2024 Topic 10 : Gilded {by Etsuko Noguchi}

Hi everyone Etsuko (My favorite Things) here with you today, and sharing my project topic Gilded with lovely Raquel (Scrapcosy) stamps.

As we enter November, my image of Europe and the United States is that it's all about Christmas. So I decided to make Christmas ornaments and garlands using this cute ESC47 stamp as the main feature. I love the vintage colors that Raquel uses, but today I went for something a little more vibrant. 

For the quarter theme (Nature) I used small pine cones and acorns, and for the topic (Gilded) I used a generous amount of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic - Gold with embossing powder gold. Now, let's get straight to the point. I hope you enjoy it please.

These are the main supplies I used this time. I'd like to introduce some including Scrapcosy stamp set 47 and 07 (ESC47, ESC07), mini stamp EM84, PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic - Southern Skies, Weathered Copper, Gold, Pewter, Summer Sky and London Bus also Ranger embossing powder- Black, Silver, Gold, some Red, Blue with VersaMark. And natural items such as pine cones and acorns.

I started by making the base and decorations for the ornaments. To make the base and decorations I painted Smoothy (Heavyweight) A4 white card with Gold, London Bus and Weathered Copper and used powder to stamp holly and reindeer from ESC47.

I cut out each part. Although it's hard to see in the photo because of the shine, the base you see on the left is silver. 

This is the round illuminated part and the sentiment plate underneath using the ESC07 and ESC47 stamp set . 

I had a little time deciding on the design of the other ornament for the sentiment and the round part , but I ended up using the mini stamp EM84.

These are the finished before the shakers and the lights were added.

Now I'm going to make the shaker stuffing. Print the snow pattern of ESC47 on thin shrink plastic with Snowflake. (If the plastic is thick, the finished product will be large.)

Cut the printed snowflake pattern into circles.

Then I put it in a toaster oven at 200 degrees and shrink it. Then it will be just the right size.

Attached the Hello Light and circle shaker dome the sentiment paper at the bottom can be removed using a Hook & Loop Dot. 

The ring of the Hello Light is made of white plastic, so I cut out a motif of Dresden Trim and glued it around the ring. Also the shaker stuffing is made of shrink plastics, beads and glass glitter.

The other ornament was also decorated with Dresden trim.

Next I'd like to introduce another Christmas decoration 'garlands'. These are garlands made of small medallions and acorn dangles.

First, make the medallion printing paper. Paint each of the Southern Skies, London Bus and Chalk Fresco colours onto the Smoothy (Heavyweight) A4 white card I have prepared. Once dry, emboss the snow pattern and holly leaves from stamp ESC47 using VersaMark, in four colors powder (Gold, Silver, Red and Blue).

These motifs and acetate were cut into circles 3cm in diameter and made into medallions using aluminum circles.

This year again, there were a lot of acorns lying on the oak trees in the park, so I went out and collected some to use as material for garlands. I used a base of white gesso for the acorns so that the Gold color would stick well.

I then painted it evenly with Fresco Gold to make a gold acorn.

The Dresden trim motif is glued onto each acorn.

I added some red and blue rhinestones to the center of the trim and used a glue stick at the back to secure the gold thread as shown below.

The medallions and acorns were attached to red and blue ribbon with eyelets using jump rings to complete the garland. 

I made these with the idea that they would look lovely on a mantelpiece or Christmas tree as seasonal decorations. This is my last project of the year. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Etsuko xxx

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With 3 Things: December Daily Album {by Keren Baker}

Hi friends, it's Keren Baker (@craftstampink) with you for another With 3 Things post. 

This feature on the PaperArtsy Blog is where 3 bloggers are sent 3 items in the post. We have no clue what PaperArtsy HQ is going to send us, there might be a slight variation (for example on this round we each were sent slightly different stencils) but generally 2 of the 3 things will be identical.

A recent/current blog topic is/was Nature, so if we can tie that to this 3 things post, then that adds another challenge into this project. To be honest, I'm really shoe-horning it in, where it's not really fitting, but the stamp set has a lovely nature vibe (particularly the trees) plus the 'natural' brown paper bag...(so I think I've just about managed it ;-) ).

Today I have made a December Daily album...let's take a closer look.

