Six Flower Cards with AB {by Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos}

Hello everyone, Liesbeth here with you today for showing you the beauty of two PaperArtsy stamp sets by Alison Bomber. I'd also love to show you some fun ways to use Infusions

This time I chose this two beauties: The Apple Blossom, PaperArtsy EAB46 and the Coneflowers, PaperArtsy EAB49. Although they're not exactly the same style, I think they work together perfectly. Just look at all those beautiful flowers! 

I will also work with three summer colours of PaperArtsy Infusions Dye Stain: Are You Cerise, Slime and Sunset Beach

I decided to make a few pretty cards. After all, who wouldn't enjoy receiving a beautiful card filled with flowers? This is how I made them:

On a piece of smooth watercolor paper, I sprinkled just a little of three Infusions colors along the left side. After spritzing it with water, I let the colors blend together into a vibrant burst of color. While everything was still wet, I inked up the text stamp (EAB46) directly from the background and stamped it onto the right side. So instead of using an ink pad, you're actually using the card itself as your ink source

After letting the card dry well I stamped some fragments of the text and some flowers from Stamp set PaperArtsy EAB49 with Tsukineko StazOn - Jet Black. This ink stays deep black even if you use bleach, which I use a lot

And yesss , here comes the bleach. Infusions work really well with bleach; every color of Infusions bleaches differently, it is always a surprise. I  started to ,paint' the petals with a synthetic brush and watered down bleach. If it doesn't bleach enough, I use pure bleach, but first I give it a bit of time.

At the left side you can see I also stamped with bleach. Put a drop of bleach onto a craft sheet or big acrylic block, spread it out to a very thin layer and use it as an inkpad.... bleachpad ;-)

After the bleach was dry, this card was a bit to white, it needed a bit of colour so I painted the flowers lightly with watered down Infusions.

Being a firm believer in the 'more is more' philosophy, I couldn't stop there! I stamped a few more leaves around the edges in light green ink (Versafine Clair-Avocado) and finished the card with a beautiful sentiment in black.

It's not really a technique, but I just had to show you this. It's one of the other cards I made. When working with Infusions, little surprises often appear on your paper. In this case, a beautiful 'flower' suddenly emerged all by itself. It wasn't planned at all—it just happened naturally. I love moments like that!

A detail of the ,flower' on the finished card, love it!

Before showing you my six cards, I would love to tell something about other finishing touches I did

 

This beautiful Apple blossom stamp from EAB46 is the focal point on one of the cards and it needed to pop out a bit more, so I drew a shadow around it with charcoal pencil and smudged it out with my finger

In my opinion this card needed very strong. bright coloured flowers. I coloured them with a pink Ecoline marker.

Here I coloured the leaves at the right side after drying (stamp-in-Infusions-technique) with only water; the water automatically absorbs and spreads colour from the infusions.

Two pictures to show you the bleaching effects again. The light text in the background are stamped with bleach. It`s important to clean your stamp immediately after stamping with bleach

And...after mixing up both PaperArtsy stamp sets EAB46 and EAB49 and having lots of fun making the Infusions backgrounds I ended up with these six cards

The Summer card is the one I showed you step-by-step above

I extended the stem by drawing with a black fineliner

Springtime and Postcard.

I secretly used an extra stamp here (PaperArtsy EAB21)...because the text matches so perfectly. The small birds nest stamp is stamped with a dark red ink and masked before I stamped the flower

The shadowed apple blossom and the Imagine card with the strange Infusions flower :-)

It was such a joy to create with these wonderful PaperArtsy products once again. I absolutely love the endless possibilities of Infusions, and combined with the beautiful floral stamps designed by Alison Bomber, they made creating this blog post a real pleasure.

I hope I've been able to inspire you and perhaps given you some ideas to try for yourself. Have lots of fun creating, and I'll see you again next time. Thank you so much for stopping by and taking a look!

Liesbeth XX

Blog: Liesbeth`s Arts & Crafts

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With 3 things : Mistletoe Accordion {by Jenny Marples}

Hi friends, introduction it's Jenny Marples 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 but generally 2 of the 3 things will be identical.

This all ties in beautifully with the Alison Bomber designer focus. A current blog theme is Nature, and it has tied that to this 3 things post too, adding another challenge into this project.

I have made an accordion style display with my supplies.

Let's take a closer look...

There is a major twist in my process this time but I'll start in my comfort zone, playing with the Slime and Olive Tree Infusions. I love dying different fabrics with mixes of Infusions. For this project I have mixed both colours into a mug of hot water, soaking white linen and natural calico overnight. Look how the same solution dyed the fabrics different colours!

Using dilute solutions of each pigment I have painted the stamped Mistletoe images from the Alison Bomber EAB29 stamp set, cutting around them, inking the edges and highlighting the berries with a liquid gloss.

After cutting the sheets of Grey Board in half I've hinged them together with a spacer tool.

I like to paint the board on both sides so the finished project looks complete from any angle.

After tearing panels from the lighter version of the dyed fabrics and sticking them to the front of the painted accordion I've spread a layer of PaperArtsy Grunge Paste over the top.

By spraying the text stamps from the EAB29 stamp set with water I can stamp into the Grunge Paste to add texture and detail. It's worth letting the paste dry a little before doing this for sharper results.

I thought blotting some dilute Slime Infusions and splattering paint on the dry surface would help to accentuate the stamping a little more than it has and at this point decided to make a big change.

Remembering a technique I learned from Raquel Burillo Perez, I've spread more Grunge Paste over a piece of mixed media card and stamped into it with the wet text stamps in the same way as before. This time I've rubbed a little of the Olive Tree Infusions powder onto the dry paste, spraying it with water and allowing the liquid to run down the paper. There's the drama I wanted all along! This can be chopped into panels and glued over the original splattered paste.

And in another plot twist I've re-painted the board using Baltic Blue Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint to add a stronger contrast between that and the dyed paper/card. I've also die cut some of the stamp images from the set to layer up with the mistletoe.

And here's the finished project!

Stamping the text in a contrasting ink helps it to stand out more whilst using thread the blue thread through the buttons gives a nod to the colour of the board.

Try stamping the tiny text in the set onto the card with a pale olive/brown ink for added detail.

It's both challenging and fun to start with 3 things and see where the journey takes you. And even if you get lost along the way, dipping into the treasure trove of techniques that have been shared on the PaperArtsy blog by so many talented creatives over the years can help to bring you to a successful conclusion.

Jenny

Blog: https://pushingtherightbuttons.blogspot.com/

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