Cards and Tags with EGL {by Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos}

Hello everyone, Liesbeth here with you today. 

As soon as I saw this lovely stamp set, I knew I wanted to make some cards this time. The small squares are little paintings in themselves, and they look so beautiful in the grid, without adding much extras. Sleek and clean, perfect!

I used two of the wonderful PaperArtsy Eclectica stamps by Gwen Lafleur: EGL24 and EGL16 .(A great font in a perfect size..and more!) For my techniques I  searched for a series of bright colours and I ended up with PaperArtsy Fresco acrylic paints London Bus, Banana, Slimed, Caribbean Sea, Glass Blue, Berry Nice and Lily the Pink. As a surface I chose the PaperArtsy Smooth card, heavyweight. I love the thickness of it, for my tiny squares

Using the thick smooth cardstock and the paints, I made several backgrounds in different ways. I just played,  it was so much fun and later on  I decided how exactly I was going to use them

It creates a wonderful effect when you use a natural sponge for dabbing the paint

I did this sponge technique with all seven chosen colours paints and created a very colourful marble-like background

I also created some background papers using Leandra's amazing brayer technique. See HERE everything about how she does it

And another one: with a small round applicator I ,turned'  three colours of Fresco paint onto the surface

The final one was just painting a kind of rainbow, small stripes applied with a paintbrush

I stamped some of them, and a white paper, with the squares and ticket from stamp set EGL24 wth black waterproof ink. I used Tsukineko StazOn-Jet Black.. At this stage I still don't know exactly how I'm going to use them, but it really inspires me already!

 

To create a bit more interest I heat-embossed some of the small squares with golden embossing powder. I used the three bigger square stamps for it. (EGL24) 

After that I cut out every little square :-)

 

Time to create some cards. As you can see I used the grid stamp just the way it is...I think it's nice to let the tiny square ,paintings' be the focal point and let them shine. So I just glued them onto the stamped grid

I finished this card with layers of white, purple and brayered cardstock. I stamped the beautiful circle from EGL16 onto the brayered paper with yellow ink (Versafine Clair)

Another card: Here I use the painted purple/pink circle background, again with some gold embossed squares. This time I stamped the grid stamp onto one of my brayered backgrounds instead of white

This applies to every card: I sponge all the sides of the small squares with black ink, so that no white is visible anymore at the cutting edges

Here I used the rainbow-painted cardsstock, the small grid stamp and the three bigger squares from PaperArtsy EGL24. I stamped the grid three times onto a white card

The size of the letters from stamp set EGL16 is really perfect for the squares of the 3-compartment grid stamp! I stamped the word ART with three matching colours of Versafine Clair and decorated the cut out squares with a golden gel pen

This card was a bit to clean so I decided to decorate the letters and the grid with the golden gel pen.

These were the techniques I used for all of the cards, I'd love to show you the finished cards and some extra ideas here down below

25 tiny miniature paintings!

And again! I also love the fact that the small squares  are not completely equal and straight. A very natural look

I love the effect of the rainbow striped card, how the colours blend

A detail of the rainbow card

Some small tags, a mix of the backgrounds and the techniques I did. For the ,Hug-tag' I used black ink and a white gel pen. 

Who knows more nice three-letter words?? :-)  Someones name will be nice too....Tom, Liz...

For this card I just mixed up the rainbow strips and added three times the nice ticket stamp. I cut it a bit smaller to let it fit perfectly. The letter background of this card is made with one of my brayered backgrounds. I stamped it randomly with some of the letters from EGL16 and yellow and red ink

A closer look

The Art Card

Some other details to show you how nice and detailed this beautiful stamps are

 

PaperArtsy EGL16 and EGL24 are great to create all kinds of backgrounds of course, but for this cards I tried to show them just the way they are. 

I loved to create this blogpost and I hope I inspired you, have fun!

Have a wonderful day,

LiesbethXX

Blog: Liesbeths Arts & Crafts

Facebook: Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos

Instagram: Liesbeth_Fidder

2023 Topic 03: Focus on Seth Apter {by Claire Snowdon} with Seth Apter Products

Hi everyone, 

It's Claire Snowdon here with you today. 

I've been enjoying some creative time lately making smaller pieces of art for a change. This topic is all about Seth Apter - but I decided to have some fun and do a Seth Apter/Scrapcosy mash up post!  I'm really looking forward to sharing with you how I combined these two very special designers. 

I really loved creating using these playing cards as my starting point - I think they are just the perfect size to showcase these beautiful Scrapcosy flowers and vases.  I went for a slightly grungy look in the spirit of this being a Seth Apter topic!  However I have definitely managed to add in a more feminine twist on your typical grunge project.

I started out with three playing cards and used my brayer to layer up PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in Fuzzy Cactus and Cerulean.  I always feel using the brayer is a great way to start to break up that plain white background and just get some colour down. 

Once I had the PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic down on the cards in Fuzzy Cactus and Cerulean it soon became clear to me that these two colours alone were not the look I wanted - so to inject some more colour into my project I added Lily The Pink and Yellow Submarine.

I choose the Yellow Submarine for it's translucent qualities - it adds an amazing pop of colour to any project but without obscuring the layers underneath.

I added the additional two colours to my playing cards using the brayer.  Then to soften the background and get rid of any remaining white spaces I added some water to the remaining paint on my craft sheet and applied it gently to the cards using my fingers.

The Yellow Submarine really adds that pop of brightness - and there are much more muted versions of Lily The Pink, Cerulean and Fuzzy Cactus fading into the background which I think adds extra depth.

I stamped out a couple of the images - one from Seth Apter ESA35 and one from Scrapcosy ESC39 and started to play around with the composition.

Using stamped images in this way and layering them up on a project in various different compositions is one of my favourite ways to create any project - it allows you to visualize how the project will come together and what looks pleasing to the eye.

 

From my composition experiments I decided that using the amazing circle stamp from ESA35 was the one element I wanted to use across all three cards to unify them.

I stamped all my chosen images out from both ESA35 and ESC39 and cut everything out.  I wanted tiny pops of colour - but nothing too bright that could detract from my background.  So I used watered down paint from the same four colours to give the images a little bit of colour and take away some of the stark whiteness.

Time to add a bit more interest to these playing cards.....Seth's stamp plates always have the most amazing texture stamps - and I used one of each type of texture from ESA35 on each card.  I stamped them using a drier inkpad as I didn't want a really bold black background stamp being the focus.  These are my version of tracks running down the cards - which complements the current blog theme!

To add even more layers and textures I used Grunge Paste and stencil PS271 and then smooshed more Grunge Paste around the edge of each card to create a Grunge Paste border.

Here is a closer photo to show the texture that is achieved using a combination of Grunge Paste - which gives a 3D effect - but also by using the texture stamps designed by Seth.  Building up the layers is a great way to add additional interest to a project.

So these are the finished cards!  To bring everything together I edged the cards using blank ink and added some gold splatter.

I covered the vases in Glossy Accents to give them a really glass-like finish.  Then adhered all my elements to each card - using a combination of glue and 3D foam pads for extra dimension.

The finishing touch was a sentiment added to each card using Scrapcosy ESC39.

Here are some closer photos of each card on it's own - even though they are small I still think I've managed to fill each one up with plenty of interesting features and texture! 

This was such a fun project to make - I really enjoyed creating on a smaller format.  The idea of 'feminine grunge' really appealed to me and I hope you'll agree that I managed to pull it off!  Combining Seth and Scrapcosy's stamps was maybe not an obvious choice to start out with but I feel they work well together and this mash up of designers is maybe one you could try out for yourself. 

Claire x

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