Nudge nudge wink wink

We got a bit of an ArtsyCrafts secret....actually, it's a great big whopping surprise that will blow your socks off..it's going to be a creative extravaganza not to be missed.......more details coming soon....

follow this blog to find out more on this intriguing story or follow Leandra on twitter @paperartsy

WOYWW - rubber rubber rubber

I know I have been AWOL, but if you look at the previous post you will see why. I refuse to feel guilty about it, because the truth is everything I have done in the last several weeks has been so totally TOP SECRET that I could not show you a thing! Or the post would have had to self destruct in 15 seconds or something.....!

Anyway, today I have mega work to do, and here it is...3 big piles of rubber to be put on foam, trimmed and sent to their final destination.....if you are nearby and fancy a quick lesson in machine trimming rubber, then pop over and I'll put my feet up and leave you to it.

And before you ask.....yes rubber can be grey...we don't normally use grey...but as our supplier has run out of red (again), we have to use grey until the red shipment arrives in the UK...we are told in days.....hopefully it will arrive cos I am nearly out of grey now too....

And NO the sodding white shed is not cleaned up and sorted out, so don't go asking about that either...bit of a sore point.... not entirely my fault....Miss Jo F-Y shot thru to the big apple for a vacation...and she was chief, self-appointed, shed-elf... 3 summers later and now I'm not sure I can even get the camera in the door to take a pic, but I will have to think up a subversive tactic to get her over here...maybe if i set a date that might help???

So as you can tell, very excited about the day ahead..... now where did i put that ipod....

Don't forget to see what the team are up to by going to Julia's place and practise your 'nosey' skills. Bet you're a natural, just like me.


Leandra

A very {PaperArtsy} summer

What a whirlwind this summer has been. In a nutshell so you don't feel you have missed out on the behind the scenes here at PaperArtsy here's the summary....

We had an early harvest, this was taken from the house looking out at the fields right in front of us...THis is also the view from our World HQ workshop next door...we love it here!

After which they flicked poo over all the fields and we gagged ...for days! uggg

We planted a vege garden...very late but we did it....and now have  lots of lettuce, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and caterpillers

Then we had lots of parties...Hugo (10th), 

a week after that my 40-something...I forget which one it was...must be an odd cos everyone else is even, I'm thinking I must be 43 this year...then a week after that Courtney's 16th

and we were very brave parents and let her have about 40 kids over for a party one night in the garden...it went very well, much better than I ever thought possible...maybe we were just worse when we were that age....hmmmm

Then Miss 16 went off to V festival just up the road in Chelmsford....I want to go next year!!! (L-R: Annabel, Courtney, Nicole, Megan) Despite bad forecasts, it never rained till the evening of the last night, and then not as bad as predicted, but enough for them to come home muddy and with the muddy wellies (we call the gumboots in NZ BTW!)


Meanwhile....I got to spend a few days with my partner in crime Lin from LB Crafts fine tuning our October ArtsyCrafts projects....shhh can I show some sneaks???? She's away for a few days and might not notice...shhhh. Oh she's such a good blogger maybe she already showed you and I never noticed....??
Oh well, from my camera....here are a few snippety bits...

This class will be called book book of wisdom....and the papers will likely be a bit different to what you see there...because Lin and I cooked up a set of papers...so the royal WE (Lin et moi) will have some of our very own papers coming out later in the year and we will use those at AC...they will be soooo goooood...Lin and I had lots of fun dreaming them up together, we wrote them down, drew piccies.... chose the colours...now my Mark has to just read our minds and scribblings and it will be job done...no problem...no problem at all.....he can do that...course he can....anyway you heard it here first...that was a world exclusive.....so now he just has to do it! And they will be totally stunning!

Ohhh now this class is lovely, very elegant and scrummy with lots of layers...as you can sort of see....it looks stunning in cream, but of course at ArtsyCrafts we have 8-10 different tables of colour for you to work with...so it could look amazing in any one of those combos....

Now this doesn't exactly show you a whole lot, but you can see that we will be having some flower fun, and this was just a bunch of stuff chucked in a pile...waiting for....the right place to be put....but you will LOVE what we do with it all...maybe this will whet your appetite, its a bit more...ummm...finished....but there's lots you can't see.....*squeals*

So how do you get to make these???? well, you are too late for ArtsyCrafts at Newport Pagnell - it's sold out, but I believe there are still some places left at Warrington October 30/31. It's a lovely venue DeVere Daresbury Park, and great public transport access, and 2 airports nearby, John Lennon or Manchester...so check out this link and come join us for the creative fun...broomsticks are allowed BTW!


