Summer Party Pennants with ESC {by Jenny Marples}

Hello everyone, Jenny here with you today to share my ideas for creating fabric pennants, perfect for decorating your garden at a Summer party. Fabrics are such forgiving surfaces to work on so it's actually easier than you might think to get great results! 

The new collection of stamps and stencils from Raquel Burillo (Scrapcosy) are just perfect for this purpose, with beautiful floral images, lovely words and clever accent pieces.

Here's a peek at what's coming up...

The stamp sets used all come from the latest release and include ESC56, ESC57 and ESC58, combined with stencils PS528 and PS529. These are all available from your local stockists now.

The pastel palette of colours used for these pennants include PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints (Cloud 9, Sand, Lemon Meringue, Guacamole, Spring, Cloudy, Mauve and Dolly Mix) which combine so well with Mattints (Acid, Fern, Bellflower and Foxglove).

To get started on these pennants you need to raid your fabric stash, ideally looking for non-patterned pieces in complimentary shades. I chose a neutral, vintage selection, dying some scraps with diluted Just Walnut and Lemoncello Infusions, though you may decide on a different colour scheme to suit your party theme.

Now grab those stencils and get to work, repeating patterns if needed to fill space. The fabric may absorb more paint than you are used to with paper so lift the corner of your stencils to check before you remove them completely.

I find ironing my fabrics before stencilling really helps to achieve that crisp finish. You can also re-iron them once the paint is fully dry. I know, ironing, but it's the fun sort!

Tear apart your stencilled fabrics into smaller pieces and begin to assemble them into rectangular pennants, adding in other scraps as required. A piece of muslin and a damaged lace tablecloth did the trick for me.

Make sure to overlap your pieces and I highly recommend temporarily attaching them together with a fabric glue pen.

A quick running stitch along the edges helps to make those joins secure and you can add extra translucent layers over the top to break up some of the larger areas.

Now it's time to add some colour with those floral images.

 

I felt nervous about stamping directly onto the fabric pennants so decided to make use of PaperArtsy's Blank Printed Tissue (PT10) using grey permanent ink to transfer the images onto one side.

It's a lot simpler to paint in blocks of colour on the reverse of your stamped images - the tissue allows for the colour to show through.

On the right side add a touch of shading with your Mattints.

Try adding a coat of Acid Mattint to the centre of your unpainted glass to make it look like it's been filled with an enticing beverage!

The Acid Mattint with also add that pop of yellow when painted over Cloud 9 paint.

You end up with a much larger range of colours to play with by adding Mattints over your painted images and it's worth experimenting on a scrap of tissue if you are unsure about any of the combinations.

With coloured images at the ready it's time to add them to your fabric pennants.

Use a matte medium like PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Matte Glaze to stick your tissue images to the pennants. Be generous with your application because the fabric will absorb more than paper. And notice how the colour becomes slightly stronger with the glaze applied.

Your tissue images will take longer to become fixed in place so allow for drying time. The upside to this is that you have a small amount of 'wiggle room' to reposition your images needed.

 

The ticket image from set ESC56 is perfect for letting you add some lovely sentiments. I added some extra pieces of lace trim to the pennants and repeat stamped the Greek key motif from set ESC56 on grosgrain ribbon to join them together. You can disguise the joins with little flowers for a seamless look!

And with that these Summer Party Pennants are complete.

Let's give you a closer look at my finished examples;

You can divide your images up to extend across several pennants - I did this with one of the butterflies, some tickets and the mixed flower clusters. 

I'm now thinking this could look good with a warm colour palette, possibly even more vibrant! Which colours would you choose?

Thank you for joining me today.

Jenny

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Suncatcher with Mattints {by Dounia Large}

Hi everyone Dounia here with you today.

This year on the blog, we are being given free reign to do a deep dive into one of the PaperArtsy product ranges, and for this post I have been exploring Mattints! I one of their main properties is their transparency so I decided to explore and exploit that in some semi transparent art, a fall inspired suncatcher mobile.

I really love how it transforms depending on the light! For the base of this project, I'm sharing with you one of my favourite technique with Mattints, making 'tissue skins'. It is is really simple and 'brainless' with gorgeous results. I hope you enjoy it too.

For transparency, the 'skins' are built out of tissue paper. The more transparent the better! I know all the PaperArtsy printed tissues will work, so I grabbed the Blank and Background Tissues (PT07 et PT10) I had on my craft table.

