2023 Topic 5 : Tinged Blue {by Victoria Wilding} with Seth Apter stamps

Hi everyone

Victoria back with you today and I'm so excited to share with you my project for the Tinged Blue topic. Blue is one of my go to colours for creating and features heavily in many of my makes, so as soon as I saw this topic, I knew I would be diving in to explore Surf's Up in more detail.Dounia's introduction to the Tinged Blue topic provides a great overview of Surf's Up colour theory and show's the great variety of colour variations you can get from a single colour. 

I've been wanting to create some art for a box frame I've had hanging around, for well over a year, so decided to create a project using that. Creating a piece of wall art without a specific final hanging location in mind, I wanted to keep things as neutral and simple as possible, so that it would meld nicely with a range of interior decor. I decided to create a series of background papers, which layered a range of the colour mixes and use these to create some butterflies, providing a modern twist on a specimen display box. 

The different elements of this project were so enjoyable. Simple, uncomplicated and playful art which was the grown up version of those colour mixing classes way back in junior school! I love the visual texture the stamping creates when combined with the different colour mixes. So let's take a look at those colours in more detail.

To create my printed papers I selected my PaperArtsy products, a mixing palette and a small gel plate and brayer. Seth Apter's designs are perfect for adding abstract background details to add visual texture without detracting from the main subject of a piece, so his stamp sets ESA35 and ESA36 were a natural choice for this project and helped tie my project into the quarter's theme. With their mix of lines, circles and tiny text the stamps provide the perfect subtle background texture for butterfly wings which don't deviate too far from natures markings. I also selected Sara Naumann's stencil PS122  to trace my butterfly shapes. 

I was tasked with creating a range of different tones with neutral colour mixes, but since I'm always keen to push the boundaries, I decided to go for a coloured grey and coloured neutral as my mixing colours. The PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic's I selected (Surf's Up - FF146, Stardust - FF222, Nougat FF39) push the colour mixes towards the blue-green space of the colour wheel.

Colour swatching and mixing colours is such a great way to get the creative juices flowing and spark ideas. A while ago I started to keep a colour journal for this very reason, so before cracking on with my project, I decided to take a closer look at some of the mixes my three colours would create and test out the results on paper, in my journal. 

I squeezed out small blobs of each colour into my mixing palette and added varying amounts of Stardust and Nougat to Surf's Up, mixing with my paintbrush. 

These are some of the swatches I created from those mixes. The swatches on the top row are the pure colours, straight from the bottle, with the two rows underneath showing the mix of Surf's Up with each of the additional colours in varying quantities. The swatches to the left have the least amount of the 2nd colour added, with the swatches on the right of the page having the most amount added. You can clearly see that as more of the 2nd colour is added, the colour hue of the blue changes, with Stardust creating blue-grey tones, whilst Nougat creates a softer, muddier hue which leans towards sea green.

I can never resist bringing some pretty to my colour swatching, so to see how the different mixes play together, I created some quick loose florals on the adjacent page. The mix of darker and lighter tones work so nicely together and create enough variety to give the composition depth. I was confident that they were going to create a colour scheme pleasing to the eye and restful enough to make a nice interior piece of art. 

 

Next it was time to put some of those colour mixes to use and create my project. The first step was creating the background papers for my butterflies. Rather than premix the colours and then add to the gel plate, I decided to take the lazy approach and let the gel plate do all the work! 

I squeezed a small amount of surf's up and stardust onto the plate, mixing as I spread out the colours with the brayer. I like the uneven, random colour mixes this application creates, with the papers have interesting, grungy texture right from the off. I then repeat this process using Surf's Up and Nougat.

With the papers dry, I then used a variety of the mixes to add some stamping details to the papers, using numerous stamps from the sets for more diversity in the patterns.

 

At this stage I decided that the papers needed another layer of contrast, so I added one final layer of stamping using Archival Ink (Faded Jeans).

 

With the background papers created, it was time to make the butterflies. When initially planning the project, I thought I would use a single butterfly, possibly hand drawn, however, after deciding to use the stencil, the size of the largest butterfly was too small for the frame, so I opted to use multiples of different sizes. I traced out the butterflies on top of my background papers, selecting different areas of interest on the papers to include.

I fussy cut these out and then had a little play with composition on a plan piece of card. It was at this stage that I decided to layer the different sizes on top of each other, so I arranged them into sets of three. 

I then stitched down the centre to stack the three butterflies on top of each other. By only attaching them in the centre, this allowed the wings to be teased out, creating extra dimension once placed in the frame. 

