How fab is this?

Linda at LB Crafts sent me this today in the post as a thanks for demoing last weekend. Its so simple, and so effective, just typical of her classic style that always looks just right!. I *love* it! I think it might need a few more buddies to keep it company. What a cool idea for Christmas decorations!

She has stamped the most popular squiggly mini #8 in jet black archival ink (Ranger) onto a small acrylic tag.

Next the Teeny tiny house from Bricks and Mortar Plate 3 is stamped onto copper metal twice...becasue this is a see-through hanging decoration, she has got the same house on both sides!

She used her Ten Seconds Studio tools (available at LB Crafts) to make a simple strip, a bit of ball & cup, with a micro-wheel eaiter side. That is secured with glue, and an eyelet at the side allows for a simple bead dangle.

At the top she has used prima flowers (and brads) both sides, with copper wire and a rust fine ribbon hanger to finish.

Thanks Lin, what a great mail day for me!



Tomorrow I'm going to share a new technique (happy accident) from last week using 2 products you're bound to have in your stash.

Keep those stamp competiton entries coming in, we've had some wonderful projects come in this week, keep up the good work. Remember we are looking for weird and unusual ways to use PaperArtsy stamps, so think outside that box some more. We know you're all a little bit weird and wacky deep down! At least we hope you are. I keep telling my kids - why would you want to be normal??? LOL

Our Big Fat PaperArtsy Competition...

Yep we are having a prize give away. We want you to send us your photos (jpegs to newsletters@paperartsy.co.uk) of the most original thing you've done with a PaperArtsy stamp, no holds barred. The comp is open to anyone worldwide and the prize is a full set of 42 PaperArtsy Minis. Value £197 GBP (approx $400 USD). We'll post a selection of the entries each week here on the blog for you to see and we'll announce the winner on May 21. So get on your bizarro thinking cap, get a caffeine buzz on and show us what you can do.

Speaking of coffee, to set the tone, and maybe get your brain moving, check this one. Greg Costello from The Workhouse Coffee Company in Reading sent me this photo. Apparently the staff at his gourmet coffee shop spend the quieter afternoon hours stamping coffee cups with PaperArtsy stamps ready for the next days business. The customers love it and we do too.

Right then, get going and show us your ideas.

Coming Soon....new 'house' Squigglies

Even though we have been particularly busy, we have still managed to squeeze in some new stamps for April. The launch of these new babies is at Ally Pally this weekend, available from the LB Crafts stand. The theme is houses, and I love them so much already. So useful, so much fun, and great for a lot of diferent situations.








I adore the rulers, these make perfect borders. The houses all have frames, so you can put images behind if you cut out the frame, or you could draw in your own doors/ windows detail. I also thought I might stamp another image inside the frame. I also think I will love using them as secret doors - interactive stuff is awesome on cards.




I think some of these stamps will work great with scrapbook layouts, and the quotes are perfect for cards, so these are really versatile.

I can't wait to see what you do with them.

Available from April 14th 2008
www.paperartsy.co.uk

Home to stay at last!

I've had a blast. Since the end of January I think I have been home for maybe 3 weekends!

End of January was CHA in Anaheim, California, USA. I got to go on my own this time which was really cool fun (of course I did miss Mark being with me) but I got to hang with the Artgirlz, and Jenny S from Paperworx, New Zealand, and all the other girlies I bumped into along the way, so it actually was mega chilled. We didn't exhibit this show for 2 main reasons: the US economy has made it hard for them to import while their exchange rate is lower than usual, and the UK trade show 'Stitches' was the following weekend, so there was no time to do both shows with only one day in between.

The big trend at CHA this year was clear stuff, as in acrylic books and stuff. Also felt was huge with all kinds of trims, borders, accents and even 12 x 12 stuff. Then there was the bling. Basically brads were like jewelry , so the bigger and blingier the better. Stamps as a category is still strong. Scrapbookers are getting into stamping big time now! Also lots of fabric trims, eg velvet - velvet brads, velvet ribbons etc. And the lush, bling, glam stuff was seen on papers with gold embossed layers or flourishes, sparkles, glitter, etc as part of the design. The other trends I noticed as far as design elements go were houses (shapes for chipboard, stamps, clear layers, on papers etc) and butterlies/ dragonflies are doing the rounds again.

