July Craft Stamper is out now

.....and my article is on page 74. I really enjoyed doing this article, because it uses the new Viva paints for texture and colour, and I also covered the wooden IKEA frame with strips of copper embossed metal. Plus I managed to squeeze in some crowns and castle stamps. There are loads of step-out photos of how to do the painted background, so get your copy now!

As the Spring and Sprout papers are brand new, I managed to make a sample of those too using the same stamp (SICC7) which was in copper in the frame (above), but here I stamped it on some fo the different papers, then layered them, and put in the occasional copper turret roof as an accent.

There are loads of neat ideas in this issue of the mag. I adore Jo Capper Sandon's bird cage, and Isabelle Norris did a neat altered house (both these ladies are on our DT), and Sue Roddis had done a cool altered book using fabric. Very nice.

What a great weekend its been with fabulous hot weather. The kittens are now beggining to venture outside, but rather than guard the garden from birds, they figure it's the best litter box in the world, and they have taken a liking to eating our bean and leek baby plants. Oh dear! We managed to fit in a couple of BBQ's too.

Leandra

Metal Covered Books

It's half term break, so the kids are off for a week, but ours have been off for about 3 weeks now with the measles !! Actually it wasn't that bad, almost worse was that the washing machine died (and as sheets and towels were going through it daily this was a crisis!), quickly followed by a webiste malfunction where we lost pretty much all the images of products and art from our website. So it has been an interesting few weeks! Throughout this 3 of the 4 children had yr 6, 7 and 10 exams. Oh and Millie spent an afternoon in hospital with a suspected broken arm, so she had a scribe for her SATS, then on the last day she became full on measle city...good timing on her part...so we have been in quarrantine here for about a month now! LOL

We have also been looking to add to our family for the last couple of months.....no don't panic...I don't have any big secret to spill......... we were thinking along feline lines.... I seriously do NOT need more than 4 kids in my life!!! So knowing the recuperating measley kids were in need of a little measle-distraction, we got serious about finding a cat. We have scoured Essex in the last 2 months looking to rehome an older, settled adult cat ( mainly because after 4 kids I wasn't keen to face toilet training that a kitten requires LOL), but after going to several open days, filling out numerous forms, and having to virtually sit an exam to qualify, we decided that a kitten was probably a lot less effort, and hopefully wouldn't have too many issues like some of the older cats we saw. We need a confident cat to chase the magpies, pigeons, ducks, morehens, rabbits, pheasants etc away from our flourishing vege patch! As we are on a farm, we think this location is a cat's paradise - cat rescue places don't seem so sure about that to our utter surprise!! So last weekend we found 2 lovely boys, Milo (black) and Otis (black and white) who are embarking upon our feline scarecrows-in-training programme.

The kids are all loving the kitten antics, and I'm thrilled because they are pretty onto it re kitty litter, so the toilet training thing is pretty much sorted, we just have to get them used to the outdoors now, every day they are exploring a little further, and they are hilarious to watch. Oh and they are good at catching (and eating ) bugs too - we have around quite a lot of spiders, ants, black beetles, bees...all kinds of crunchy wiggly things....I guess they have to learn that hard way about those that sting or aren't so good for them! So far so good!

Now that the chidlren are getting better, they have started crafting. There is stuff all over the kitchen table while they experiment with paints and metal! So I just thought I'd share with you what they have been up to.

Courtney had to cover her second art book with metal. Last time she used pink metal and sanded it back, but this time she decided to use aluminium metal, and she coloured the metal with the new Precious Metal Colour Paints from Viva in greens and copper. These paints seem quite durable on the metal showing no signs of scratching off although it is early days. I'm interested to see how well the paint copes with her handling of the book!

