Nut Shell Books with I&D {by Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos}

Hi everyone, Liesbeth here. These beautiful PaperArtsy I&D 'Vintage Nude' stamps were once among the very first I ever owned about 20 years ago, and today I'd love to show you how I used them to create two (nut)shell booklets.

I no longer have the original packaging, but here you can see the wonderful stamps featured in this blogpost: PaperArtsy Ink & The Dog Collection: Vintage Nudes plate 1, Vintage Nudes plate 2, Vintage Nudes plate 3 and Vintage Nudes plate 4.

I also used real shells and nutshells, and PaperArtsy Stencils PS234, PS002, PS239, PS173 and PS105.

For the pages I used PaperArtsy Smoothy white stamping card,regular. The perfect cardstock!

Paints I used: PaperArtsy Fresco Paints: Smurf, Banana, Snowflake, Gold and Gloss Glaze.

I started with the shell book, two shells will be the cover. Using one of the shells as a template I cut the double pages out of the folded cardstock.

Time for some layers, first I used the stencils with the Fresco Finish paints Banana and Smurf to paint some marks at the edges of the pages here and there. Later on the paints will work as a resist. I sponged the pages with Distress Inks: Wild Honey, Salvaged Patina, Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire, overlapping areas.

I sprayed some waterdrops to create nice spots, after drying I made a next layer with Distress Ink Chipped Sapphire and the stencils as shown.

Time for the beautiful Vintage Nudes stamps, I stamped them with Tsukineko StazOn - Jet Black. I used every single stamp from the four stamp sets and tried to create nice compositions. I also stamped the small flower (Plate 3) here and there with blue and yellow Distress ink. After that I bleached (watered down bleach and a synthetic brush) and coloured the women and some other details, and finished with a bit of glitter glue.

A hard decision.. shall I paint the shells or not? I did, using the Fresco Paint Snowflake :-) Onto very thin, one layer napkin paper I stamped the small flower (Plate 3) with three different blue colours waterproof ink (I used Versafine Clair), tore them out and glued them one by one onto the shells with Fresco Finish Gloss Glaze. 

I glued the double pages back to back to create a book.

Something was still missing, so i decided to take the amazing Fresco Finish Paint Gold and painted the edges of the shells a bit ragged. It's so shiny..to me the perfect finishing touch!

To 'bind' the book, I added some washi tape on the spine of the booklet, glued some pieces of fibre in the shells and glued the booklet in the shells.

Here you see how the first page is glued into the front shell. I glued the edge and secured the page with clamps till it was dry.

I couldn`t resist making another tiny walnut book, the stamps are so perfect for this! Made in much the same way. This one, however, is an accordion book, 6 pages long.

The closed books. I decided not to paint the nutshell, but of course it's up to you.

This picture shows the beauty of the stamps! And also the layering, glitters, colour pencil make-up and other details. 

Finished! A small shell book and a tiny nutshell book full of lovely Vintage Nudes:-)

Look at that cute nude ladies in their gothic arches, love it!

Another detail of the nutshell pages.

This is the final page of the shell book. The bleached woman pops out, the golden Fresco paint and glitter glue make it shine!

It was a pleasure to create this two books with the wonderful ,oldies' PaperArtsy Ink & The Dog ,Vintage Nudes`.

Hope I inspired you, have fun!

Liesbeth XX

Blog: Liesbeths Arts & Crafts

Facebook: Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos

Instagram: liesbeth_fidder

Wall hanging with Scrapcosy stamps {by Liesbeth Fidder de Vos}

Hello everyone, Liesbeth here! 

This year on the blog, we have free reign to do a deep dive into a PaperArtsy product ranges of our choosing. For this post I have been exploring some of Raquel's PaperArtsy Scrapcosy products. A wonderful stamp set, a belonging stencil and some Scrapcosy printed tissue paper.

I decorated a wall hanging with it and I love to show you how I made it!

I am actually quite happy with the result! The stamps are perfect for what I had in mind. Now the wallhanging hangs in our kitchen :-)

My starting point was a ready-made wall hanging, consisting of three 15 x 15 centimetres panels, covered with nature pictures that I didn't like.

The stamp set I used is one of my favourites: Eclectica (Scrapcosy)15 (ESC15) and I used PaperArtsy stencil PS105 by Scrapcosy and some pieces of Scrapcosy printed tissue PT05

As I love to work with the three colours yellow, pink and blue (I often do) and I love Mattints I chose PaperArtsy Mattint Dragonfly, The Pink and the new Acid.

My plan was to cover the pictures of the wall hanging with stamped cards and to create a nice frame around them. So first I made the cards. I cut three pieces of  PaperArtsy Smoothy Regular white cardstock 12 x 12 cm, and coloured them with blending tools and Distress inks. I used Wild Honey, Picked Raspberry and Mermaid Lagoon, as I always do :-)

Using Tsukineko StazOn Jet black I stamped the different stamps (ESC15) onto the cards and some pieces, like the flowers at the tea cup, on a seperate piece of cardstock. At this stage I didn't know yet what I was going to use. I also cut masks for the tea cup and the postmark stamp.

I masked the two big stamped images and used the stencil PS105 with a blending tool and Distress Ink Chipped Sapphire. After splashing some water drops, wiping them up I accentuated the spots with a white gel pen to create ,stars'. I also used the gel pen for the text and for some other accents. Using watered down bleach, I bleached the images where necessary to let them pop out. I sponged the edges of the cards with black ink and made shadows around the images with charcoal. The card with the text was still a bit empty so I cut some of the stamped lace, coloured it and created a frame at two corners as shown.

Here you can see the bleaching and the charcoal shadows. The cards are ready!

Time for the wall hanging itself and how to put it all together!

It's all about the edges, the center will be covered. First I sanded the edges a bit, because it was glossy paper, and covered the edges with a few layers of gesso. I decided to do some crackling and I searched for the perfect background colour for it, I came up with a mix of PaperArtsy Fresco paints Twilight and Blueberry. Perfect, exactly the colour I was looking for! I painted the edges with the mix...two layers was enough.

One of my favourite PaperArtsy products is the Crackle Glaze! By far the best there is, it always works perfect and you can dry it with a heat gun, so quick and easy! I applied a layer of Crackle Glaze on the edges onto the blue paint and dried it, and painted the top layer with the opaque white Fresco paint Snowflake. Immediately the crackles appear. Magical!

Oops...there's some white on the ropes as well ;-) I will paint them black again later on.

A little bit of decoration on the crackled frames. I tore some small pieces of texts out of the printed tissue  and glued it onto the crackles with Matte Glaze (my perfect gel medium, I use it for everything!!) here and there with a soft brush. 

After drying I painted the crackled frames with the three Mattints Dragonfly, The Pink and Acid. For every board a different colour.

Very carefully I painted the sides of the boards with Fresco paint Little Black Dress and a small  sponge. It provides a nice finish.

I cut out the butterfly and lots of flowers I stamped before, and painted everything with the three colours of Mattints: Dragonfly, The Pink and Acid. I used a very small brush for this.

The finishing touch: I matted the cards on pink, blue and yellow cardstock and glued them onto the boards of the wall hanging. I added the little flowers and butterfly at the images.

The colourful wall hanging is ready!

Yellow..

Pink...

The entire piece..

and Blue!

In the following photos you can see some more details:

It was so much fun to create this wall hanging! I love the combination of the paints, crackles and Mattints. And of course the wonderful Scrapcosy tea themed stamps! Hope I inspired you, have fun!

Liesbeth XX

Blog: Liesbeth's Arts & Crafts
Facebook: liesbeth.fidderdevos
Instagram: liesbeth_fidder