Day 8: PaperArtsy 12 Days of Christmas

Day 8:  Featuring Julie Harrington

using Nut and Meg Plate 8

Julie, our talented mixed media styley Aussie is back with a few more samples using SIEN8. This stamp was designed to be used with all the others, as backgrounds, embellishments or borders, so you have seen it turn up in other places quite a bit already. The words make a great background, or look awesome stamped into UTEE as does the snowflake. The cat fitted in perfectly in yesterday's plaque, and I'm sure s/he will turn up in lots of places, and the 2 border strips are going to look fab on the new PaperArtsy Rum and Raisin Papers.
So first up is Julie Harrington

Julie was so excited to be playing with her new Viva paints, that the wall hanging featured below became a sampler of the paints. She used different colours as a base coat, and over stamped or embossed in other contrasting colours. You could have a lot of fun with this concept, tweaking it to suit the colour palette you prefer.


You can check out Julies work here, you really need to go and take a look. She has been doing some fantastic digital scrapped pages for a 7 Gypsies photo carousel, with pages that look awesome, and you can also see some of the tags with her own line of stamps she designed for us called Urban Snapshots. Julie is one talented lady, and I never have any idea what she is going to come out with next. She is into so many styles and things and its great how she jumps in boots and all to try out different ideas. Fearless.

Multi cat card
By Julie Harrington

A Quick and easy card in fact so quick and easy that Julie made it twice. I was only supposed to show you one, but I decided they were nice together!!

Stamp out the cat from plate SINM8 six times onto white card stock.
 

Cut an A4 sheet in half (to get A5 size).  Fold in half again and turn to landscape view (fold at the top of the card). 

Cut a sheet of patterned paper.  Or cut paper to the size of the card and run through a cuttlebug or similar embossing system. Secure to card front.

Stamp out the words and cut names out for each cat.
Colour the cats to match the background or to contrast with the background.
Assemble using mounting foam.

Patchwork Hanging

By Julie Harrington

What you need

1. 3 or 4 contrasting colours of Viva Decor metal paints
2. a matching Croco Crackle
3. transparent Croco Crackle
4. Uultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE)
5. embossing powder
6. Paints for stamping 
7. Brads or nail heads – whatever is to hand
8. Acrylic sheet
9. Bazzill card and ribbon.

I used Platinum Croco plus of the Precious Metal Colour Paints I used Ice Blue, Pearl Blue and Blackberry along with the Transparent Croco paint.

• Cut a square of card about the width of an A4 sheet of paper.  Measure the width of 1 edge and then calculate 1/3.  Cut small square of thick white cardstock the measured size (should be just under 2" square).
• Take 3 squares and using the blackberry, paint 2 of them.  On the 3rd paint with a mixture of blackberry and the transparent crackling paint.  Let dry.
• Take 3 more squares.  Using Ice Blue paint 2 of the squares.  On the 3rd use a credit card or similar to scrap a bit of paint lightly over the square leaving some white showing.  Then take the Pearl Blue and scrap a very small amount over the edges.
• On a 7th piece of square cardstock paint with a mixture of Pearl Blue and transparent crackling paste.  Allow to crackle overnight.
• On 8th piece of square cardstock cover card with embossing ink and then layer ultra thick embossing powder.  Heat with heatgun and then immediately (before it cools) stamp into it.  Don’t smoosh your stamp around.  Just leave it sitting in the Utee till the Utee cools.   The stamp will pop out once it cools a bit.  {Note, you can get deeper texture depending on how many layers of UTEE you use, so while the first layer is hot and molten you can adda second layer of powder, when cool shake off the excess, re melt and then stamp into it. But for this project we don't want the stamp texture to ooze the UTEE off the edges of the square card, so one layer should do it.}
• On the last piece paint with the Platinum crackling paint and let dry.
  

 Once all the squares are dry stamp on some of them using a contrasting paint (I used a silver).  Stamp on some of them using embossing ink and then embossing powder.

Assemble squares with brads, nail heads into square. You may also require an adhesive underneath. Lay up onto card, acrylic and use the ribbon as a hanger.

Thanks Julie for another great idea!

Now I'd like to introduce you to Jacqui Chimes. Jacqui has been a follower of PaperArtsy for many years, and she has been (quietly) on the DT for some time, but this is her first real public appearance for us. She makes really stunning layered cards, but you'll see much more of her on days to follow. Check out Jacqui's lovely blog, she has been playing along with us throught the 12 days of Xmas and has more samples online with Egg and Nog from last year as well as this year's Nut and Meg. She is a versatile stamper, and creates beautiful vintage style mini book projects and cards in a  in a way that looks effortless, plus she can also do thoroughly crisp, modern, beautifully finished cards. What a star. 

