2022 Topic 05: Stamp Mash-up {by Laurie Case} with Zinski, Kay Carley and Hot Picks stamps

Hello everyone and welcome!! It's Laurie with you today and I'm super excited to share this art journal page with you! Full disclosure: I'm fairly new to the world of art journaling. My journal pages tend to lean towards cute, quirky and fun without any actual "journaling". But I always try to make the quote a little personal to reflect my mood or what's on my mind at the time.

I wanted to create a page that would simply make me smile. Normally, I would use a rainbow of colours but I wanted to give myself a challenge and keep it fairly muted. I also wanted the focal point to be the star of the show!

I usually use a disc-bound journal system. This allows me to take the pages out, work on them and place them back. This has always seemed "safe" to me. If I didn't like what I had created, no problem, I can just get rid of it. So, for some added excitement, I chose to use a spiral bound journal! I chose some some nice muted colours for the background along with a bright pink for just a little added colour.

This is where I began. Ripping some old book paper into strips and using a gel medium to adhere them to the page (poof...the blank page has disappeared!). I added a thin layer of white gesso just to lighten things up a bit.

To add a little texture, I used the PaperArtsy Kay Carley Stencil PS171 PA along with some Grunge Paste. I kept the texture to the upper right and lower left corners.

Once the Grunge Paste had dried, it was time to add the paint! I chose Koala, Eggshell, Waterfall, Snowflake frescos and for the little pop of colour...Orchid. I used a wee bit of water to thin the paint on the centre of the page and quite a bit of water to achieve the drip effect with the Waterfall paint in the corners.

As you can see, the texture of the stencil is awesome but I really wanted it to stand out a bit more. I lined the stencil over the paste and added some PaperArtsy Snowflake Fresco Finish Paint over the top. This really brightened the corners up!

Of course, every background needs some stamping. I found a few stamps that are great for mark making and used Ranger Distress Archival Ink (Smokey Grey) for the stamping.

Now that the bulk of the background was done, it was just a matter of adding some details, including the Orchid paint!

Using a silicone tool for mark making (Dina Wakley), I added dots of colour to the stencilled areas. This really gave it the small pop of colour it so desperately needed.  I also decided to add a bit more Snowflake to the centre portion of the page using a small stencil from my stash.

Now, let's work on the focal image! I adore ALL of Zinski Art stamps but the cows from Set 34 had me cracking up!!

 

Rather than use only one image, I thought it would be fun to combine a couple.

I used alcohol markers to colour then fussy cut them out. I LOVE the way those two images work together!

 

All that was left to do was create a quote/sentiment and put everything together. The PaperArtsy  Hot Pick 1605 had the most perfect quote for this page..."I See No Good Reason to Act My Age".

I stamped the sentiment out onto a piece of white cardstock using Ranger Archival Ink (Jet Black) and trimmed each word apart so they could be spaced throughout the page.

As you can see, I added some torn strips of book paper to represent a hill and ground my cute cow.

And to finish everything off, I added some white gel pen details the black areas of the cow which adds even more whimsy!

This project was a lot of fun but it was also a challenge...which I really enjoy! Combining your stamp sets not only gives you more bang for your buck but also makes you think outside the box. The products I used here today are quite different from one another and truthfully, I wasn't sure how I was going to bring this all together. But they work beautifully with each other and I couldn't be more pleased! 

I hope you'll dig deep in your PaperArtsy stash and challenge yourself to mix, match and make something amazing!!

Laurie

Blog: itsallcutanddie.blogspot.com

Instagram: @crazycardlady

                  @my_art_journal_journey

2022 Topic 05: Stamp Mash-Up with ZA, EKC & HP - Topic Introduction

Hi everyone, Keren here with you today to talk about a really inspiring trio of artists and to introduce our latest mash-up topic. The Mash-Up topics previously have been produced some of the most intriguing and creative projects in the year.

This time we're focusing on Zinski Art, Kay Carley and Hot Picks. Following the same pattern as previous mash-up topics, we'll look a little more closely at each artist, seeing some of their work and how people use their stamps.

So let's begin with Elena Zinski, the brains behind Zinski Art.

Elena had been an artist long before she ever started designing stamps for PaperArtsy. She wanted to design some stamps to incorporate them into greeting cards. She approached PaperArtsy who were local to her in London at that time, and a wonderful partnership began. When her children were little, she used to write stories for them and illustrate them too. Her love of telling stories and creating meaningful art comes through in her designs.

What is really fascinating about Elena's art is her love of unique characters with personality plus, brought to life with whimsy and quirkiness. Each character is so different and full of fun, and people use her artistic images on all sorts of different projects. Whether it's a journal, card, ATC or 3D project, there'll be a Zinksi character that's just perfect.

