2022: PaperArtsy - A Year in Review {Topics 9 to 12}

Hello from PaperArtsy HQ,

How has 2022 been for you? We hope that you have found more time to be with friends and family than last year! Here at PA HQ there have been many comings and goings with people finally able to leave New Zealand after the border was closed for so long! So we have had quite a number of family and close friends come our way this year from NZ. It has been a revolving door from March to October, and as this was the first 'proper' summer here since we arrived in France, it has been awesome to enjoy many new experiences that we did not realise were 'normal' for the summer months. Days in the pool and every-meal eating outdoors in cool spots (or less hot ones). So many visits to scenic spots, kayaking on the Dordogne River, local food and 'line' dancing in the local village one the sun has set, plus many trips to picturesque villages nearby. It is a country full of the joy of celebrating regional differences, and we have thoroughly loved the chance to share the little things we are learning that are special to this region with others here on holiday. Still pinching ourselves about the location we find ourselves in, we were only looking for a property to suit  business functionality, but we daily celebrate how close we are to Bordeaux, Bergerac, Lalinde and Couze et Saint-Front, making it easy to enjoy daily bread from the village to city life and shoipping,  or wine tastings at local chateaux; we are so close to it all. 

One of the things I have missed a lot about England is designers and friends just dropping into PAHQ. We do have neighbours and friends constantly dropping in here, but I do miss Tracy and Jo who were our most frequent visitors, as they both lived not too far from us, and often popped into the 'vortex' as Jo would call it - that place where time weirdly evaporates when you come over to pick up or drop off something, and inadvertently find yourself becoming a helpful elf!

Today Dounia is sharing her picks from Topic 9: Leftovers, Topic 10: Up My Street, Topic 11: Mash up with Tracy, Nicci and Scrapcosy and Topic 12: Minimalism. 

Take your time to enjoy today's round up, there is so much goodness to remember from the incredible blog team this year. They really come up with so many beautiful ideas, and I hope you get a moment to take a look at their wonderful creativity, it is so inspirational!!

Leandra 

Keeping up with or focus on sustainability in crafting, we are this time focusing on all the little treasures created as a by product of creating!

You know what I am talking about. Even the most frugal and organised of us end up with scraps of papers, pieces of pictures and hints of die cuts that did not find a place in the finished project. But we can't throw them away, they are so pretty and could be useful later! Well, later is now. Time to bring out all your bags and boxes of carefully preserved pieces and have a play session. Keren's intro post gives lots of ideas for using tiny bits and bobs, and not just paper, textile, clay and paint also make an appearance! Our bloggers then rose to the challenge beautifully, sharing their treasure chests and combining them in creative ways. I don't know about you but I must admit seeing other people piles of leftovers also assuaged my guilty conscience about my own hoarding tendencies!

My first pick is striking summer journal by Kate Yetter. She went full on sustainability, even the base is recycled from lunch and gift bags! How impactful is that bold and texture black edge? I love how it grabs your attention and contrast with the detailed and colourful layouts. Be sure to check her original blog post for an insight into her process, quite different from her usual style, and for a look at all the varied pages.

Nikki Acton chose to collage her leftovers on a little concertina book. Her original blog post is full of tips to make the mix of papers and textures look like a cohesive whole. More than just colour consistency and a focus on triangles, she also consistently used the same stencil and stamp set through the project! I love how she manages to make the pages obvious pairs that have their own story but also work all together.

Claudia Neubacher went 3D for her own project with this grungy home decor panel. In her original blog post, you can see it develop organically, with a few of the fails, twist and turns we all experience when creating. She also shares her beautiful collection of bits and bobs in their pretty containers! This piece is so dimensional with its clay stamping. I particularly like the tiny bottle: it is a vase of feathers but also evocates a soft brush!

What can we say about where we live? And what does it says about us? This topic revolves around the notion a home, of community but also the beauty of architecture.

To start you off, Keren's intro post is a beautiful poetic reflection of what make a neighborhood, a street, a house, a home, interspersed with inspiring pictures.

Autumn Clark took advantage of the numerous house, door and window stamps in the PaperArtsy collection for this colourful cascade book. I am always impressed by her talent at making work together colours that you would not think of mixing! Check her blog post for a better look at her rich and rustic palette and her fun gel printing session. It is also a great example of how sometimes art speaks to you, as she ended filling the book with photos of her hometown.

This topic was made for Jenny Marples, who regularly wows us with her architecturally inspired creations. Her pages are always impressive and this lot does not disappoint. This time she mixed classic stonework with Kim Dellow's retro pop designs for a surprising and whimsical look. I love how she married her realistic drawings with the abstract stamps and stencils, and made it look achievable. Go to her original blog post for two other wonderful pages!