Chocolate Snowflake Card

by Jacqui Chimes

• Stamp ornament from Nut & Meg 8 with Stazon ink onto a square of Chocolate Metal. 
• Back the metal with Humungo tape and card stock (Tape Sandwich Technique) then use a Teflon pointy tool to go over outlines and a ‘scootchy’ tool (a technical term for a texture wheel like this) to decorate the edges. 
• Sand lightly then distress with Glimmer Mists (Walnut Gold and Iridescent Gold)
• Go over the edge with gold Krylon. 
• Cut a square of gold card and use ‘curls’ from tail of bird from Egg & Nog 8 to stamp edges with gold ‘Encore’ ink. Emboss in gold. 
• Cut bronze metallic card as shown and stamp and emboss ‘Merry Christmas’ from Egg and Nog 3 in gold at the bottom. 
• Stamp and emboss ‘Snowflake’ from Nut & Meg 8 randomly over top two thirds of card and emboss in copper. 
• Decorate the snowflake with ‘jewels’ and mount as shown with ‘pop-dots’. Tie ribbon.

Santa 

by Jacqui Chimes 

Plain card, run through the swirls cuttlebug, red is shiny as is the silver. 

Santa is coloured in with a bit of silver stickles for his trims. 

Red and silver swirls are cuttlebug border die cut apart. 

The images (SIEN9) are embossed.

All the panels are raised on sticky foam squares.



PaperArtsy Blog Giveaway: Please leave a comment and we'll randomly draw a name to win Nut and Meg Plates 8 and Egg and Nog Plate 9 on EZ Mount worth £18.80. This offer ends midnight GMT the day of this posting, 11 September 2009,  and is open to all players worldwide.

 

Paintings...yes I said paintings!!!

I've been having a blast doing a Suziblu class. Highly reccommended!

As I showed you a couple of post back, we were learning how to do the faces. Like draw them from scratch. Suzi gives a formula that WORKS! And it is fun fun fun....afer learning the technique of drawing, we kept practising until we got the "petite doll" that we wanted to work with. Here's my Flower Fairy sketch that I decided was going to be my one to work with. Itraced her onto watercolour paper from this sketch in my sketchbook.

So then we moved onto bakgrounds. Layers of card, tissue, stamps etc and drippy drippy with the colourwash and water and paint. I figured I needed some pink in there for the fairy, but I ended up making 3 backgrounds, all based on blue and ochre, but each had a different 3rd colour, green, orange and pink

...I'm thinking tryptych on the wall here...about time I did some stuff to decorate a wall somewhere.....just for me....

Once happy ith the BKGD, we stuck down the people we made onto the backgrounds. Faces are coloured with pencils (coloursoft or prismas) the clothing and hair were painted to strengthen the paper before cutting out.
Stuck that down...I used Claudine's Matte Gel Medium which I LOVE ...my fave product in the world (I must show you my 1 minute transfer technique in a video of that).....and her gesso is yummo too....and it smells like...oranges...so nice....

Oh and as you can see I decided to give my flower fairy a flower and a birdcage as embellishments...these are drawn onto AB gessoed paper...I wanted to add paint to that later....and yes, the flower is missing the stalk, and the birdcage is missing its legs.....they will get added someday soon....

Her dress is scrumbo scrapping paper that fitted the colour scheme nicely..we all have to cheat a little sometimes!

So here's the crunch, I know this background malarkey pretty well being a self taught "splodger" for at least a decade, but I have alwasy made my things on top of the background pop or contrast with the BKGD. But Suzi has been getting us to melt the BKGD and the feature together so you don't always see where one finishes and the other starts. WHOA does this go against the grain of what I have done in the past....so today I forced myself to stamp over the doll and the BG at the same time (nearly died) and I added texture with molding paste through stencils, and tried to bring colour from the back to the front. I also blinged her up with glitter, byzantia bits from Stewart Gill, and applied lots of glazes to all kinds of places, as well as interference paints...I think the list is endless...anyway, so much for slap bang do it fast ...oh no....this is the real deal artist stuff where you slow it down, take your time, and relax into it and...well I really enjoyed myself.....blissful creativity.....

So here we are at week 4 of the class and this is where I am up to. We still have to add beeswax to the top of this, so the meltpot and quilting iron will be out next week. I'm not sure if I'm done yet before beeswaxing. I still need to add text, birdcage legs...and I'm very tempted to add some watchparts too, alsthough I may wait to embed those in the beeswax...I want some more 3 dimensional stuff in there....eventually......

Can you believe I have 2 more of these to do too...I have got them done to the stuck down stage, just need to do the "integration' part on them both....

You probably can't see the details from the scan, but there are crushed up byzantia bits on the flower petals and on the skirt, interference paints in all kind of places, glittery eyelids and toes.....very girlie, but still in my rich colours that I adore....

So if you want to learn this, go take a Suziblu class! You won't regret it!!

NEWSFLASH: We have rubber goodies for you rubba lovers next week....Mark pressed the moulds for 4 new squiggly minis today, so they will go online tomorrow I expect. And there are 10 new Ink and the Dog minis coming too....can hardly contain myself...new babies to play with......