The following weekend we were exhibiting at Stitches in the UK (Birmingham). I was expecting a quiet show, but we actually were so busy I didn't get to walk the show at all! Stitches is always fun, as Tim and Alain from Ranger are here, so we usually get to go out for a few meals with them while the show is on. It's taken a few years, but now Tim actually really likes Indian food!

2 weeks after stitches I was teaching for the weekend down at Portmouth at Jendenink. We made this charm bracelet. It's a fondue system with the melt pot. Make a paper bead, dip and voila! Sometimes we add gold leaf or perfect pearls to the bead to glam it up a bit. So cool, and a fun way to use the melt-pot for sure.

The weekend after Jendenink was SMAC. This is a trade show in France. We have a distributor in France called ACICAM, so 2 times a year we release new stamps for them. We translate existing PaperArtsy stamps into French which they sell to French shops. So at SMAC we released another 20 stamps, and we even did a French catalogue for them, as they now have about 60 designs (over 180 individual images and 25 minis).

SMAC was great as we stay at a hotel opposite the Louvre. Although the down side was the train took about 45 mins to get out to the show each day, but of course it is super cool to be in Paris too. Suze Weinburg and her husband were here this year, as well as the Ranger owners Alain and Justin, so we had some fun nights out with them all. Suze and I swapped some great melt-pot ideas, and she was blown away with the show, it is really the most beautifully presented show on the world calendar! Go here to see her photos of the show, and here for her newsletter that week. Mona from Creative Imaginations and I planned all our make and takes together, along with Tim's grungeboard, and Ranger products, so I really enjoyed all the cool stuff I got to demo with at the show.

The show trends are so different at SMAC to other shows. Felt was big at this show last year (and still popular this year) but the beads were truly incredible. The main thing I saw a lot of was interior decor items, and texture. People love to add that personal touch to their homes, and they use a lot of scrapping style stuff to do it in a very stylish and classy way. Also people in Europe are not scared of colour, so everything is bold and very beautiful. So inspirational.

So we got home from SMAC, and then 10 days later we were back for Version SCRAP. This is a scrapping show in Paris, with classes and workshops. Mona was still in France working for ACICAM in between the 2 shows, and so we co-ordinated for classes again.

I did this cute flower class (left) with some Creative Imaginations products. And a mini transparent book which was really popular too.

We also did loads of different make and takes on the booth which people could book in to do also. I caught up with Celine Navarro who I also briefly saw at CHA, so that was cool.

As it was school holidays Mark and the kids came over too, and the daughter of our distributor took them to Disney Paris for a day out on Friday. We kept it a secret, and they were so excited. Our kids are now 7,9,11,13 years, so they are a great age for theme parks!

We got back from this latest adventure yesterday. How to blast 3 months in one easy step! LOL

This weekend its Ally Pally, a Stamping and Scrapbooking show in London. I shall be there demoing for LB Crafts on their stand, so if anyone is nearby, come along. Its a great show!

"Home" theme Postcards

Today Isa and I were emailing about ways to use Golden Glazes, and the inevitable happened and I ended up using them on some stuff.....as you do.

When I first started learning about Altered Books, there was a small series of book/ magazines published by Design Originals (actually it turned into a series) called AB101, 102, 103 and so on. The first 2 were pioneered by Beth Cote, and then they turned into a free for all with all kinds of contributors. She also did a DVD, and that's where I first saw the glazes being used.

Its very simple process: squeeze and spread. Glazes can be used over or under collage elements, and I have even used them to transfer ink-jet images into the 'paint'. On the left I used cut 'n' dry foam to apply the glaze (Yellow Ochre, Sea Foam Green) to watercolour paper. After each layer, dry well, and you can gradually build depth of colour along the way. Glazes blend really well, and they have a long 'open' time. [That means they take a while to dry]. These dry with a matte finish which is great because you can easily work on top of glaze to stamp, journal, collage etc as its not a plastic shiny finish.

Permanet dye inks work well over glazes for bold sharp images, but today I successfully used distress ink (antique linen, Frayed Burlap) up against a zig-zag mask at the top of this piece. I then over-stamped a flourish image (SM08) with distress. I did find the distress colour would get darker as I dried it with a heat gun.

To finish, I stamped an arch (Urban Snapshots - Arched Apertures 2) in Jet Black Archival ink on the toothy side of ink-jet transparency film..this is much easier than stamping onto slippery acetate. I then used Patina Green Glaze on the reverse shiny side of the acetate to create a little bit of contrast between the background. The doors are cut open and bent back, and a collage sheet image (tinted with distress inks) is placed behind for a focal point.

