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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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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