Ella then got involved. Now that Courtney was out of the way and back at school, she started using the supplies out on the table and the leftover metal scraps.Ella decided to cover a smaller book (pics above and below), and she also used the Viva Precious Metal Colour metallic paints, but she used 2 different colour combinations, mainly purples and greens to get a nice contrast. I think it turned out really good, and makes a nice sturdy notebook. The only help she got from me was how to stick it down with humungo tape, but once I showed her how to do the front, she did the back and spine all by herself, she's 12 (Year 7) and I think she really enjoyed this project. She often makes this kind of thing for birthday gifts for friends or teachers.
Not to be outdone, Hugo (8yrs) needed a little box to keep some flash cards in, so he made and decorated this one. First he drew his name on the front of the metal, then puffed that out from the back. Then around that he used a mould - that alphabet one is really fine detail and takes quite a bit of work to get it all defined nicely! That kept him quiet! Then for the sides he did a great job of ruling lines, using texture wheels, ball/ cup or sometimes he made up patterns himself. Once he was happy with it all he distressed it with espresso paint, and then fixed the metal to the box with humungo tape. All the other kids at school are most impressed with his box!Now that the weather is warmer, we are gradually getting the garden sorted out (well Mark is mainly - I just do the watering and occasional weeding). He planted leeks, courgettes and beans this week. The potatoes are flourishing in some cool barrels we are trying out this year - they have a window-slot to open up when you want to harvest the potatoes - I wonder if it will work?? The carrots are showing green tips already, we need to put in another row of seed this week, and the garlic we planted ages ago is well under way. Soon we'll get some tomatoes on the go. Last year the pigeons and ducks ate all the brocolli green leaves one early morning, so this year we have that under a plastic tunnel thing - sorry I'm not up with the lingo! Next we will need to make collars for them i believe. I'm still a beginner!! In New Zealand you just plant something and it grows, here there seems to be a lot of disease, bugs or adverse weather conditions to contend with, so I am sure that gardening skills of people here are far more attentive than what we are used to! My friend Diane is an avid gardener, and she pops over here once a week, so she is our chief consultant and advisor. I think we'd be a bit lost without her!

Can you believe June is around the corner?? We still have last years calendar on the wall! I'm still in denial that it's 2009 already. Next weekend I'll be demoing at the Craft Barn in Lingfield, so if you are down South, and need some inspiration do come along. They usually have about 20 people demoing so it's a fantastic way to learn lots of ideas, and see many products being demoed. I'll be using all the new stamps: Crowns and Castles, Metal Xtra, Spring and Sprout papers and Precious Metal Paints. Hope to see you there.

Leandra

How cool are these?

Yes. I know, it's shocking that I haven't posted, but I have about a million excuses. Mostly I have been away teaching nearly every weekend since I last posted. I had Easter at home - a chance to see the family for some quality time!!

ArtsyCrafts was a highlight for me (and Lin) in March. We had 2 fun filled weekends with fabulous peope who each made a wonderfully unique cabinet full of all sorts of goodies, as well as a few other smaller altered art projects. I really enjoy these events, we put so much time into developing the proejcts, sourcing new supplies to work with, and sharing the techniques with all of you is the best bit.

The details for the new weekends in October later this year will be live at the end of this week, if you get a chance to come its going to be great, the theme is "time" and we already have many of the projects well under way in the planning.

Back to my travels, I was in Paris twice at SMAC, and then a few weeks later Version Scrap. Both events were very busy and my school girl French is coming along nicely! I also had a wonderful day teaching at Imagine That PaperCrafts in Upminster (close to us) a couple of weeks back, and a busy weekend demoing for Lin at Ally Pally here in London and lots of other bits and bobs in between. It's all been a blur!

So during all that going on, we also designed loads of new products. We have papers as seen on this paper spread, and also on the house book. They are called Squiggly Papers (Spring and Sprout) and there are 28 A5 sized papers in a pack, 4 of each double sided design. So that is 7 different double sided papers.

I am really loving these!! We used a different printer this time, so they are are different paper stock to previous papers we have printed, these have a matte finish, perfect for stamping on, the weight is 140gsm, and they are made from totally recycled paper, and printed with vegetable based inks. Very eco friendly!

We also got a bit carried away in the stamps department. We have created 9 "Crowns and Castle" Stamps joining the Squiggly Ink Collection. These I am enjoying loads! They are so versatile.


Here is a mini book I have made with them. I think I managed to use nearly every image!

Those hinges are stamped onto copper metal, then wrapped around the book. I can see these will get a lot of use! I like to crumple the metal, then smooth it out with a paper stump as best i can before stamping on it. This gives a great textural effect for the hinge.