On the right the glaze background is much more Blue, however again I used Sea Foam Green, and Patina Green (which is more like a green/blue ...the BEST shade of the collection). This time 3 -4 layers gave a much stronger colour., But I did try to keep a couple of sections more green than others...it seems to appeal to the eye more.

You might recognise the swirly heart and numbers are grunge-board, the smaller of whcih was embossed in red, and held together with a brad. I then tried to imitate the font in the stamp (don't think I did too badly!) and the lines were stamped. The little house was stamped onto beige card, and masked and sponged with distress inks. The Stamp is from PaperArtsy Squiggly Ink Collection- Love & Kisses 1.

This glaze method is often how I start a canvas, because as the colours are soft, you gradually build. Starting with glazes isn't so scary as acrylics, and they are easy to move around, blend etc. You can also soften the harshness of acrylic with glazes, or create transcluscent, bespoke glazes to your own preference. And of course, they can be a way to seal your work.

A nice finishing touch to any type of mixed media project is to use a metallic or pearlescent glaze. These products can accent texture is a soft subtle way, and the pearlescent glaze mixed into any solid colour will add a really neat tint...particularly striking in darker paint shades.

Have you used glazes before? Let me know how you got on if you have time to drop a comment.

Squiggly Crazy

Ok so we all went a bit squiggly dizzy this weekend.

The squiggly stamps are featured on blogs all over the place. Check out Jo and Isa from our DT who dropped everything to do some awesome squiggling action with ink and paper. I'm sure you will be inspired to try out their colour combos and ideas!

On the right is my notebook cover that I made which has got the most oohs and ahhs so I thought you should get to see it too!. This is made with 5x5" manilla tags and bound with the zutter (I love that machine!)

Stamps from Squiggly ink ; Love and Kisses 1, Swirls anc Curls 1, 3&4.



And here'e the back cover

The inks are distress (Spiced Marmalade, Aged Mahogany and Broken China, Shabby Shutters)
The stamps are Squiggly ink -Swirls and Curls 4, Squiggly Mini #8.


Send me pics of your squiggly adventures - watch out, its addictive! In a squiggly kind of way.

Leandra

It's a squiggly life

This week i have pressed so much rubber! If you haven't heard already we just released a new collection called Squiggly Ink - it's a kind of swirly doodle style which is just SO useful! The new Squiggly Ink stamps look so much fun before you even start, and yesterday, after making them all week and itching to have a go, I finally got to sit down and play! YAY...

So many people are emailing with pics of what they have made too, i think these stamps really are causing a buzz, so I'm thrilled that people love this collection so much.

I always want to do soft and romantic style (maybe its a Valentines thing), but no matter what - it ends up full on colour, so this (left) is my closest to soft that i can do.

Most of these stamps are from Squiggly Ink- Love & Kisses 1, but the background stamp is SM08 (a mini). I love the striped blue background too - I just sponged (with Cut 'n' Dry foam) Broken China Distress Ink (Ranger) onto the edge of an ATC sized card, then stamped the 'stripe' in Walnut Stain Distress ink.

You can't really see it in the photo, but I cut the door out from the front of the house, set it back and raised the rest of the house to the front, so it looks like an arch. The key is plain Grungeboard from my buddie Tim Holtz. You can see various ideas on how to use this product on his blog. The 12 Christmas tags are loaded with great ideas for those of you new to ranger products. Is there anyone new to ranger's cool stuff???



So back to my artwork, they were all made with Distress inks, and this one is my favourite...I think the colours are fab! The feature stamp is Squiggly Ink - Love & Kisses 5 and the Hearts on the red layer are from Squiggly Ink - Swirls and Curls 4 . I used mini SM05 for the tiny hearts in the middle. The wings are swirly grungeboard, the crown is plain grungeboard.







On the left I used Linen, Tattered Rose which were boosted for depth with Worn Lipstick and Vintage Photo, The brackets are in Aged Mahogany. Then stamps, stamps stamp. Loads of images from loads of stamps. This was fun, and the key was to try and keep the pinks and browns in their own zones which softly blend into each other. The background stamps act as a 'bridge' between the zones.








And now for the quirky. I love this kind of stamping, and this is the kind of Valentines Kind I'm most likely to give! Very cheeky . The stamps are from Love and Kisses 6.



Wishing you all a great New Year.

Leandra