I've been a busy bee....

Permission granted by Mark to have a play day...so here's what I did ...a few pieces with the new squiggly Ink minis and some dijon metal.....and I have fun making a bespoke background too.

Let's start with the background. It's made of several layers of all kinds of stuff, but once it was thoroughly dry I sanded it to grunge it up a little and to make it smoother for stamping onto. I used colourwash sprays, paint, ink sprays, stamps, old book and dictionary papers, tissue papers.....that's probably about it! LOL

Next I stamped onto some metal (mocha and dijon), and watercolour paper. I stamped each image once onto the metal, and twice onto the paper. I was thinking that I might colour some images with my coloursoft pencils, or layer stamped metal onto the background...so at this stage I was keeping the options open by working with just a few colours. In the end, my background worked better with the dijon, so I'll keep my stamped mocha for another day.

For Mini 25, the cat, make a tape sandwich of cardstock, humungo tape, and the stamped dijon metal. Next use a pointed teflon tool to outline the stamped design (stamped with stazOn ink).

You can see I don't stick to the lines exactly, it can look good if you work off the lines (look at the tail). You can also use the tool to add extra pattern likeI did on the stripes.

The nice thing about a metal-tape-card sandwich is that the combination is soft, so you can easily make embossing marks in the metal, but the metal is also supported , so it doesn't stretch, and this makes it easy to cut out too. You will need non-stick pointy scissors. I use the Red Handled Tim Holtz ones.




For the finished sample, I cut out the cat, even though it looks like metal from the front, as the back is cardstock, you can easily secure it to the project with your preferred tape or glue.

I stamped the words 'you know you love me' directly onto the background. Added a few mini tags, and layered to book page that had been painted lightly.

The little footprint makes a nice border edge, and I chose to grunge up the blue backing paper to match the style of the card.

The Lighthouse, Squiggly Mini 23, was stamped onto watercolour paper, and coloured with coloursoft and prismacolour pencils. Trim it out, and I layered it onto torn pieces of the background.

The tag behind was a nice idea that turned out better than I expected. I sprayed 2 mini misters of distress ink (broken china in one, and peeled paint mixed with vintage photo in the other) with mica powders through a tattered angels stencil. Dried this off, then rubber DTP over the top with scattered straw. Next I painted over the complet tag a layer of gesso which was thinned a bit with water, and dried it off. I then sanded the edges of the tag quite a lot, and rubbed Walnut distress ink into the sanded parts direct to paper. Last, I spraye the whole tag with water to soften the walnut stain ink, dabbed off the excess liquid with a paper towel, and dried with a heat tool. I really like this effect. The trim at the bottom was a left over bit of sketch book paper rubbed with walnut stain and sprayed with a distress ink spray. I like to stick everything together with Claudine Hellmuth matte gel medium. It is strong, and when it dries there are no marks left from where it night have smooched out.

Squiggly Mini 24 is the windmill.

I used the colouring pencils trying to pick out colours from the background paper. One way to blend the pencils is to use a dark colour, then colour over the top of it with white or a light shade. You get a lovely blended result, and you can do this over and over as you work to get the shade you like best.

The sails of the windmill were stamped onto dijon metal, and then made into a tape sandwich. I used the teflon tool to add texture. I also like to add bling to the spots, or you can punch out some. I couldn't find my tiny hole punch so I just cut it out and stuck it down. The sails behind are coloured green, so if I had found the punch, that would have been a nice surpise to see that peeking through.

I layered the windmill to a piece of painted book page, background, and a piece of card painted with cream and lavender, and stamped with SM08 in gold paint.

Here we have Squiggly Mini 26, the cute birdbox with some quirky little inhabitants!

First I stamped the stamp 3 times onto the background in Jet black archival ink. This is where you see how smooth your sanding was!

Next cut out all the pieces from a dijon tape sandwich, and do the same for a watercolour background.

Try different pieces in different positions until you are happy with the layout, and stick all the pieces down with matte gel medium. I layered this to book page and black card (not shown).

And finally a tag with the birds. This time, I stamped straight onto the background again, and used coloured pencils to change the tone of the birds. The trick to making this stand out on the background was that I mixed some plum colourise paint (Stewart Gill) with glazing liquid (Golden) and painted it with a fine paintbrush around the birdhouse. This transcluscent paint won't obliterate the background, but leaves a dark stain. I left this for a few seconds, then dabbed off the excess with a paper towel to soften the edges. You may need to repeat this a few times to get the shadow even all around the stamped image. Making the background darker this way helps the birdhouse pop out.


These samples turned out in a different colour palette than I normally use, but I think it's interesting and challenging to work with different colours to your 'safe' ones! I was generally thinking blue, purple, ochre...which is kind of odd I guess, but there is the odd dash of green (because blue and yellow mixed make green), just like a hint of pinnk emerges occasionally too.

