What a year of delights we have seen from Kate in 2025. Her quirky characters are just the right amount of adorable and funny, and those marks and layers she brings to life for us all are so interesting to watch her bring to life when she shares the process in her Facebook lives over in our PaperArtsy People community. I hope you find some time over the restful period between Christmas and the New Year to get caught up on her ideas, and perhaps have a go yourself! Here's to another interesting year ahead with Kate - we have some exciting plans coming your way!
~ Leandra
2025 - what a year! And as usual it just seems to have flown by, and we're already thinking about a whole host of new designs for next year. This year has been an eclectic mix of animals, creatures, florals, Christmas, and even a few more minis. All with a touch of whimsy, of course!
February Release: The Funky Critters Collection
KC009, KC010 & KC011
PS453, PS454 & PS455 (Regular)
February saw some funky birds, scribbly florals, and even some slightly silly fish, all of which work well together in combination. Alongside stencils with plenty of familiar marks, vines and circles to add to the creative process.
Birds and florals are an easy combination and happily play side-by-side, as you can see here with the florals framing a rather silly chicken.
Owls can be a hoot (!) and a leg sticking out to the side is just asking for something to balance on it, in this case a lovely single flower.
What is better than one angler fish? A floral angler fish of course! Or several, all peacefully swimming together. This particular stamp set, including birds and fish, was designed with florals in mind so feathers and gills and tails became petals.
I do love a large and busy group of florals (or anything!) but sometimes a single image can be quite powerful. And here you see a single slight droopy looking echinacea placed over a gel plate printed background using alcohol ink; one of my favourite go-to techniques.
A close-up of a background created using alcohol inks on the gel plate, and a stencil with very simple but oh-so-useful all over marks.
You can check out a video in the PaperArtsy People group sharing this technique *here* 
May Release: The Witching Hour Collection
KC012, KC013 & KC014
PS465, PS466 & PS467 (Regular)
I so enjoyed playing with this collection! A combination of some spirituals gals, a few potions, alongside fairytale toadstools, and fluttery butterflies made for an easy combination yet again happily playing side-by -side.
I stamped the toadstools here on matte film before placing them over a colourful background. Their semi-transparent nature gives them an ethereal glow.
One of the things I really enjoyed about this set was the slightly taller figures - it was fun to play with something a little taller. Here I think she looks very at home surrounded by fairytale toadstools.
Katy Norgate, a talented and familiar PaperArtsy blogger, has a magical way with colour, and created this very striking and bold colourful piece. Somehow it reminds me of a magical sweet shop!
August Release: The Holidays Collection
KC015, KC016 & KC017
PS483, PS484 & PS485 (Regular)
Christmas in August?! Why, yes, we all need plenty of time to get ready for the big day! But this release wasn't all about Christmas. I included some quirky little rather rotund people which grew out of on-the-go sketching in my little journal. These are really just every day stamps, but I always say you can make any stamp work for Christmas.
This fairly was just crying out to be added to a strip of acetate so she could freely fly over a colourful printed background, and a row of mini Christmas trees which actually work just as well as toadstools.
Lots of stamping in this Christmas mobile but so fun and satisfying to create. After getting in a rather large and annoying knot using invisible twine to hang the images, I settled on acetate strips which was a very effective solution.
Building transparent layers with films and acetates is one of my favourite things. Stamping Gold Fresco onto matte film through the simple but effective marks stencil added so much depth to this background.
And yay! for grumpy gnomes! And punny quotes!
November Release: The Quirky Characters Collection
A final release for the year ... 8 little minis with something of an insect theme. Lots of wings, spots, antennae ... as well as Deely Boppers, and extra legs! A bit of quirky fun for any occasion. These little credit card sized treasures work brilliantly as stand-alone on small projects, but just repeat them or use them in groups for larger projects. Very versatile.
Here's another beautiful Katy Norgate sample ... with her trademark pop of colour.
An incredibly useful frame is included in this collection. It's brilliant for just adding over an image like this one below to highlight the main focal area.
But to make such a small image work on a larger project such as an art journal page, repetition or grouping can be a very useful tool.
Katy had the same idea here, when she repeated this image (and gave us all an ear worm too).
Unusually Katy used more neutral colours here but it just works!
Stamptember Feature (with SSS)
In September I was a featured partner with Simon Says Stamp, a USA based craft retailer. SSS features a different partner brand every day of the month throughout September, from Tim Holtz to Gina K and a lot of clear stamp and die brands, including their own in house products.