Here are the completed butterflies ready for the final part of the project. 

The combination of different colour mixes and stamping details, provides so much contrast, leading the eye through all the details when looking at with these little butterflies. Each one is  completely unique, whilst also being similar enough to the others to provide harmony in the final design.

The final part of the project was to create a piece of background card to attached the butterflies to. To tie into the overall colour scheme, I used a range of mixes of Surf's Up, Stardust and Nougat, lightly braying the colours in layers to the outside edges of the card.

A final bit of detail was added with some stamping in Archival Ink (Cornflower Blue).

 

To complete, I mounted the four butterflies to the centre of the card using foam squares to lift them off the page for extra dimension.

 

I placed the piece in the box frame and voila, the project was complete!

The final piece is just lovely, if I do say so myself! The little bit of detail to the outer edges of the card, draws the eye right into the butterflies where you are in for a visual treat with lots of subtle colour and textural details. If your budget is a little tight, you could definitely create this using just one of the step sets and you could draw the butterfly (or butterflies by hand). You could mix it up by using different multiples of butterflies in the final piece, changing up the composition for different effects, the possibilities are almost endless!

I hope this has inspired you to give colour mixing a go and demonstrated how easy it is to use that to your advantage in a project. If you're inspired to have a go, I'd love to see what you make, so don't forget to tag me on socials.

Wishing you a creative, happy week!

Victoria

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2023 Topic 5 : Tinged Blue {by Liesbeth Fidder-de Vos} with France Papillon stamps

Hi everyone!

It's Liesbeth here with you today. 

I just took a deep dive into the color mixing adventure and I can really recommend it to you as well! Go and read everything about Tinged Blue in the Topic Introducion here. This time the starting point is PaperArtsy Fresco Finish-Surf's Up, a medium blue that is easy to take in any direction as you will see in our different Tinged Blue topics from each blogger.

It's so interesting how different the mixing turns out by using the different second colours!

I choose a coloured neutral: PaperArtsy Fresco Finish-Buff , and a warm yellowish beige. I was so curious what would happen when I started mixing these two colours!

My project for using the mixed colours was some altered mouse traps...in fact rat traps because they are big! They are nice as a wall hanging and they can also be used as a memo holder or even a photo holder as I will show you later on. For Quarter 2 our theme is TEXTURE... I will show you two ways to create texture on the project.

For this topic of course the starting point was the two PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints: Surf`s Up and Buff.

Another starting point for me was these wonderful PaperArtsy France Papillon stamp sets  FP010  and FP011. Oh how I love them! That very vintage style and the backgrounds and texts... just perfect! That's where I ran into a problem... the stamps were to big for my small mouse traps I normally use... so after a long search I found the big rat traps (7,5 x 17,5 cm), yessss! So my intended idea could proceed!

First I studied the colour mixing using PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Surf`s Up and PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Buff. I made a card with ten rectangles and started with the two pure paints on 1 and 10.

I added a small drop of Surf`s Up to a large amount of Buff and painted number 9 with the mix. For rectangle 8 I added a bit more...and so on until everything was filled up.

After drying this was the result! There were two things that particularly stood out to me: Some soft green appeared...beautiful! That actually makes sense because Buff is a bit yellowish, and yes ..as you will know .... yellow and blue makes green! Nice nice nice! Very strange in my opinion is the fact that in the lower row, 6 to 10, much more is going on than on the top row. As you can see, the difference between 6 and 10 is enormous.

A note from Leandra: Surf's up likely to dominate in the 1-5 zone as it has a higher VALUE than Buff (see the topic intro blog post for more on value and saturation), so the more easily it will be able to dominate the mixes in numbers 1-5 than 6-10.  

This is where colour mixing sometimes requires flexibility and instinct vs strict proportion based mixing. Both are valid experiments!

eg 1 part buff to 9 Surf's Up, 2 parts Buff to 8, 3 Buff parts to 7  ..this is the logical way to start your test, but what to do if the results are very similar for all those 3 mixes?  Another option is to wing it (!!) and use a lot more of the lighter colour and very little of the darker colour to get a wider variation. You could start with a big puddle of Buff, add a drop of Surf's Up, paint it out, keep adding another drop of surf's up and paint out the result over and over until you have a wide scale. I admit, this then makes it hard to get back to a particular colour in the future, whereas the logical scientific method of 'parts' allows you to always get back to the newly created colour. I think it is fun to try both methods to see how wide the variation can be with just 2 colours. This is the fun of colour mixing!