Have a great weekend!

Leandra

Ohhhh Lookie what's new!

I am loving these new minis just pressed today and sitting here waiting to post out to you on Monday.

I am not sure if this is a letterbox or a birdhouse, but I just love it loads!!! And all the little birdies are pretty eccentric, but that fits the PaperArtsy family perfectly! This is going to be my favourite stamp this month!! Code SM26


Also we have a cheeky pussy cat, the cat's got the cream here!! SM25

The footprint and the words can be trimmed away from the main design so that you get 3 stamps from one little mini. Great value for money, and of course these are ready for you on EZ mount, and you get a laminated index sheet to store them on.


Next up is a squiggly windmill. I think the 'paddles' ...is that what they are called??? or is that only when they go through the water..... blades??? sails???...(the bits wot go round and round!!) will look fabulous in metal with a few of the holes punches out!!! This windmill is called SM24

And to complete the set is the wonderful lighthouse. SM23. Those stripes are just demanding to be coloured in.

All of these make nice additions to a corner of your holiday journal pages, postcards home, or use them on a summer BBQ invite!!


We pressed all these stamps today, so tomorrow I shall have to make a few samples I think.

We also have new metal Dijon (mustard colour - in real life it is much more yellow-ochre, in the picture it looks too tan), and Mocha (coffee colour, light beige) , so if you haven;t played with those yet get some now! All of these minis will look great stamped onto metal and embossed with a teflon tool. Make a tape sandwich of metal, humungo and card stock, trim out and put onto a card, tag or project. Fabulous fun!

So let us know what you think with a comment, we love hearing from you so don't be shy. If you talk to me it lets me know people are out there and interested in what we do!

Are you on twitter yet? Come a be a twit with me. You can follow me @PaperArtsy ...and see what we do at PA world HQ....occasionally I post pictures (twitpics!) the whole twitty lingo cracks me up, and it is fun to follow other people and see what their daily lives are like. It helps me gt through tedious jobs, and it is fun to see what people are up to in thier crafty lives too. Twitter can seem a bit weirdo to start with but it's just like texting in bulk. Mark thought it was silly initially, but now he's watching twitter about 3 times a day....have you tweeted yet? Its way easier than blogging.

This weekend I have 2 more painting to "integrate", I need to try beeswax on the next layer and make the new mini samples...I hear we are expecting rain....perfect creativity weather!

Leandra

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

Doolally Days

Every year I think that I need to be more prepared for the madness that is end of the final school term, but every year I forget. On top of that there are other mundane issues that I also forgot...because why would you want to remember to do stuff like....

• taking both cars to the garage for MOT - one needs follow up care in order to pass the test
  
• defrosting the mini fridge...and then I plugged it back in and it blew up (another appliance bites the dust - remember it was the washing machine lat month!), new fridge on order....(ripples of excitement over this!)
  
• Millie heads to the big school, this means more school uniform, sorted that last night.... (don't understand why crap msynthetic blazars are so expensive....),
  
• Car tax - yay can do that online,

Then we had slightly more fun things like:

• foot ball tournament in 30 degree weather....5 games to watch, was glad they just missied out on the final by the end of 8 hrs in the baking sun
• Sports Day at the Primary school...why do all the dads look about 18 these days?
• Induction Days x 2 for Millie at the big school...
• Haircuts for kids who were supposed to have them last holidays but their mother keeps forgetting
• Courtney at work experience for these 2 weeks....trip to Lakeside for a wardrobe that can be summer beach and smark work...very tricky brief- but a couple of floaty dresses and a pair of knickerbockers (remember those from the 80's!!!) did the trick....and a handbag...
• Parent Teacher meetings...Millie passed all the yr 6 SAT's with Level 5's...not only is she sporty but brainy...and a nice kid....how did we do that???

Coming up we have 3 more school trips, youth group trips, and Mark and I are still discussing who gets to go to Chessington for the day with the Year 6 munchkins.....i went last year, so i guess it must be his turn.

Our house will be invaded soon with builders putting in new windows....the landlord finally agreed the towels on every window sill (muchos leaks), and curtains blowing in the wind was justification for a whole house job....just need to convince him about the kicthen and bathroom now! LOL

Vistors from NZ are coming en mass this year starting in 2 weeks when the builders are in, and finishing at Xmas! Friends x 2 sets, family x 2 sets, sister x 1, neice x 1, mother x 1 Among this we are hopefult to fit a week in Brussels with Taz and Baz (kiwi buddies from WAAAAAAAY back), and a week in Wales with other kiwis over here for Aug/September. Plus over the summer we have 3 kids birthdays and mine.

