent inks out.. Memento Olive Grove looks the perfect match, I think... the Bamboo is too light to match the darker particles of the Slime Infusions.

SO, off I went and stamped all the stamps in both sets onto tissue paper, and onto white paper with this green color.

Now I have all of the stamping ready to assemble it to the lace paper tags, I also need some words to go with it. "FRAGILE" "NATURE" and "ART" which have to be adhered to leftover pieces of the lacy papers... Tissue paper to the rescue again, and Grunge Paste through PaperArtsy Stencil PS271.

I also created tissue paper with Grunge Paste through PaperArtsy Stencil PS270, but I did not use it in the end. New fodder... 

I am so happy I experimented a little.
Expect to see more details in this section, the final touches, assembling all the elements and some last-minute changes; some fiddling around ... always...

By moving around the elements I finally came to the compositions and adhered all of it to the lace-paper-tags. Quickly, before I could change my mind again!

I chose to fill in the parts I could not fussy cut with tissue paper, as you can see quite clearly on the middle tag here. I adhered the tissue paper with image and script to the lace-paper; when dry I adhered the fussy cut twig with bookbinding glue to line up over the tissue paper twig. 

I cut multiple twigs from our apple tree outside, and cut them to size to fit through the loopholes as shown. I chose to scrape the bark off and was surprised how beautiful the green matches the Infusions Slime color.

Of course I need white spatters; Fresco Chalk Acrylic Snowflake (FF15)

AND some spatters with Slime Infusions .. 

I ended up tearing the alphabet letters from the tissue paper (from stencil PS271) and adhered it with decoupage glue to leftover lacy paper to form the words; FRAGILE dried flowers, NATURE stamps and the ART to put that together.

I so much enjoyed playing with these products, and these various elements.

I hope you found some inspirational ideas in this post, and enjoyed the techniques to play and make art. 
Enjoy! 

Ellie Knol

Blog: http://elliecreahoekje.blogspot.nl/
Owner of: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DutchArtJournal/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllieKnolCrea/
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2021 Topic 2 A Pocketful of Journaling Resources with ESN {by Jenny Marples}

 2021 Topic 2: A Pocketful of Journaling Resources ESN {by Jenny Marples}

Taking inspiration from a variety of places, Jenny has created a beautiful journaling folio using clever ideas for adapting dies plus some interesting shaped pages. With pockets galore, this is a serene project perfect for recording plans and thoughts.
~ Keren.

Hi everyone, it's Jenny Marples (Pushing The Right Buttons) here. I'd like to share with you a little folio I've created to hold lots of the bits and pieces you might need when working in a planner or journal. As you might expect, that involves a few pockets!

When Sara Naumann talked about her new stamp and stencil releases in her recent FB live video in the PaperArtsy People FB group I was inspired by her suggestion that they could be used by planners and everyone who enjoys journaling. Rather than just make a few journal pages (and bearing in mind the current theme is pockets) it got me thinking about making pockets to hold those bits of ephemera, tags, washi tapes and other things that planners and journalers often use. Whilst making this folio I decided to combine Sara's new releases with some of her older stamp sets since they work so well together. Here's what the cover of the folio looks like (front and back, secured by a sari silk ribbon);

This all started with a masterboard created on an A2 piece of cartridge paper - I loved the colours chosen by Autumn Clark for her recent blog post and decided to follow a similar theme of yellows, creams and greens. As well as applying broad brush strokes in Winter Green, Haystack and Toffee I used a brayer to apply Heavy Cream and Cloud 9, stamping some of the ephemera images from Sara Naumann's stamp sets ESN36, ESN37, ESN38 and ESN42 in between the layers.

I used Eileen Hull's new 'Folio Journal' die as the basis for my folio, splitting each of the folding sections with a knife and adding book binding Architape with Hinge Spacer tools from Coolkatzcraft Ltd to introduce extra flexibility into each join. 

The entire hinged folio cover had cotton calico applied over the top. This was then painted with a slightly dilute layer of Toad Hall paint which, when dry, was sanded to add some age and softness to the finish.

On the inside of the cover I applied some gauze and painted the edges (the bits that would be visible) with Honey Dew.

Next it was time to start chopping up that masterboard and adding sections to the outside of the cover.

Turning attention to the inside covers it was time to start constructing various pockets to hold the bits and pieces needed by journalers. I used more dies for this bit including the Walrus Whiskers Die Set, a Folio Envelope Die Set and a Clever Strip Die to create the expanding sides to some of the pockets.

Some of the pockets were given an uneven coat of Toad Hall whilst the envelope was painted in Cloud 9. Many of them had pieces of the masterboard added on top. More of the masterboard was added to the inside cover.

With the basic folio constructed I needed to add a pop of extra colour; for this I turned to Infusions, dying one ply layers of tissue with Raspberry and Olive Tree, and some teabag paper with a mix of Rusty Car and Golden Sands.

To add to the decoration of each pockets and the front of the cover I stamped images from the new ESN47 set together with some from sets ESN36, ESN37 and ESN38 with Peat Moss Archival Ink before applying torn strips of the tissue and teabag paper over the top. 

Almost finished! I stamped various words and images from one of Sara's new sets ESN49 onto the pockets and covers using black archival ink and with Little Black Dress through one of her new stencils PS220.

Finally lines of white dots were created by tapping Snowflake through one of Sara's new stencils PS219.

Here is more of the finished folio starting with the front inside cover which, when folded back, reveals the first of the pockets containing a couple of die cut stencils and the folio envelope for notes and scraps;

There is an expanding pocket for ephemera on the first of the foldout sections and on the inside of the spine a space to hold a pencil (or pen) and a paintbrush.

The folio is deep enough to hold a hand bound notebook decorated to coordinate. It is secured in place by a band attached to the inside of the cover.

On one side of the final page are more pockets containing tags that can be used as bookmarks and a washi tape holder whilst the other side has been decorated and stencilled to coordinate.

Sara Naumann's new stamps and stencils are perfect for making your own bespoke journals, planners and folios as well as for using inside them and they can now be found at your local PaperArtsy stockists.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Jenny

Blog: https://pushingtherightbuttons.blogspot.co.uk/
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