Renata Peley also mixed hand drawn buildings and stamps but her result is completely different and totally striking! Her original blog explains the set backs she faced, as sometimes you first idea just does not work, but she regrouped and managed to achieve her vision! I love her use of colours, the contrast between washes and bright pop for great dimension. Her attention to details, with the stamped antennas and doodled cables, also bring this project to, another level.

Dounia Large put together a life map retracing all the places in France she has lived in and illustrating some them with Kay Carley's little houses stamps. Her original blog post beautifully shows the architectural diversity of her home country and explains her choices and inspiration. It is also a great example of how you can personalised stamp to suit different styles: from winter chalets to timbered medieval houses to 19th century buildings!

Back with another mash-up topic! Once again we tried to put together 3 universes full of fun and possibilities, backgrounds and focal images, stamps and stencils. See Keren's intro post for more visuals on our 3 designers.

While Tracy Scott might say her style is that she always changes styles, her stamps and stencils are definitely identifiable, with bold flowers, intricate mandalas and inventive pieces for pattern play. Raquel Burillo, AKA Scrapcosy, is all about vintage, mixing versatile elements like frames and labels with beautiful hand drawn fauna and flora. Nicci Battilana is the newest PaperArtsy designer, bringing a distinctive fun and gothic style, full of intricate characters and playful textures. As always, our blogging team was full of wonderful and unexpected ideas blending or contrasting the designs from these 3, have a look:

First, Laurie Case altered jumbo playing card into soft and grungy dimensional displays. As explained in her original blog post, this project was not smooth sailing, she had to start over twice, but you cannot argue with the result! I love all the techniques she packed on a rather small substrate, and her layering is gorgeous and effective. She had the idea to use a regular size playing card as the center, and to die cut it reveal the centre club, genius!

Ellie Knol went for a tag book with striking colour contrast. Her original blog post details how she made her bright masterboard. You can only see snippets here, but it also covers the other side of the tags. I love the functional stamp windows, you can slide the backgrounds in and out, and change them if you want! I like them as is, as they feel like windows to the other side of the project, but they would look amazing with photos for example! 

Renata Peley blended the 3 designers styles perfect in this vintage and soft journal page. The Scrapcosy flowers seem made to go with Nicci's pensive Rococo lady! I am impressed by how well she managed to marry the soft pastels of the focal point and the bold vintage browns of the background without them clashing. Check her original blog post for a better look at all the details and dimension she added to achieved the final look.

Less is more!

I must admit I was tempted to simply write 'Minimalism' in big letter and call that an on topic introduction... but you will have to bear with me prattling on a bit more. Minimalism is certainly achievable everywhere, check Keren's intro post for examples from fines arts, architecture, crafts and more. But what makes a craft project minimalist? Of course, we general think of composition: not too many elements, no clustering, clean lines etc... but we wanted our bloggers and you to think further than that: what about focusing on using of one colour? or maybe restraining oour use of supplies: just one stamp or just one stencil? This is a good opportunity to reflect about your style and creative process and find out which elements you can do without and which are crucial to make your work yours.

My first pick is this subtle scrapbooking layout, a rare treat on the PaperArtsy blog. Jennie Atkinson saw all our suggestions to achieve minimalism and said 'yes'! Careful composition, restrained colour palette, limited use of supplies, and more play together for a deceptively simple yet elegant look. Her original blog post really explores the mindset you need to achieve for this type of project, and how clean and simple does not necessarily mean quick and easy!

Minimalist does not mean soft colours! Amanda Pink chose a mainly black and white look and bold geometrics for her art block inspired by Frank Stella. What an impressive showcase for this tiny butterfly! A great example of effective compostion: The nestled squares and gradient of grays really focus the eye in the center to the pop of red bringing the piece alive. Check her original blog post for a deep dive into her process and a closer look at the subtle details of each non-layer.

Asia Marquet certainly seized to the (mainly) one stamp idea! Like quite a few of our bloggers, she had to face the terrible, and often avoided, challenge of careful planning, and the nerve-wracking pressure of clean crafting but the result is certainly worth it! I love the subtle colour variation between the impressions and the tiny numbers add-ons. Go to her  original blog post for all the details on her Infusion-stamping technique!

Who said you cannot be minimalistic with cute and detailed stamps? Victoria Wilding certainly proves that wrong with this series of ATCs. Her original blog post details all the steps for these subtly complex pieces: there is stenciling, brayering, stamping, embossing, layering, stitching! Proof that minimalism does not necessarily means having very few elements or colours, it is more about the general impression!

Well, wasn't that a beautiful selection of posts? We are so spoiled by our blogging team and the lengths they go to in their projects. I hope you can appreciate the time they put into each piece, but more importantly, how much they enjoy what they do while creating.