Have just realised my summer doesn't seem that relaxing does it! LOL hoping the weather holds though. I love these hot 30 degree days, they are fab! Not so good for pressing rubber, but for everything else (except football!!) they are perfect! We are reluctant to put up the pool, every year when we do that the weather turns rubbish....

So we are now in design mode to get new stamps ready for September through to February...It's all planned, just have to DO IT!!! We have a few surprises up our sleeves (again too...but my lips are sealed for now)

I have got all the pictures of the wooden earrings done with ferro, precious metal colour and copper findings done, so will blog those after I get through today's list! Here's a sneaky peek.

Oh and the kittens are growing like mad...they are much easier to look after than I imagined.

Leandra

And now for something totally different....

...I have been doing an online class with Suziblu, and last week we learned how to sketch faces...you know the kind we have been seeing for a few years in Cloth Paper scissors that Misty Mawn and DJ Pettit et al seem to create with the heads off to one side.

Well Suziblu has been doing this sort of thing as utube vids, and she is such a hoot to watch that you really get sucked in. I came across her weekly videos last summer, but you should go and take a look. Suzi has online classes that you can take, and the one I'm doing is about drawing faces, colouring them in, then creating a mixed media background around them.





These are some of the faces I sketched last week....and here are a couple that I learned how to colour in this week.


The chicky babe with the striped hat has a dodgy left eye that is slightly in the wrong place, and smaller than the right one...probably something to do with me colouring her in at 1 am when I should have been in bed!!

The next one has nice coloured eyes, but we think she looks a bit masculine...her chin is a bit too pointy I think...at least I can see where I need to improve.




The little pirate was an experiment in masculine and stubble...looks like he was also up all night!

Anyway, just thought I's share with you a snippet of what I have been doing the last few weeks in my spare time.

Viva paint onto metal

OK so I'm being a good girl and reporting back to you the next part of my Viva exploration! The trick to discovering the versatility of these paints is to play around with them!!!

It seems these precious metal colours are happy to be applied onto any surface, but the shinier surfaces (metal, acrylic) do take a bit more effort to build layers initially.

This sample is a painted acrylic tag. First you need to choose some colours, many people find this the hard part, so to simplify, try choosing 3 shades: light, medium, dark....and 2 of those should contrast...eg. pistacio (light), blue lagoon(medium), olive (dark), then you can have gold or any 'standard' metallic as an accent. This works really well if you have some texture on the piece to highlight lumpy bits! (see previous post on ferro texture)

Before you start , shake the bottles well until you hear the ball bearing 'clack', and look at the colour to ensure the top half of the bottle is blended with the bottom. Some colours take more work that others! I always replace the lids properly while working, and shake before I use every single time. I find I keep turning the bottles upside down on my desk, so the metallic pigments don't settle too much while I'm working.

Ready to start? Open the bottle, place a square of cut and dry foam over the mouth of the bottle, then tip the bottle up and back down before removing the foam square. You should have a nice round spot of paint on the foam. To evenly dispense this spot on the foam, dab it a couple of times onto your craft sheet, then immediately start dabbing the paint all over the surface you are working on. Dry with a heat tool and repeat 1-3 times until you have a good even base.
TIP: If you don't dry paint well inbetween layers, then you may find that you get 'spots' where the new, wet coat paint might lift off previous layers, so you want to build this base coat with a light dabbing action, and make sure you dry really well in between coats.

Next, colour 2 (medium shade). This could be a slightly darker green (eg lime) or you could opt for a contrasting colour like blue or pink. I like the pearl blue a lot, also turquoise...but whatever you select as colour 2, you should find you need less paint than the first coat. To apply, again, tap your paint spot onto the craft sheet to soften the spot, then starting at the very edge tap gently to apply the colour to the sides of your substrate. I like to work around the sides, and occasionally bring the colour towards the middle. Keep tapping, and renew your spot if it starts to dry out. For contrast it's good to not put colour 2 everywhere, otherwise what was the point of colour 1???.....so work around the edges, but maybe leave2-3 sections of the edges with colour 1 (base coat) visible. If you do obliterate all of colour 1, the great thing about paint, is that you can come back over colour 2 with colour 1 again...this is also how you build nice depth, by allowing sneek peeks of earlier layers to be seen.

When you are happy with the balance of colours 1 & 2, then you can add colour 3, the darkest. This will only need a small amount tapping on, again starting from the edges works well, or you can apply paint to a stamp with the cut and dry foam, and stamp the paint onto the background. You can see this was done in turquoise on the 'acrylic' sample. Try stamping in your accent metallic (eg gold). If you find you 'zones' of colour are too defined, then using stamped texture images (numbers, textures, script, patterns) across the light and dark sections is a good way to soften the zones between colours 1 & 2.