What else..OMG we have done so much...we are up to Hot Pick 1009 (the September release)

Fresh in from the printers less than a week ago all the Hot Picks are on New Index sheets...and I'm sure we have already gone thru a few boxes of them!This is what to look for now in the shops.


And we have Hot Pick Xtras....if you haven't seem HPXT02 where have you been??? (don't tell me on holiday....I'm not listening...no excuses in this day and age of technology)

Go see it here HPXT02...and we have 01 and 03 available in November...unless you go to the Artisan show on October 1&2 where Traplet will be selling them as a PaperArtsy show only Craft Stamper subscription offer...yup that is TRUE, and the Lovely Katy Fox and Helen Chilton are already playing with them and cooking up great demos for you...and no I'm not showing you them NOW..I'm not sure I'm allowed....but they are wicked! And yes, PaperArtsy will have a stand at the show, and we also have a Make and Take booth where you can do a gorgeous thing or 2 with the very talented Jo Firth-Young....so of course you want to go to the show! It's going to be even better than last year!


And today...now this is super shhhh...I snuck some pics from 2 of the new Xmas plates Mark will be making next week.....I am such a rebel...he may be a bit cross that i'm showing you...but I love what he did...he's calling it an Authentic PaperArtsy Christmas...

So watch out for these next week too.


Yesterday was Ella's Birthday (Miss 14), so we went and watched the A-Team...brought back memories of the old TV series, and we all loved it, and today, Miss Millie came home and made brownies for us all, and then helped out peeling and sticking Hot Picks...here she is....

everybody needs a Millie. She is multi-talented, and saving up for a laptop!!


I know it's hard to believe...but I still haven't told you all the good news of the week...we still have some more stamps to show you...but I think that is enough for one day!

Oh and lots of you have been asking how my Dad and his wife are doing in Christchurch, New Zealand after the earthquake. They are absolutely fine. The house suffered substantial damage to the chimneys and roof, which my 72 yr old father has been trying to fix himself...up on the roof....thankfully he has got it to a waterproof state without falling off, or getting bumped off in an aftershock...until more permanent repairs can be made....They were miffed at the timing as they just had new carpet put down in the lounge the day before the quake, and they had a new couch delivered the day of the quake, and due to the rubble and soot coming down the chimney, everything is black, not white...so they were pretty disappointed about that, but in the scheme of things, they are very lucky that the house structure is intact and habitable. There are many many people who have had to walk away from their homes. We are lucky that in New Zealand the earthquake commission was set up with the financial resources in place to help communities in events such as this. 

Christchurch has a lot of work to do to get the infrastructure back to normal, but the kiwi spirit is well suited to situations like this, everyone pulls together and gets stuck in. Go check out piccies here and you soon see how bad it actually was from http://tvnz.co.nz/ No one can understand how it is that no lives were lost when nearly every home in a city of 300 000 people has suffered damage. They are very very lucky. And i hope they can get back to normal as soon as possible.


Sweet PaperArtsy dreams


Leandra

Coming Soon

I must confess. I have been keeping my head down and bum up!

In the last 3 weeks we have had 3 birthdays in this house: Hugo, me and Courtney. All the retail shopping required to get pressies, have celebratory meals out and parties and BBQ's  has filled my catering and entertaining obligations for the rest of the year! I am shattered from socialising and entertaining so many kids. 

The most scarey was Courtney turning 16 - we very bravely decided to do one of those evening parties in the back garden where 16 year olds think they are 20 somethings. To be fair the 30 kids that turned up were wonderful, polite, and we breathed a sigh of relief when they all left at midnight! No dramas. Yay. Think she thinks that she can now have one every fortnight! oh no she won't!!!

Ella turns 14 in a couple of weeks, and the kids will be back at school soon. Whew. I need a holiday!

So what's new in the shop? Hot Pick 1009 ships out to retailers next week. We are madly pressing them today so Lin has some for Stevenage this weekend.

Here's how it looks, HP1009:

  

And I've been cooking this for a while. It's a Hot Pick Xtra, and all the flowers fit the Dies 1, 2&3. Lin will have this at Stevenage in limited numbers too. I LOVE it!!! HPXT02

Both will be going online in the PaperArtsy shop at the end of this month. 