Dounia 

2022 Topic 09: Leftovers {by Floss Nicholls} with Ellen Vargo stamps

Hi everyone, it's Floss from flossworkshopart with you today, and I'm here to share how you can use up some of your scraps of fabric along with packaging papers to create a stitched collaged piece.

I love to use papers and materials together on one piece and delving into both my leftover oddments of small material pieces, remnants of packaging papers and ribbon left overs, it allowed me to use up some bits I already had. By printing some fabulous geometric shapes from Ellen Vargo's stamp sets EEV01 and EEV09  it allowed me not only to add some fun elements and a flower focal point to the piece but to give the leftovers a new lease of life and become something new.

I often use bits of old clothing within my artwork and I particularly liked the way I had used gesso and Infusion dye stains in a previous journal project I made; using an old white shirt of my husbands. The shirt had a fabulous loose woven texture in its weave, so it lent itself perfectly to grabbing gesso at low and high spots on the fabric which added to the textures created. I had some left over scraps of this, that I had already stained individually using Olive Tree, The Sage and Sunset Beach infusions, so I rummaged through my net scrap bag to find a few bits that went well together to use with them.

I use the little net bags (that the supermarkets now provide as an option to use when buying their loose veg) to store my fabric scraps and my sari silks etc...I was so happy when the supermarkets replaced their plastic veg bags with these little net drawstring bags because they suit keeping all manner of material scraps perfectly as you can see through them.

Here I am playing around with positions of how edges and colours work together.

Infusions dye stain tip: Use a paintbrush to even out the dark spots where pigments stick to the wetted material and brush it lightly over the gesso to tint the gesso with the beautiful range of colours found within the Infusions Dye Stain. Naturally the Infusions will soak into the material when you spray it with water but it will sit on top of the gesso giving you such great contrasts.

I like to stitch in the centre of some material collaged pieces to allow for more raw edges or the space to fray some edges. I chose a straight machine stitch throughout this art piece, rather than using any zigzag stitching as I knew this collage was going to be a 'busy' one, and thought that the zigzag might be too distracting from the rest of it. Use a fabric glue or a running hand stitch if you haven't got a sewing machine.

It's tempting to add hand stitched features to add further interest to your sewn pieces at this stage, but I personally would wait until the end to add these details.

It's fun to add separate material pieces on top and stitch in the other direction using uneven lengths of stitching too... 

I used these three vibrant Infusions Dye Stains in a previous project over gesso that had been applied to a white cotton shirt that was never to be worn again.

I used Ellen's EEV09 stamp set on some of the Sunset Beach dyed fabric scraps using Ranger Archival Black ink and cut them out to arrange as petals for my flower feature. The circle flower centre was printed on a scrap piece of a gel print also using the Archival Ink and the edge was folded over to create the cone flower centre shape. I used the square and the iron shape from Ellen's EEV09 set using PaperArtsy Heavy Cream Fresco finish chalk paint  on some scraps of packaging paper.

I cut some little squares from the remnants left over from the flower petals to add to the centres of the stamped geometric shapes for further interest. Nothing goes to waste here...I do love the small elements of detail.

I started looking at how the shapes from both sets worked together and how different the outcomes were from those printed on scrap pieces of old gel print papers in comparison to those printed onto the fabrics.  I much preferred the fabric printed petal shapes because there was more contrast. I also loved the frayed edge elements that were starting to happen just from handling them, so I guess in a way, they could be considered almost organic just in the way they were changing through using them. 

A few photos had been previously transferred onto some of the scrap dyed fabrics using gel medium so I thought it might be fun to incorporate them...for those of you who are familiar with my work...did you already spot my Great Auntie Lil making another appearance? I needed to add a smidge more water on her to remove a little more paper backing to reveal her image to make her less grey papery...it's a fine line between rubbing too hard and removing too much image and not taking enough backing away to reveal the image fully. I find it best to do it in small stages.

I started looking at how the collage was going to evolve and which bits I would place where.  I find that taking photos of choices are helpful as you can flip back and forth between them to help you decide. I liked both options below, so that made for a difficult choice! In the end I chose the green stamped material on the sunset beach as I liked the little pop of white stitched material against the edges.

Great Auntie Lil was dressed up with a little bit of lace... 

Little accents of lace and stitching were added to bring continuity throughout the work...

To add further interest to the collaged piece I added further stitching, sticking to colours of a similar palette, and little snippets of thread that had frayed from the material edges. I also glued the scrap fabric flower stem on.

My final touch was adding a few scraps of the used fabrics to the little box using a bulb pin. I thought the box just cried out for a little fun element.