If you wish to stamp a feature image (face, person, house, castle etc), or a quote onto the painted base, then a dye based permanent ink is best. Stazon ( a solvent ink) will not show up very black on these paints, so I prefer archival jet black (ranger). The quote I stamped in black uses archival ink. It's also better to stamp in black on the lighter sections of your background so that the image is more clearly seen, and try to avoid busy areas (eg script stamped sections in the medium colour), because then your quote will be competing with the dark script/pattern for attention.

To finish the acrylic sample, I stamped the castle SICC7 in black stazon onto aluminium metal, layered the metal to humungo tape and cardboard (tape sandwich technique), then outlined the lines with a pointy teflon tool, and then cut out and stuck down the sandwich to the paint with foam pads or gel medium. (matte gel medium is the safest adhesive for the long term) Finally flower embellishments were also added with a small spot of gel medium, and bling accents work well in the centres. Ribbons at the top finish off nicely.

Ok so let's move onto another shiny surface to paint...metal. This castle sample using SICC4, started life as an aluminium piece of metal. From the precious metal colour Viva paints, I worked with lime green, Blue azure and turquoise . Blend well by dabbing gently. Then I stamped squiggly mini 15 (spots) in gold down the right hand side, and dried that.

I stamped the castle in archival jet black ink....remember, if you paint is not properly dry, you will not be able stamp on top effectively, so take time to add thin coats of colour, and let dry between coats well.

To add texture to the castle and the spots, you need a pointed teflon tool, these come in the basic tool set, or you can buy diff size and styles of teflon tips in the 'eraser' sets which i have in small and medium size. Yes you can use the 'erasers' to remove mistakes from the metal....do this on an acrylic mat.....but i love to use the rounded teflon tools to puff out areas, and i use the chisels to refine (flatten) in tricky to reach places, or to define areas more sharply that you can with a paper stump.

Back to the spots. Gently (that means don't press hard! - you don't want to scratch off the paint!) trace around the circles of a few randomly chosen spots. Flip the metal over onto a soft mat from the mat set. Ideally you want to use a ball and cup to stretch the metal working in a soft circular motion, but if you spots don't fit the ball and cup, then you can use a rounded teflon tool, or a fine paper stump to stretch the metal. Flip your metal back over to see if the spots are as deep as you like them, then working on the acrylic mat, use the 'cup' end of the ball and cup and press down over the ball. This flattens the surrounding metal to make the ball 'pop'.

Now back to the castle. Again, take the teflon tool, and outline the castle walls, if you want you can do this on the thin soft mat, or if you don't want such deep texture, work on a wad of paper. How cool is that? You have just added depth to your stamped image...this is why working with metal is so much fun, you can add an extra level of dimension to your work quite easily. If you want to enhance this further, then you can flip the metal over, and puff out the shape a little more as I have done in this green and pink sample. The camera has caught the shadow down the left hand side. of the castle, which helps you see how puffed out the roof and turret sides are.

Maybe you are wondering where this stamp comes from? You probably don't realise it, but the turrets are designed so that you can build your own.

Start with SICC3 (crowns & castles plate 3), and stamp the pointy turret in black archival, remember, you are stamping onto metal, so you need to be firm, but try not to grind on the stamp too hard, or you will stamp blurry lines by pressing too hard.

So we can now lengthen the walls of the turret, and to do this you will need the side wall stamp from SICC1. Make sure your block work on the stamp is facing towards the inside of the turret. There are a couple of tricks to getting the line to match up perfectly. Either place the ez-mounted stamp onto a see through plastic ruler or acrylic block that has a grid...I use Tim Holtz' ruler, but an acrylic block with a grid is even better, because for a small stamp like this a smaller block is easier to handle than a longer ruler. As long as the line of the wall matches the line of the grid, you are fine. You can test on a line ruled on a piece of paper first. The other method, is to draw a permanent pen line on the cling foam , then when your stamp is on the block, you can see a guide line..again, test on paper first.
Once you have lengthened the walls of the turret to your preference, then you can fill any block-work gaps with the block work stamp...just check you have it sitting straight on the block before you stamp.

In a similar way, you can also extend the knobby castle wall out to either side of the turret. The extra knobby bumps are also on Crowns and Castles Plate 1. You can match them up the same way. To make the wall look ralistic, you will also need to stamp extra blockwork below the knobby wall line.

So now you can see how easy it is to build your own castle. From plates 1, 3 and 9 you can create a wonderful vista of castles. Try stamping, cutting out then layering them so you get great depth.
If you did all this on metal you could make an amazing surround for a birthday cake or centre piece for a medievil feast!! Fun fun fun!!!


Next time...stamping onto metal with metal extra stamps, or even flowers to make textured embellishments for all kinds of situations! Oh and I must show you some of the sketches i have been churning out for my suziblu class I signed up for.

Please leave a comment and let me know how you are enjoying crowns and castle stamps, metal or vivia paints! I love hearing what you are up to.

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 .....