For a project about Mattints, I used... Mattints! also for their transparency. I somewhat limited my palette, to help create a united look. Any theme would work so I chose my favourite, fall colours! I love warm hues so went for yellow/orange/red with some greens and browns to completely cover the foliage range. I also added the 'wild cards' The Pink (MT08) et Dragonfly (MT07) to spice things up and create variety.

I first prepared the building blocks necessary, by colouring blank tissue with my chosen Mattints.

I painted roughly A4 pieces in all my fall colours, and half that in the 'wild cards'. The intensity of the colour depends a lot on the quantity of Mattint applied. Here I did two coats on one side and another coat over only half the other side. That way I had two shades of each colour, for more variety and depth.

Here is my very high-tech drying system. With the current weather, my projects are enjoying the wood stove with me! As the Mattints also work as a glue, you have to be careful not to let the sheets stick to one another!

I like to add opaque parts to all transparent projects, to create contrast & texture and highlight the transparency. For this one, I did some very basic mark making on more blank tissue with a opaque Fresco Finish Acrylic Paint. I chose Cloud 9 (FF149), a warm white, because white shows off colours the best and I thought warm version worked the best with my chosen colours.

As you can see, not much thinking is necessary for these steps, just fun playing with paint! Now it is time to start putting the layers together.

 

The principle to creating the 'skins' is to glue layers of tissue on top of each other with a transparent and wet medium, like Matte Glaze (FF52) or Mattints. For the tissue 'disappear', it is crucial to fully saturate it with glaze when gluing it. I like to apply the glaze on the back of the tissue and on the top of receiving substrate before connecting them, then apply another layer on top of the glued down tissue while it is still wet. Here you can easily see the difference between the already glued pieces and the still dry ones.

As my base, I used half of one the big sheets of painted tissue, this one is the Ladybug (MT12) one. I created a layer on top using pieces of the Backgrounds tissue as well as the tissue with white mark making. To create more variation and depth of colour, I decided to glue the pieces with Mattints instead of a colourless glaze. I chose Ladybug (MT12), Squeezed (PT06) and Nutty (MT02) to coordinate with the background. The limits of the tissue pieces are more noticeable that way but I did not mind for this project.

I repeated the process with Nutty (MT02), Glow (MT01) and Fern (MT03) backgrounds. This is the results after this first layer. The white opaque patterns will be softened by the following step.

On top of the 'pattern' layer, I added another one, this time with pieces of the coloured tissues, using coordinated Mattints to glue them. The picture seem to imply I planed their placement but in reality, I did not think too much and just glued stuff on top of each other. If the pieces overlay in some places, it just creates even more colour variation.

As the Mattints are also sealants, they make the tissue less absorbent. So I have found that you often need to 'work' the glue a bit more into the painted pieces, but they too end up disappearing.

Once all of that was a bit more dry, I repeated those two layers on the other side of the bases. This creates even more variations and also makes a stronger 'skin'. I really love how they turned out, with the bits of pattern poking out and all the different colours. However, I think their true beauty shine when seen in transparency.

There you can really see all the layers and the new colours they build. I like the darker touches created by the opaque white paint. I could just make those 'skins' for themselves and display them on my windows, but here I also wanted to show you a use for them.

All those colours had to become leaves! I roughly traced the shapes with Fresco Finish Chocolate Pudding (FF42) and cut in the middle of the lines. This both helped guide the cutting and created a border around the leaves. I think it gives them dimension and reminds me of fallen leaves starting to brown at the edges.

Here is my pile of leaves and my (also very high-tech) structure for the mobile: a cut open soda can. It then only needed a couple hours of threading the leaves onto fishing wire and adding them to the can...

I absolutely love the result. It is a bit messy and misshapen, like real leaves, and I am mesmerized by how different it looks in different lights.

The aim was to have light shine through the leaves, creating shadows and patterns, and here in the rising sun, it does not disappoint!

But I think it is also beautiful in the sun light, without transparency. The depth of colour really shows here and, I think, capture the feeling of an early autumn day.

With no direct sunlight, the colours are softer and more reminiscent of fallen leaves. I love how the golden beads pop then, adding even more whimsy.

Inside, lighted by a lamp, this thing moves with the slightest air currant and cast crazy wispy shadows. So moody!

I leave you with a couple of detail shots of the leaves.

I love the snippets of pattern and texture that randomly show.

I prefer warm colours, but let's not forget the beautiful greens that bring depth and contrast.

I hope you enjoyed this journey in Mattintland and that it inspires you to try making tissue 'skins'. The process itself is easy and fun and the possibilities to use them are endless!

Keep creative

Dounia x