I'll show you all the inside later. For memory keeping, particularly seasonal-style daily recording, you really need to have the album done before December, so you can just slot in a quick photo or jot down what happened. The chances of it actually happening are far greater if it's already pre-made!

I did add 2 colours (well 3 if you add the 2 shades of green) to the Chalk and Pewter: Cherry Red, Lawn & Slimed. I had them left out from a previous project and well, they're Christmas in 3 bottles, right?

I first started by deconstructing the paper bag. It was too big for what I wanted, but knew I'd use it for the front cover plus the handles would be a great form of texture later on. But the paper bag gave me the inspiration for the whole project- a paper bag album!

I purchased some inexpensive paper bags, trimmed and punched a half circle in the open end of each bag using a circular punch.

Compiling the body of the album is easy. Firstly glue the bottom gusset part closed onto itself and once all the bags are done (I did 12), then you glue the rectangular gusset onto the next bag, keeping all bags in the same position (i.e. with the glued gusset facing upwards).

The idea was to slot the tags that PaperArtsy had sent me into the spaces between the glued down gussets and use the open bags to pop little bits of ephemera that I'd pick up along the way. I needed to decorate the tags so began using the JOFY PS439 stencil (check out our stockists for this stencil and the stamp set).

Once I'd stencilled the greens onto the stencil and over-stamped the trees, I used the Pewter with the stencil to create a moody looking sky. I wanted to create a raised window for the front of the album.

The little square images on the JOFY137 stamp set are in Jo Firth-Young's inimitably fun style. I wanted to have the snowman peeking through the window and coloured him in with alcohol markers.

Using another of the stamps in the set, I coloured and trimmed out hearts and stars, attaching green thread to the reverse and adhering them with foam pads. You can also see the framed acetate front that I was going to add over this window. I could have added more pads and created a fun shaker front with some sequins etc.!

This photo shows you what the internal structure looks like. The patterning on the bags gave a unintended pattern to the edges which I love.

I added this photo to show you just how much shine you'll get from the metallic Fresco Finish range. If you've never used them, they give a real extra boost to your projects.

I wanted to add some sort of closure. I'd got some natural linen thread that wouldn't detract from the look of the album so found some old circles that had a foam pad underneath, just perfect for this. You could make your own version very easily. The twine wraps around in a figure of eight and keeps the album closed.

The album 'engineering' is very simple. Once you've stuck all your bags together, you make holes in the glued/closed edge. If you're doing a lot of bags, you probably want to do this step before you glue them together. This method also lends itself beautifully to stitched bindings. Then you create a front, back and side, so you're making in essence a book cover and then you glue your inside bags to the outer 'cover'.  I forgot to put some eyelets onto the back which would have made it look far neater!

For strength, I added extra eyelets on the top of the inner piece- this is the bit that hides the gusset of the top bag and can be as decorative as you like. Don't tie the ribbon too tight- you can see I've left some 'give' in the ribbon.

Now you just need to slot the tags in and add some twine to each tag to make them easier to pull out.

Here's a look at some of the tags. I had wanted some die-cut numbers but couldn't find any suitable ones, so created my own using my silhouette and cardstock matching the PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic colours. The 'waste' from the cut out numbers came in really handy for decorating the tags.

Underneath the '24' on that tag, you can see some brown wrinkled paper. That is one of the handles completely unravelled and it left you with some wonderfully textured paper!

Here's a closer look. It's worth mentioning that the PaperArtsy stencils work wonderfully by themselves, but you can often pair them with stamp sets like here. Because the triangles don't match perfectly to the stamp set, they give added interest and also a good leeway for user error, so you don't have to worry about alignment!

Another useful tip is, if your stamping doesn't come out as perfectly as you'd like, add a layer of vellum, which softens the effect and no-one will be any the wiser !

There's so many design variations with these square images and they'd make just perfect mini tags.

I hope that you might have a go at doing your own December daily album. It's really easy and great for adding in all those little leftover bits and pieces that might be hanging around your crafting space. Jo's sets work perfectly for this idea- she has so many Christmas themed sets to explore. Any sized paper bags will do, as long as you have enough of the same size for the project! Hope you get a chance to explore mini-album creating.

See you again soon,

Keren x

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