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/
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2024 Topic 4: Books & Journals {by Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos} on the PaperArtsy Blog

Hi everyone!

Liesbeth here with you today. I´m a book lover! I love to read a lot, and I also love how books look, feel and even smell! And of course I love making them! 

I am always looking for nice, curious things to make the covers for a small book from. It might be during a walk in the forest, spotting leaves, husks, bark, pieces of wood etc. Also a paradise for finding books is the thrift store. I always see possibilities for book covers everywhere. That´s where I found these two altoid tins, my perfect book covers.

Our quarterly theme is ,HIDDEN´, and there is lots of space in the tins to hide something in! 

After I finished this project, we went for a short vacation to one of the Dutch islands: Texel. Completely the atmosphere of the wonderful stamps I used for the book, so I made some pictures there on the beach! I was happy with the result, and it was so much fun to create the book and the tiny beach inside the front tin!

First I hasitated for a moment between some nice wooden coasters I bought as well and the tins. The tins won!

At this stage I didn`t know exactly what materials I should use, but I was sure about the wonderful PaperArtsy Sara Naumann stamps, I chose ESN55 and ESN59. They are really perfect for this project, so natural and vintage looking. And I was also thinking about a nice stencil, some Fresco paint and maybe some Infusions...?!

First I had to prepare the tins, so I sanded them with sanding paper so the paints will hold better. After that I added a layer of gesso, in- and outside.

I painted the lids of the tins with some PaperArtsy Fresco paint Glass Blue, let it dry and covered some areas with PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze. After it dried, I painted the entire tins with two colours of PaperArtsy paint: Blue Oyster and Eggshell, together on the paintbrush, not mixed to much. Wonderful crackles appeared on the lids.

To make the backgrounds inside the tins I used the beautiful PaperArtsy Scrapcosy Printed Tissue Paper. I glued nice parts of it into the tins with gel medium, as shown here, but not before I stamped some shells on the paper here and there with a waterproof ink. (I used Tsukineko StazOn-Jet Black). 

The best way to paint the inside tissue paper, to add some colour and a vintage look, was using PaperArtsy Mattints, they are so multifunctional! So here I used the Mattints Dragonfly and Nutty just as a paint. Being transparent, the black printed tissue imagery is not compromised.

To decorate the front and back of the book I stamped the beautiful big shells from the two stamp sets onto a blank piece of tissue paper, tore it out and glued it down with gel medium.

Here I made a little mistake... i didn't realize the tins needed to be in opposite direction. the front one should open at the right, the back one should open at the left. Mine are the same, oops! But I decided to use them the way they were, and it didn't turn out to bad!

Now it's time to create the book itself. I cut some double pages, the size is exactly as big as the bottom of the tins. I used some PaperArtsy Infusions (Just Walnut) directly on the paper with water, and also in a spray bottle. This way I created a very old and vintage look for the pages. 

After drying I sponged with Ranger Distress Ink (Walnut Stain) through the PaperArtsy stencil (PS325), and stamped the several stamps of the two stamp sets with brown and black inks, I used them all! I used a little bit of bleach to highlight some stamped images.

As soon as I was satisfied about the pages I cut the corners nice and round and sponged the edges with brown Distress ink. Then I made a nice composition and glued the backsides of the pages together.

I covered the spine of the book with a piece of fabric. Using my Infusions Just Walnut spray I made the tins very old looking. I also sponged and stamped the edges and sides of the tins with black and brown waterproof ink. I used Ranger Archival-Sepia.

It was time to finish the book by gluing the back sides of the tins onto the front and back of the book. Here you can see the spine, I hung a crystal Swarovski star onto it.

I decided to create a hidden tiny beach into the front tin. I didn't want loose sand so I bound the sand with PaperArtsy Gloss Glaze. This way I created ,sand  paste' and it worked perfectly as I hoped. I just mixed a bit of sand with some Gloss Glaze.

With the ,paste' I made a beach at the bottom of the front tin and let it dry overnight.

After one night it had hardened enough and I decorated the beach with some shells, rope and driftwood. I glued everything on it's place.

The book is closed and decorated with a piece of twine and I added the text ,to the sea, to the sea' to the front. The text is stamped on a seperate piece of paper and cut out.

And here it is, a sea shell book with altoid tin covers and a hidden beach.

Some of the pages inside the book

Making book covers out of strange things is so much fun, so many possibilities! Just look around and search, hope you give it a try! I am very happy with the result of this beach book. The PaperArtsy stamp sets ESN55 and ESN95 are so perfect for this project! The size, backgrounds, focal points and style...it seems like they were made for it!

Hope I could inspire you. Have a wonderful day and see you next time.

Liesbeth XX

Blog:  www.liesbethart.blogspot.com 

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