Look out for our stunning advert in the next Craft Stamper magazine to get free shipping on these stamps (hint: you won't miss it) LOL

Happy Weekend

....Leandra

Hot Pick 1008

The new Hot Pick for August has been steadily heading out of PaperArtsy World HQ to shops in the last 2 weeks. Many have quickly nabbed the new Hot Pick which we officially release on August 1st on www.paperartsy.co.uk

You're going to love this one I think, because it has 2 new dies to match it. The flower dies are really popular, and so here we created 2 more, GrungerFlowers 2 and 3 to match the stamps on the new August Hot Pick plate: small script, and Clock collage.

These flower bellies are made from tissue sprayed with Dy's Altered originals sprays (I was lucky enough to receive a gift the other week with those in...mmmmm. Nice vibrant shades) So I sprayed some white tissue with Lime, Sky Blue and Jade, die cut about 8 layers in one go, then over-stamped each layer with the stamp from HP1008. Then I lightly crumpled them and secured with a small dot of glossy accents onto a tag. I sent Dy a thankyou gift back and this was how it looked.

The tag on the present features some of the other images from HP1008 (above)

It's also good to know that the larger of these 2 flower dies is the same size as the small flower stamp from HP1004, remember this one from April!

Oh I guess I should show you the new stamp set too here is HP1008!

So get your Local Stamp store to make sure they order these if they haven't already!

Have a great weekend, it's nearly here and more warm weather ahead!!

Leandra

Sparkly Bits is WOYWW

I have had a crazy few weeks. The kids seems to get socially hyperactive at this time of the year, and I decided to tackle the garden and grow some veges. Plus we have been really busy with designing and all the usual stuff going on here at PaperArtsy Central. Courtney had her prom a few weeks back, and I must put up all the piccies. Been trying to do that for what seems like forever. Anyway, my most recent desk activity is as follows. Sparkly Spritzing.

This year I have been really enjoying finding out about Crafty Notions Sparkly and Dye ink Sprays. The colours of the dyes and the micas are really surprising - the kind of colours where you find yourself doing a little internal squeal of excitement!  Over the last few days I have been making samples of all the colours we have in stock to photograph for the on-line shop, and for our display boards at shows. Here's the scrumminess. Millie and Ella helped and it was not only fun, but surprising how the colours were so different to what i expected from the label description. They really need to package these things with spots on the bottles.

People often ask what is the difference between these and other sprays out there. I am no expert as I really haven't played with loads of UK based products, so can't really compare those but I did sell and use Glimmer Mists a lot in the past couple of years. We decided to switch due to a change in supplier resulting in a price point too high for the UK market. Plus at the same time, the UK market seemed to provide a wide range of alternative sprays.  I do like the extensive range of on-trend colours in various hues available from Tattered Angels, and I like how they release new groups of colours regularly, but at £6-7 a bottle it's too much to expect people to pay. 

I also like that they had colour spots on their bottles...and so that is what prompted me today to add colour spots to all our CN stock, plus all the class-sample bottles I have. It's not hard, just get some white-spot stickers spray, let dry, then stick to your bottle. This is going to make it so much easier for people to see what they are buying at the shows!

When using the CN sprays, the first thing I noticed was the binder in the spray seems to allow the mica to be suspended in the liquid, rather than float on top so if you dab off some excess liquid with a paper towel, you only take away the excess liquid leaving lots of mica with the dye. If there is no binder in a spray the mica seems to float on the surface of a sprayed puddle, so if you dab off excess, all the mica ends up on your paper towel. A binder should also prevent the mica rubbing off when the product is dry. 

Ohh check out my rectangle 'spots' showing the yummo colours inside the bottles!! 

I think any mica spray product can clog, if the mica is not evenly dispersed in the liquid (ie well shaken) before you spray,  then either the fine nozzle or the sucky-up tube will inevitably block. You do need to hold the bottle upright, and keep shaking frequently as mica can settle quite fast, and you don't want a concentrated amount of the particles to go up the tube and get stuck there. If you use your sprays infrequently, and the liquid totally dries up in the mechanism, then you could have difficulty kicking it back into action again. Usually a soak or rinse of the spray mechanism in warm water will loosen any stubborn particles that may have blocked tubes and nozzles. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and buy a new mechanism, but if that is not an option, then try decanting what you need into a Ranger mini mister, the spray action of those babies produces a perfect mist!
So after today's effort, all these bottles have moved off the workdesks and onto the shelves ready for purchase.