It makes me happy to give leftovers a second chance at being included in a piece of art.

It was good to have some 'over prepared pieces' from a previous project to work with that were sitting in a pile on the workbench, as well as using up some of my little bitty bits of scraps from my stash...I do find it cathartic having a scrap busting splurge! Grabbing leftovers can feel like some of the hard work is already done and the fun is about to begin when colours and shapes just jump out at you from the piles and work beautifully together. I am, and was, drawn to using colours and shapes that were similar in this project; I now have intentions of applying this collaged stitched piece onto the hard front cover of my large journal.

I particularly enjoyed the 'patchwork' piecing of materials together and the layered fusion of materials and paper; I can definitely see me doing much more of this! I liked the way the seams of the shirt worked on the edges, but cannot believe I didn't free motion embroider the stem as I often do on my flower pieces; I will be heading back out to the workshop later to do just that!

I do think, if I wanted to add more, I would be likely to choose more textiles...using scrap threads mounted on a felt and scrap base to free motion and fuse it all together with free motion embroidery and then apply it to Great Auntie Lil's skirt...that in turn may spark adding the same technique to another area...or maybe some stencilled numbers or a phrase. 

Thank you for reading right to the end and I look forward to seeing/hearing about how you use your leftover pieces and if you try the Infusions Dye Stain over gesso to get some deep contrasts.

Happy creating,

Floss x

Facebook: floss_workshop.art

Instagram: floss_workshop.art

Website: www.flossworkshopart.com

I am teaching mixed media in-person classes in small groups of up to six in my workshop in East Sussex UK. You can find the class details on the website link above.   

2022 Topic 09: Leftovers {by Nikki Acton} with Tracy Scott stamps

Hi everyone, it's Nikki here with you today and I'm here to share with you a small book of collaged pages using up my leftovers.

Like many of us, I have lots of leftovers, there is the box under the desk from when I last had a tidy and then there are the boxes and piles on the desk of more recent 'leftovers'! I got quite organised recently, having a leftovers tin for die cuts, one for materials and ribbon and one for for paper / prints. I decided collage had to be the way forward..... but the little book idea evolved as I created.

I collated my leftovers to see what I had! Paper tends to be printed paper and leftover gel prints. If you have read one of my posts before you may know I often make more backgrounds than I need - just in case !!

I selected some prints, and scrapbook paper scraps that I thought might work together..... 

 

 

I noticed that the blue/grey prints and the black prints were leftovers from previous PaperArtsy blog posts - so it seemed a good idea to use these! If you are interested, the links to the original projects are here:

Mark Making Subtle or Bold - March 2020

Shaving Foam - Making it Grungy - November 2019

 

I cut these down to A7 size and added some random stamping...I cut about 10 pieces and began working on them in pairs.

 

I started with some of the 'shaving foam technique' leftovers. I collaged some torn gel plate leftovers and strips of printed paper to start.

This dark background needed some colour so I took a Tracy Scott stencil PS224 and sponged some PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic - in Mermaid to one area of each card.

 

At some point during collaging my cards I decided that triangles (Tracy Scott stamp set - TS054) were going to be the theme that ran through each one.

 

Some scraps from my material box and die cuts were added along with some punched mini circles.

Tracy Scott stencil PS224 and stamp set TS054 were used on all pages to bring some cohesion or a theme to the different collaged pages.

There are four pairs of pages in the concertina book. Another example uses the blue/grey/grey gel print leftovers as the start point.

Some collaged paper added, including book paper - but then I got brave! I used PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic - Little Black Dress to cover some areas.

 

 

Using the the same stencil and Mermaid paint I added stencilling over these areas - not worrying how perfect it was. I also toned down some the collaged elements by dry brushing with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic - Chalk.

 

The triangles once again form the focal point - with some ink died ,frayed calico added

On each of the pairs there is some stamping with Tracy Scott's marking making stamp set - TS065. Here you can see the crosses stamped with paint and the larger numbers stamped with archival ink.

The last couple of pairs followed the pattern - but using the triangles in a different way each time and varying the collaged leftovers. 

Here you can see the front of the concertina book when it is tied together.

 

The fabric layers on the final pair include hessian, dried coffee bags, some handmade paper scraps and twine.

 

With each page complete I adhered to the concertina base. 4 on the front, 4 on the back. I used some ink-stained seam binding to tie it all together.

I really wasn't sure where I was going when I started this project. Once I started simply; small bases, adding layers - it evolved. So often the ideas come as we create, rather than before we create. Don't let a lack of ideas / over thinking stop you making - just start and see what happens.

Nikki

Blog: Addicted to Art

Instagram: @a2a.craft

Pinterest: nikacton

YouTube: Nikki Acton