I smeared the left-overs of the mixed  paints onto a journal spread. A very good way to see the different nuances with an eye on the end result, and how the colours work together. I loved it, perfect soft look and so good for the vintage look I was searching for.

For my project I decided to use the colours from boxes 2, 6 and 9. I think it will be the very soft look I needed but with a good contrast between all 3 options.

I love the way PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Surf`s Up and PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Buff mix together. With my colours chosen, I am ready for my project!

I planned to make three photo holders/ wall hangings. First I removed most of  the metal parts of the rat traps using a plier. The clamp at the right side will be used again, so I kept the two parts.

After removing some of the metal parts, two holes appeared at the centre of the rat trap. PaperArtsy Grunge Paste is a perfect filler for this kind of things, I always use it as a putty! After drying I covered the traps with some layers of gesso, till the red mouse wasn`t visible anymore.

I found the metal parts way too shiny...not the vintage effect I needed. So first I painted them with the blue PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Surf`s Up. After that I added lots of tacky glue and covered every part with PaperArtsy Rusting Powder, and let dry well. (It's a panacea!)

I soaked the Rusting Powder parts with vinegar and covered the parts with a (soaked in vinegar) piece of paper towel. I let everything dry overnight...ignoring the smell.. ;-)

This is the result of the Rusting Powder, so beautiful! Look at the contrasts with the paints! And now I look at it I think it's texture as well...which is our theme this quarter!

And again: structure onto the wooden planks. Using PaperArtsy Grunge Paste and PaperArtsy Mini Mask PM017 I made this beautiful structured 'windows/flowers'. I had to remove one of the staples because there was no room for the stencil. I put it back in later.

I decided to add even more texture and aging by using some crackle glaze under the paint here and there. (PaperArtsy-Fresco Finish Crackle Effect)

As soon as the Crackle Glaze was dry, I mixed my colours using the two Fresco Finish Paints:

Surf`s Up and Buff.  I tried to recreate the colours 2, 6 and 9 from my sample card.

In a quick and cloudy way, not too carefully, I painted the fronts of the traps and also the metal staples. It became the nice, soft blended background which I was hoping for, and the beautiful crackles appeared immediately. I let everything dry well.

Time for stamping! I stamped the different stamps from the PaperArtsy stamp sets FP010 and FP011 onto a piece of thin tissue paper and tore them out. I chose a brown waterproof ink (Tsukineko StazOn-Spiced Chai), I Thought it would turn out a bit softer, more vintage, than black. As I said before..I never have a plan, so at this stage I didn't know where it would end. I really didn't know if I was going to use everything I stamped...and where...and how.

Onto the rat traps (they aren't rat traps anymore :-) ) I tried to make a good composition with the torn out stamped images and carefully glued them down with some gel medium.

Using a lighter brown (Tsukineko StazOn-Saddle Brown) I stamped some of the texts and other stamps from the two stamp sets here and there directly onto the painted surface.

At this stage, in my opinion, the traps were still a bit boring.. so it was time for my Twists and Turns!

My wall hangings needed a little more contrast and interest in my opinion. A 3rd color, PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Paint, Toffee, saved me! The mid-brown colour is almost the same as the StazOn- Spiced Chai, perfect. 

To match the colours even better I mixed  a bit of Toffee with a drop of Fresco Finish paint Surf`s Up. I painted the edges of the wall hangings with it.

I took one drop of the same mix and watered it down, with lots of water. It needed to be as translucent as a watercolour paint. I painted the stencilled (Grunge Paste) parts and the stamped tissue paper images with it. This was just what I needed to let it pop.

Now let's add some more rust and assemble everything!

I finished the pieces with a hanging hook and some embellishments. First, the picture frame hooks needed a bit of rust. I made a paste of some PaperArtsy Rusting Powder and a few drops of vinegar, mixed them till it looked like paint. I 'painted' the staples and the three hooks with this paste and let it dry a few hours.

As the final decorations I added some metal embellishments and a small bow as shown here below. I put the rusty clamps back in place...ready!

A wall hanging or a photo holder?? Both!

For as long as we've been mixing colours here at PaperArtsy in the wonderful colour topics, I've been doing a lot more with it and I really like it! You will learn to understand the colours and the mixing and I really can recommend it to you too! This lesson, based on PaperArtsy Fresco paint Surf`s Up, was again so interesting and instructive, and above all a lot of fun! And I'm so happy with the new colours I made for this project! 

Dive in and enjoy! Curious to see what you make!

Lots of love,   Liesbeth

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