APOLOGY: If you are waiting for orders it because we can't count. lol We stuffed up on the amount of rubber we (read MARK) thought WE had in stock.....but when we (HE) went to get the next box from the storage pile...we were all out. And of course it's all my fault apparently. ALthough rubber ordeing and counting is definately a BLUE job, not a PINK job (many of you know about how our job descriptions are blue or pink in this household....and in my book rubber ordering is deffo BLUE......Anyway we were expecting it here on Tuesday...but nothing arrived. Rang the rubber supplier and of course, they have a new system and so delivery is taking longer than they originally told us (HIM...Mark aka rubber-boy....just to be clear...he has a special superman suit that he wears while pressing it too....yes really.....), so we have been advised we SHOULD have rubber tomorrow (Thursday). Don't panic...I'm not!! I'm having LOADS of fun doing my paintings.... so all orders will be sent out first class before the weekend.......we never ran out of rubber before...I think it's quite funny....and this is why I am having so much fun making art because I have some time!!! So maybe we should run out of rubber more often....KIDDING!!! So that was an official apology...on behalf of Mark....blogging is a pink job....

Leandra

Viva Paint Ideas

I had a lot of fun demoing at the Craft Barn for their June demo weekend, so thought I'd show you a few pics of some of the samples I made before I send them off to Sandy for her to put up in the shop.
I got to demo so many supplies that my desk was a treasure trove of all kinds of goodies. One of the most popular techniques people enjoyed was using the viva decor ferro texture paste. You can use a splodger (spatula/ credit card) to spread it and then stamp into the paste with a damp script or pattern stamp. I used MN44 (french text), and SM08 (squiggly scroll). Leave that to dry (15 mins) and then you can apply Precious Metal Colour paints all over to highlight the texture.

Ferro is available in several rusty colours, so if you want the colour to show, then choose contrasting shades to use on top. I like Gold Iron which is a rusty chocolate colour. Golden orange and Silver Ferro are lighter shades that contrast nicely with pinks and blues. If you opt for a shade like Golden green, it works well with greeny blues like the sample shown here to the left, it's a forest floor type effect.


In this swirly sample you can see more clearly the texture and how I used a few different shades of precious metal colour paints: blue lagoon, green gold, bronze and a touch of violet.

To apply, make sure the paint is well shaken up, place a piece of 'cut and dry' foam over the top of the bottle, then tip the bottle up and back down. Now you will have a spot of colour on the foam and you can easily drag it across the ferro texture lightly. It dries really fast, so you are not waiting around for this at all, it's very instant! I just used a heavy piece of card as the substrate, but you could use grungeboard, chipboard, wood or canvas. The texture is quite flexible, so it won't crack.

This pink sample is on a chipboard base, and then coloured with pink, gold, rose-pink and lilac precious metal paints.

To embellish these samples, I prefer to stamp images from Squiggly Ink Crowns and Castles collection onto copper metal. It's nice to outline the stamped image from the front with a teflon-tipped tool (from the Basic tool set or teflon tool set), then you can flip it over onto a soft mat, and puff out the image with a paper stump. Once you are happy with the depth, fill the metal recess with glossy accents, press onto card stock, and once dry you can cut out the metal image and secure with glossy accents, foam pads or gel medium onto the chipboard as an embellishment.

On this dragonfly sample you can see how the ferro was spread over 3 sections of the card, stamped with the scroll SM08, then painted with precious metal paints in pinks, and highlighted with bronze.

The dragonfly SITT3, and small flowers SITT6 were stamped onto periwinkle and copper metal, layered to card and humungo tape, and then embossed with the pointy teflon tool, and sprayed with glimmer mist. Note how the patterns on the petals catch the glimmer mist. I love how working with metal allows you to give shape to wings and petals. It makes the embellishments so interesting!
On the mini castle sample you can also see the texture of the flowers. The copper was also lightly sprayed with a glimmer.

TIP: If the ferro is too thick when you stamp into it you will get a peaky-frosting effect when the stamp is lifted off. To avoid this, clean your stamp (an old wet toothbrush helps!) thin and smooth the level of the ferro with your spatula and try again. I think it also helps to stamp while the rubber is damp, but the great thing about ferro is you can stamp and smooth until you have the effect you prefer. You do need to clean up that stamp quickly!

This green/brown sample also uses periwinkle metal for the stamped bellies, but they were more heavily sprayed with glimmer, so the colour is less purple and more green/blue. You can also see that I used the croco crackle (gorgeous colours!) around the edges....and I love how once 'cracked' you can see through to the metallic paint underneath beautifully.

Well I am sure you have enough information to give this technique a go! All the paints, stamps, metal and tools are easily found in the shop by following the links in this post.....now all you ahve to do is choose which colours to buy!! My advice, start with 3 shades: a light, medium and dark, and 2 of those should contrast...oh and don't forget to get a metallic accent shade for the peaks.... like gold, silver-gold or bronze.

I still have some other techniques I want to show you with metal and the paints, so I'll post those over the coming few weeks.

Have fun and remember...its more fun to get messy than clean the house!

Leandra

PS. You can now follow me daily on twitter @paperartsy . I promise to tweet interesting facts ... not boring drivvle! LOL .....