PaperArtsy has been supplying SSS since 2005 when they first exhibited at a USA based trade show, and Heidi was one of the first USA customers who visited their booth as a new business herself. Back then exclusively online retailing was just beginning to gather momentum, but it was pretty rare for craft suppliers to be online only. Both SSS and PaperArtsy were exclusively selling online at that time.
I created a set of stamps designed to be versatile for a range of projects within the one set. You can see below the designs featured for my day of Stamptember. We also created a coordinating stencil and both products were available individually or as a set.
These items were only available directly from SSS on their website at the time of the promotion. Heidi pre-orders from PaperArtsy a quantity a significant period of time ahead, and once they are gone there is no more stock. Imagine juggling this event for 30 + brands in just one month, a massive undertaking!
Not only is this opportunity good exposure for my design style, but also for the PaperArtsy brand. PaperArtsy engages with this event because it exposes their brand to a wider group of crafters, particularly in the USA, and that exposure helps drive interest and engagement to stockists globally which is incrediblly important and even more so in the current climate.
Next year, if they are invited to participate again, it will likely be a different designer who is the focus. For example, in 2024 JoFY was the featured designer.
Leandra and I approached a number of crafters in our orbit to make samples for this promotion with these designs, and when our day came up we shared all the makes as reels on the @PaperArtsy Instagram account. We know this is a time sensitive offer with the short 24 hour cycle, so we did our all to share the products in the hope that people would jump on the offer before it sold out. It was an absolute joy and a privilege to work alongside crafters from within our community on this event, and they all really did us proud.
If you managed to procure these designs, here is some fabulous inspiration from our supportive Stamptember creative team.
By Sarah Downes
By Mags Woodcock
By Lindsey Bowe
By Helen Ranger
By Colleen Melody
By Claire Stead
By Nikki Acton
By Katy Norgate
End of Year Project: Let's do it all again! by Kate Crane
I created this double page spread in my kraft art journal to represent my creativity throughout 2025. It's such a fun way to look back at the year and to keep track, but also a great way to use up scraps of gel prints and backgrounds And if you have been joining in with the Paper Artsy play-alongs or the technique lives over in the Facebook group this year, you'll have plenty of those!
You only need a few supplies for this project because you'll be mainly using up scraps and bits that you already have. I also used Frescos in Snowflake, Gold FF20, Watermelon FF236, Kiwi Gold FF230, Cherry Red FF86, and Script tissue PT12, alongside a few more general supplies such as gesso and gel medium. I added a little background stamping with the mini KCM021
I began by drawing squares with a black fine liner, approximately 5x5cm across a double page spread with a plan to create a mini collage in each square. I finger painted a little gesso in each square being deliberately loose, and then used gel medium to attach torn scraps of Paper Artsy Printed Tissue tissue PT12 - Scripts.
I added more loose finger painting using Paper Artsy Frescos in Watermelon, Cherry Red, Kiwi Gold, and Snowflake, deliberately keeping it light and leaving a little white space.
A few splats with a fine brush and the white paint (you can add a little water if necessary) , as well as 'drawing' a few scribbles with the wrong end of a paintbrush adds nice light touches of light.
A few inky black splats helps to balance things out a little, and then a bit of carefree scribble with any kind of crayon. It's so liberating because most of it won't really show but it really adds to the depth of layers in the project.
I used the teeny tiny texture stamps from KCM021 as well as KC015 to stamp inside the squares but also allowing a little outside of the squares so it didn't start to look too confined.
And finally, some stamped metallic gold using old lids and plastic cards.
Now it's time to dig out elements for those top layers. I always seem to have a stash of stamped and coloured images and in this case some were coloured with water colours, and some were paper pieced in a super-easy but very effective technique I shared in the Paper Artsy People Facebook group earlier this year. All of the images I used were from collections released in 2025, so this really is a retrospective look back over the year!
I've got a stash of backgrounds too, and here you can see a gel print I created using stencil PS455 and some alcohol ink.
I love using a simple tool like a circle punch, not just to create a circle though - I love the negative 'window' it leaves behind. I used these along with scraps of neutral ledger, scraps of silk ribbon, mini squares cut from previous prints, and then finally stamped and coloured images. Building up mini collages in this way is so fun!
The images are mostly too big for a 5x5cm square so I made them fit! no problem! I used some head and shoulders, and some I cut vertically. I also kept one or two of the images full size and allowed them to overlap the squares. This helps to prevent everything looking too neat and confined.
I didn't add any actual stitching this time which is unusual for me, but I did add scrunched up lengths of regular sewing cotton to add a 'stitchy' kind of feel. And I snuck in a few staples too.
This kind of page with so many elements is colourful, fun and busy, but by keeping the collages limited to the squares, allowing just the occasional overlap, stops things from appearing too chaotic.