Zinksi images are often ideal just as the main focal point, but also make such good parts of a scene. Tracy Springer shows how even with lots of elements, the Zinksi characters still sing (literally!!).

PaperArtsy Blog

Miniature Zinski stamps images are called 'Zinis',  and Corrie Herriman made an adorable house with the minis, allowing you to imagine just what sort of conversation and adventure they're having.

PaperArtsy Blog

Zinski Art is often defined by its humour and joy too. The characters just make you smile! Lauren Hatwell always does amazing things with Zinski images and she created some fun storyboard-style creations with a previous release from 2017.

PaperArtsy Blog

As Elena prefers to create digitally, I'm including another piece of art from the blog, to give you another style idea. Her images are just wonderful for colouring in with.

PaperArtsy Blog

Kay Carley has been designing with PaperArtsy since 2016, but had been involved in the craft sector for many years prior writing magazine articles and even designing stamps. Kay is known for her love of nature...and sparkle! 

Here's what Kay had to say about how it all started;

'I originally started designing (years ago) for The Stamp Man - that was probably about 13 years ago now! I then had a break from designing until PaperArtsy approached me several years ago. I have always loved whimsical designs, flowers, nature etc….which is why I tend to gravitate towards those types of imagery when designing my products. I guess that there are two main ways that I begin designing:- sometimes I may not have a clear idea of what I want to draw and will just begin doodling and see what happens! Other times I have a very definite idea in mind of what I want to do….for instance with my recent flower releases I had spent a lot of time in our garden and had taken lots of photos of the flowers that we had growing throughout the different months, so I used those photos as my starting point for designing my recent flower stamp sets.'

Over recent years, Kay's been developing clever colouring stencils that add dimension and colour to her stamped images and make the user look artistic with such little effort. Here's a perfect example from Kay.

PaperArtsy Blog

One of the things you'll notice about Kay's designs is how easily you can make a harmonious scene. She has flowers, foliage, butterflies, houses and even snowmen !

Here Kay has created a triptych with her wonderful gentle scenes reminiscent of an English garden.

PaperArtsy Blog

Using the same collection, Kay switched gear and created another trio with a remarkably different vibe, also showing us another of her skills- using paint!

PaperArtsy Blog

If you're into flowers, you really need not look much further than Kay's lifelike floral images. This next piece of art shows her latest collection and you can notice her attention to detail, drawing skills and a beautiful delicacy that is such a large part of each of her stamp sets.

PaperArtsy Blog

The final designs in our trio are from the Hot Picks range.

The Hot Picks are designed by Mark (Mr. PaperArtsy) and initially, in April 2010 PaperArtsy designed a series to be gender neutral, vintage and larger designs specifically to suit journalling. Prior to this the trend had been (as always, cards) but also ATCs. Altered books/ journalling was just taking hold in a slightly more mainstream way. So they needed a larger plate size to make larger stamps than A6.

PaperArtsy Blog, by Dounia Large

Leandra explains 'PaperArtsy also had started making dies, and we were doing a lot of Ten Seconds Studio metal work based classes so we wanted designs that could be die cut and the design stamped on the cut shape plus accentuated with metal working tools. So in effect early 2010 we were making coordinating stamp and die sets. No other company was doing this at the time and it was a very successful concept.

PaperArtsy Blog, by Lin Brown

We also used the hot picks range to create series of stamps to use in the ArtsyCrafts retreats that Lin Brown and I offered. So we would choose a theme for the event, come up with project ideas and then give Mark a list of the stamps we wanted and the sizes they needed to be. So  we did stray into some more masculine and feminine themes at that time. Since then Mark has continued to add to the range on a more ad hoc basis.'

PaperArtsy Blog, By Leandra Franich

Some of the more recent releases have been a collaboration with Leandra, Mark and Dounia Large (who works for PaperArtsy in France) and you can really notice Dounia's love for science and vintage images in the last Hot Picks release. If you've never explored the Hot Picks section (and there are Christmas and Halloween Hot Picks too), you've missed a trick. Do go and spend a happy half hour seeing some vintage, quirky and cool stamp sets.

PaperArtsy Blog, By Nikki Acton

I hope that this has given you a little 'amuse bouche', so to speak in anticipation of what is to come next. How will our bloggers combine them? Which stamp designs will be the focal point? Will there be a similar style coming through?

I tried to find combinations of the three designers or even a combo of two and I couldn't find anything much. If you've got any links with them being combined in an art project, we'd absolutely love to see. For now I'll leave you with a duo of projects. First, 2 mini books that work perfectly together and use some sentiments from the Hot Picks range...

