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

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Valentine treat boxes with KC {by Martine Dubé}

Valentines Day is around the corner and I always like to make treat boxes with little cards to offer to friends and loved ones. I made some using Kate Crane's mini stamps, infusions and Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics.

The supplies use to make this project are Kate Crane mini stamps  (KCM008, KCM021, KCM022, KCM023) along with some Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in Snowflake, Cerise, Smoked Paprika and Pumice, I also use some infusions in the color You Are Cerise. The cardstock I use is the Smoothy white stamping card 240gms (SCA4) and watercolor paper.

I started with a light base of infusions in Are You Cerise so that by background is not too white and to start creating layers. To do that you need to apply the infusion and with a water bottle add a lot of water and dry with a heat gun. I did this step in both paper (smoothy card SCA4) and watercolor paper to see the difference in color and how the smooth card would react with a lot of water.

Make sure this first layer is dry before making the next one. You can see here that the color is brighter on the smoothy card and that it took water very well. I also iron my cardstock so it's flat when I start to make my print...yes I iron my cardstock!!!

Using the same color of infusions  you make your background print - here I made hearts using a round paint brush but you can make the print you want - you could also use a stencil.

 

To add texture to my print I splattered the left over infusion, again here it's better if your print is dry that way the print and the splatters don't mix together.

For more texture I use water down fresco paint (Snowflake) to do more splatter.

Finish with doodle on the hearts with a paint pen.

Here are my finish background ready to be die cut.

Time to create my tags to put on the boxes. First I stamped the images that I wanted  KCM008, KCM022, KCM023. I also used KCM021 to add texture to my tags.

 

I use freso paint (Cerise, Smoked Paprika, Pumice) to color my images and watercolor pencils to add shadows.

I cut my tags out of watercolor paper and did the same watered down infusion background, you could add some infusions splatters here but I forgot...OOPS!!! Then stamped some hearts in matching colors and some texts for textures.

I've fussy cut my images in order to put some dimension on my tags.

For dimension I use some foam tape on the back of my images and added some stripe washi tape to ground them on my tags.

I colored some seam binding in pink and orange to match.

The tags are ready to put on my treat boxes, and I used a piece of double sided adhesive to do so.

Die cut the boxes and glued them with liquid glue.

I always have fun making these littles boxes, I love giving them to my family and to my co-workers. I always try to put an image that match their personality.

 

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