So its not just the sparkly ones that I'm all excited about, don't overlook the 2 that look to be the most boring - the Black and White Matte Sprays. Don't be deceived! I call them magic sprays because, well these guys are a different animal altogether. I have no idea what is in the product, but they are a LOT of fun, and can instantly fix disasters. 

If you make a backgrounds that is way to busy, and you totally overcooked it? Take a mask/ stencil, place it over the background, and spray the matte black or white on top. Or don't use the mask, just spray, then dab at it with a paper towel. The busy background is instantly toned down by the black or white. Simple. 

You know how distress inks are a deliberately unstable ink - this means if they get wet, they bleed/ wick... so if they are applied direct to paper, chipboard, card etc, and then sprayed with the white matte spray, they are instantly softened into a really delicate background. If you use really strong colours like aged mahogany, walnut stain, spiced marmalade directly from the ink pad onto the same surface with a really heavy application, expect some cool bleeding up into the white matte that can be very interesting to watch, and a great way to to create a totally unique background with distress inks.

 Ignore the frame embellishment above, just look at the background. It was victorian velvet and bundled sage applied direct to a white chipboard, then lightly sprayed with the matte white, and excess dabbed off. By dabbing off the excess the colour comes through, but in a much softer way than if it was distress on its own.

But the cool thing is you can still stamp on top of this matte white spray, so here the flourish and script was added, and more distress ink rubbed to the edges, but it still looks muted.

Here is another sample in rustic tones which has been overstamped, the black at the base is archival, but all the rest are Distress inks with matte white spray.

 Here is another made by an ArtsyCrafts attendee (sorry no idea who) in lovely greens with pinks.

So you might like to give it a go, it was one of the fave new techniques we taught at ArtsyCrafts in May and everyone was very surprised at how easy this product was to work with. Remember it is quite thick and creamy, so you do need to shake a long time to get the product well mixed before you begin to spray. Think of it as exercising while you craft!

If you're a WOYWWer thanks for dropping by, do check out what everyone else was up to today here at Julia's place!

Have a great week.

Leandra

WWOMWW what {was} on my workdesk on Wednesday!

Missed out getting to the computer yesterday, you'll see why in a sec!

Wednesday morning Courtney's friend Ellie came over bravely trusting me to do her nails for the prom which is Friday evening. No I am not a beautician as well as a stamper, administrator, rubber-presser, mother, wife, teacher and all the other hats I wear...I just figured after more than 20 years of getting my nails done...well how hard can it be, so decided to give it a go!! And after practising for a few weeks on various teenage daughters, a few hints from Jo F-Y who IS trained at this lark...I think I am getting the hang of it.

This is what my desk looked like ready for Ellie's arrival. (Well acutuals its the outside garden table in the heat but under the shade of the brolley!)

Now you are going to be miffed cos I forgot to take a piccie of the finished result which we all thought was pretty good. In short French Manicure, pinkie nail art in blue to match her dress and small blue bling with clear coat on top. Very simple but nice for prom. (you'll have to picture that yourselves!)

So far so good.Off to work I plan to go.

Then Miss Corky decides she want "more" for her nails. So suddenly my fingers become the guinea pigs...initially x 5....

We mix clear or White acrylic powder with fine glitter, chunky glitter, and brainiac moment...mica powders!!! to make custom batches of acrylic for funky tips.{Remember we are in Essex, so this level of bling is totally acceptable, just probably not on a mother of 42!} 

So by 10.30pm my hands looked even more ridiculous with 10 potential options on offer! Remember I did do my right hand with my non dominant left hand, so not so bad for a beginner working with her left hand!

So now I have a pair of hands like this and a BBQ to go to tonight. And Corky still hasn't decided which blingy nails to go for!!

Today she gets the spray tan. Tomorrow Amy's mum Michelle drops of the hairclip to tuck into the back of the quiff(sp?)and we still have to practise the quiff and makeup and actually do those nails. Decided it's worse than a wedding - well worse than ours which was a very simple wedding on the beach in New Zealand.

Anyway. Mark was not overly impressed with my unscheduled 'pampering??' day off so I shall have to make up for it today! Drop by Julia's to see what everyone else got up to yesterday. Soz for being late!

Will blog prom pics on Saturday!