For the base of the book, I started out with some large tags, covered them with Spring and Sprout papers, and then started decorating the papers. I stamped often onto metal, sometimes copper, and sometimes Pearl metal which I like to colour with dye spray like re-inker in a mini mister, or glimmer mists.

The Arch here is the new Mini 22 stamped onto pearl metal - it makes a great frame for a niche in an altered book, or here I used it as a peek-through to the next page.

The triangle shaped border is actually a diamond stamped several times to make a border. I also used the same diamond to either make page turners, or page numbers. On page 2 you can see another stamped border, this time square, it's from the same plate, Geometric Plate 6, from the new collection of Metal Xtra stamps. This collection is designed to be used with metal in mind, but its not necessary. I will have to show you more of this collection in another post

The birds on page 2 are not stamped, they are actually on one of the papers - they are slightly larger than the stamp from Tops and Tails plate 2. The little flowers dotted around are a variety of flower stamps from the Tops and Tails, or Egg and Nog collections, and are stamped onto shrink plastic - these make cute textural embellishments.

Here are a couple of the castle turrets. You can stamp them in such a way that the knobbly wall joins together, and then you add in a turret of your choice. Then you have side-walls to lengthen the turret , and you can add arches, windows, blockwork etc. I will also show you how this works more clearly in another post.

I am quite partial to a turret with a copper roof though!!

Another metal xtra border down the centre of this page, and these birds are stamped, and water coloured with distress ink.

You can see a sneak of the playing card symbols through on the next page. That stamp is actually a square, but i stamped them on pearl metal, distressed with black paint, and cut each one out individually.

Now the last page is my favourite.....

I adore this shield. I stamped it in metal, and embossed from the back to puff out the jewels at the top of the crown, and the swirls. If you make a pattern in the blank background and rub some black paint into the grooves, it leaves a wonderful pattern. The fleur de lys is a nice addition to the centre.

Well I hope that gives you a taste of what you might do with these stamps.
Whether is a little princess, a man, or a boy who like dragons, these stamps are sure to appeal.

There are some more ideas coming in the July issue of Craft Stamper.

And I promise, now that I am home and things settle down a bit, I shall blog more. Pease leave your comments and let me know what you've been up to!

Leandra

Leandra on Taco Tuesday

Hi Everyone

This is a quick note in case you want to pass on the following via your blogs, yahoo groups etc

At the CHA trade show a few weeks ago I was invited to demo and be filmed for Ten Seconds Studio's blog. Every Tuesday with Cheryl and Megan is "Taco Tuesday" and they put very funny videos on their blog about how to work with their metal products and tools. If you look closely you'll see the bags under our eyes...it was 7.30 am filming on the last morning of the show....a looooong week, and we were all trying to look normal...if that's possible!! .....You can see it here. At the end there is a special offer code to use on our website, so watch the whole thing and you'll be glad you did!
You will see the new haircut, an overload of jewellery made at Make and Takes at the CHA show (you can see living in Essex has rubbed off on me - lots of bling LOL) and of course metal stamping ideas with Squiggly Ink stamps, Claudine's canvas from Ranger, cuttlebug with stamps, metal and canvas, embossing a stamped image with the teflon pointy tool...all in about 12 minutes!

We just added Ten Seconds to our website, so you can buy stuff here at PaperArtsy too. More stock arriving this week - all the new stuff from CHA.

Leandra Franich
PaperArtsy
Church Lane, Brentwood
Essex, CM13 1RZ, UK
+44 (0) 1277 212 911
sales@paperartsy.co.uk
www.paperartsy.co.uk

Fun couple of Days

The last couple of days we have been having lots of fun catching up with people at the UK trade show we all call Stitches, even though it changed its name to something new and really long - we all still call it stitches. There is paper, beads, fabric and all kinds of hobbies represented. And though the show was smaller than previous years, there seemed to be a real buzz this year, and still plenty of cool stuff to check out. We have really been enjoying ourselves.