Frankieeatsworms

...and what sticks in my head as an iconic image using Hot Picks stamps.

PaperArtsy Blog, by Lauren Hatwell

Does this topic push your creative buttons? We would LOVE you to share what you get up to with us! A great place is tagging us on Instagram @paperartsy or why not join us and post in the PaperArtsy People Group on Facebook. We love to see what you make! 

2021 Topic 14: Mash Up LPC EGL EEV EAB {by Amanda Pink}

 2021 Topic 14: Mash Up LPC EGL EEV EAB

And just like that we are at the end of the stamp mash-up topic. Amanda has a stunner for you today, lots of gorgeous layers, and tips with crackle effect backgrounds and grunge paste stamped brick walls! What more could you ask for!
~Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Amanda Pink (ink-a-pink) with you today, and I'm here to share with you an 'art panel' I have created for the current 'mash up' topic where we get to create project/s using stamps from different designer collections. This time the designer collections are Lynne Perrella, Ellen Vargo, Gwen Lafleur and Alison Bomber. 

 

I do love a good mash up but it's the first time I've joined in one of PaperArtsy's here on the blog so I was keen to give it a go and see where my 'mash up' creativity would take me especially as I had no set idea what I was going to make when I began. 

I remember at some point thinking maybe a journal page which my finished make could very well be but settled on making it into an art panel so I can have it out on display rather than tucked away in a journal. 

I had heaps of creative fun making all the layers and elements of the art panel. Fun that included painting, a little paint mixing, some crackle glazing and stamping with inks and grunge paste. Inevitably  that makes for a long post that shares the creativity story and includes a few hints and tips along the way too

 

Usually when I set out making something I begin with the background and then work from there but this time I started with the focal image. With no clear creative direction at this stage I hoped that once I saw the image stamped and painted it may spark ideas for the rest of the project and it did!  

I chose one of the images from Lynne Perrella Collection 40 (LPC40) and picked out a few Fresco Chalk Acrylics (Deep Sea, Autumn Fire, Gold Rush) as the main colours for the image.

In addition, I selected 3 Fresco Chalk Acrylics (Pixie Dust, Nougat, Chalk) that I blended together to use for the face testing it out on a scrap of card. I mixed the paints on my glass mat but it's worth mixing them on a palette because if there's any left over mix when you're done painting it can be covered with a piece of cling film to use later. The cling film helps to slow the process of the paints drying out.  I did test this out and the blended mix was still good to use 24/ 36 hrs later. Same for Fresco's straight from the bottle too.

The images were stamped twice in Ranger Archival ink (Jet Black) using a stamping platform.  A great tool to use when painting a detailed image. If you lose some of the stamped detail while painting the platform allows you to put it back in by over-stamping the image with precision once its painted.  

Note: for precise over-stamping the stamp must remain where it was on the platform when it was first stamped and if the stamped card is removed from the platform to paint it must be placed back in exactly the same place it was when first stamped. 

 

Just look at all that detail! WoW!

I painted the images 'off' the platform as I like to be able to turn the stamped image around when painting smaller detailed images. It allows me to always be painting in the direction that feels most comfortable for me which tends to be brushing from left to right. (excuse my painty fingers)

 

 

Detail painting for me is so calming. Once I get going I totally 'zone out' and this particular image of Lynne's was a joy to paint. It's design lent itself well to the tri-colour palette. Although some elements of the design were more intricate than others to paint it wasn't anything a fine paint brush couldn't handle.

 The straight outer lines of the stamp design made them super easy to cut out too.

With Lynne Perella stamp images painted and really liking how they looked, how the colours worked together I drew from those colours to create the 3 layers of my art panel. 
The first layer I created was the largest and this is where I introduced a stamp from one of Ellen Vargo's designer collection stamp sets.

 

 

In contrast to the fine detail painting of the images this background was all about loose,free painting with 2 of the 3 main colours I'd used for Lynne's images: Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Autumn Fire, Deep Sea).

 

Fresco Chalk Acrylics are great for stamping so I used Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Gold Rush) with the long slim stamp from Ellen Vargo's Set 5(EEV05)  to stamp all over the painted background. 

  

Note: Be sure to clean stamps straight away if you are stamping with paint.

 

Some black drop shadows using a black pen really helped to lift the gold stamped design.

 

 

Continuing with Ellen Vargo's stamps I used a second stamp from set 5 on my next background. Rather than use the stamp with inks, or paints this time I used it with PaperArtsy Grunge Paste which I thought would add some texture to the finished project.

 

I was thinking along the lines of creating a brick wall effect in adjacent corners of  this layer  and thought the stamp from Ellen Vargo's Set 5 (EEV05) with the 4 uneven rectangles had potential. I roughly applied some PaperArtsy Grunge Paste to a piece of heavy kraft card primarly concentrating it in the upper left , bottom right areas of the card. 

 

 

Now I don't claim to be a Grunge Paste stamping expert, I'm still very much an enthusiastic novice but I can share a few helpful tips that I've picked up along the way.  To get the best result spritz the stamp lightly with water before pressing it into the Grunge Paste and use the stamp on an acrylic block as this generally gives a better impression.

 

 

I was really pleased with how the stamp design and the Grunge Paste worked together to create the textured 'brick wall' effect I was after. Loved how the Grunge Paste even picked up the fine line detail on the stamp design!!

 

Once dry I drybrushed 'the wall' with PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Nougat) and enhanced the 'bricks' with touches of PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylics (Gold Rush, Little Black Dress)

 

 

At either side of the 'brick wall' I added some text  using one of  the quote stamps from Alison Bombers Set 8 (EAB08). 

 

 

 

I chose a stamp that I thought suited Lynne's images - its one that really speaks to me. 

 

I wasn't after a clean and crisp stamping of the full quote I wanted it to be more broken to suggest it may have worn away in places.

 

 

The third and final background layer was all about the crackle.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze, but for anyone who isn't it's a glaze that you apply between 2 layers of paint, usually different colours to create a crackle effect.  The crackle effect you get with the glaze will vary depending on what you use to apply it. In this instance I applied the crackle glaze with a sponge on a base layer of PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Little Black Dress). 

Note each layer, be it paint or crackle glaze has to be completely dry before applying the next.

 

 

While the Crackle Glaze was drying on the black it reminded me of wet tar!  

 

 

For the top layer of paint I used PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Gold Rush) again applied with a brush. As soon as the top layer of paint is applied the cracks start to form.

 

Depending how thick the Crackle Glaze is applied determines the size of the cracks once they are fully dry. Thicker = bigger, thinner = smaller!IF you apply the glaze with a sponge, as I did you will get round cracks, and if you apply the glaze with a brush, you will get cracks that follow the direction of your brush strokes.

It's important to keep in mind that when applying the top layer of paint  not to work over the same area twice as doing so will lessen the chances of the cracks forming.  Also apply in one direction with a generous layer of paint. Simply load up the sponge/ brush, apply and repeat. 

  

Remember I mentioned that what you use to apply the Crackle Glaze affects the crackle results?  I thought I'd create a second panel where I applied the Crackle Glaze with a brush so you can see/ compare the difference. Sponge on the left, brush on the right.

Applied with a sponge gives more of a 'crocodile skin' effect , applied with a brush more of a 'weathered wood effect', don't you think? It's great to be able to determine the outcome just by varying how you apply the glaze to your base layer. Another tip is that both the base layer and the top layer give a more striking effect if they contrast with each other, and it is also a good idea to use an opaque paint on the top layer.

 

 

With all my background layers and focal images made I just had a few extra 'bits' to make.

One of the stamps on Gwen Lefleur Set 9 ( EGL09) caught my eye. I thought it would be good to use as an embellishment on the finished art panel.

 

 

 

 I had a feeling it may be longer than I needed so simply cut it down to size.

 

I was still short of a title for my art panel so reached for Alison Bombers stamps again, this time Set 7 (EAB07)

Just like the quote I'd use on the brick work background I thought this one suited the image too.

If you've stayed with me through all the creative fun, thank you. Just a few close ups of the  finished art panel now so you can see how all the creativity came together in the end.  

Starting with the painted images that took centre stage one sat behind and one on top of a Tim Holtz window frame embellished with metal gears.

 

All the background layers and the order in which they were placed.

Where I positioned Gwen's embellishment.

Not forgetting the title.

I love that Alison 's quote stamps can easily be cut so you can use just part of the quote as I have done here.

'She lives in a world of private dreams'

I really enjoyed creating my art panel for this 'mash up' topic. Mashing up the products and the techniques as well as the designers stamps meant things never got 'boring'. There was always something sparking the creativity.  

Personally I find mashing up designers stamps makes me look at my stamps/ stamp sets closer, familiarise myself with them, play around and experiment with them and ultimately use them more often and I'm all up for that. 

If a 'mash up' is something you've never done before or don't do often, I'd really encourage you to give it a go/do more often. I'm sure you'll have fun.

The topic draws to a close tonight but be sure to check out the 'mash up' projects the other designers have created over the last couple of weeks. They are all amazingly inspiring.   

Thanks for spending time with me today/ tonight.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. 

Creative wishes

Amanda 

Blog: ink-a-pink
Facebook: Amanda Pink
Instagram: p1nkart
Pinterest: PinkArt