Last night we caught up with Team Ranger, (Suze, Tim, Mario & owner Alain) and Dy and Ben from Art from the Heart. It was Suze's first Indian, and she was a bit worried that the spices would blow her out of the water, but we chose really mild dishes and she absolutely loved it! I think it would have to be one of the best Indian meals we have had. Every year we go out with all these guys to an Indian as Alain loves it hot, and restaurants like this are hard to find in the USA. The decor was really red and really gold! And the food was really good. Here's a pic i stole from Suze's blog.
When we got back to the hotel Tim wanted Suze and Mario to see the ceiling beams in our room. I think either he or Alain had that room on a previous year. Here's a pic. Just walking down the hall is an obstacle course. You have to duck and dive all the way along the hall - unless you are Suze-sized!

So Stitches has been good fun. I saw some really awesome paints and texture paints from Europe. I still don't get the Yudu thing at all. They say its cheap for what it does, but do we really need to screen print our own shirts at home. They say you have to use special printer's paints, as acrylic is too thick. I just can't see us all wanting one like we would want a cuttlebug! LOL So I'm still not convinced...yet.

2 weeks back i was at CHA checking out all the new product releases from the USA, and at Stitches there was some of the same, but also many European exhibitors who put their own twist on stuff.

New from us we have added Ten Seconds Metal products to the website. More will be added later this week as the new stock arrives in the country, so watch this space.

And tomorrow is Taco Tuesday (actually its today already - I'm up too late) from Ten Seconds Studio. While I was at CHA they asked me to film a demo with them on thier booth, so the last day of the show really early, we made the video. You can see it here - me demoing with Squiggly Stamps on their new metal. Let me know what you think. It was a lot of fun, and if you haven't figured it out already, metal is going to be huge this year.

Have a great day!

Leandra

PS. If you want to come to ArtsyCrafts second weekend there are still some places left for March 28/29

Botanical Twig Hanging

Oh you are patient waiting for me to get the project I mentioned at the start of the month up online! We have had a lot of problems with the cold weather making our wireless internet antannae malfunction on more than one occasion - we know now that it doesn't like fog, snow, ice, freezing fog or negative temperatures! Just the kind of weather we have had since Christmas! So when the line is working we are like little beavers downloading orders ASAP!

So last time when I blogged, I put up this image of what you need to make this project....and the good news is that if you buy the current issue of Craft Stamper on sale now (February, CS105) , we are offerning a great deal for the following bundle of items:

• 5 stamps (Nature 1-4, At Home 6),
• twill tape,
• a picture pack image,
• mini jewellery tags, and
• a pack of Vintage papers, that's 5 different A5 size double sided papers which feature many PaperARtsy stamps on the designs of the papers.
  

You can go straight here to buy this items as a bundle or individually. This fun interior design project is a great piece to adorn a wall in your home, and its really quick too. Love that!

Extra Materials:

In addition to the PA bundle you will need the following:

Square manila tags (5.5 “square) are the substrate, but you also could cut regular heavy card to this size. Sandpaper, inks, cut 'n' dry foam, gesso,Tim Holtz fragments, scissors and scratchy tool, acrylic blocks and stamps, glue stick and glossy accents, plus a craft sheet.

Step One:

Use a glue-stick and stick a different Vintage Papers to each tag. Sand edges with sandpaper, add extra gouged lines with a Tim Holtz scratchy tool. Apply ink, one or two colours, to the edges with an applicator tool.

Step Two:

Apply a thin wash of gesso on each panel for the quote. Dry. Stamp a quote in black ink from each of the 4 Nature Stamp plates onto each panel.

Step Three:

Sponge a couple of distress ink colours onto a blank tag. Apply in soft gentle circles, start on the craft sheet and then pull colour onto the tag. Stamp a selection of images in black over the background.

Step Four:

Apply glossy accents glue to fragments and press in position. Leave to dry. Cut out each image. Sand the card edges from behind to soften the sharp bits.

Step Five: Arrange all fragments on the various panels until you have the balance you prefer when you arrange all 4 panels together.

Step Six: Set eyelets in the positions around the panels where you wish to join them together.

Step Seven: Don't forget to put some eyelets at the top too so you can wire to the dead twig supplied by your garden or local park. I find it works well to wrap the wire 3 times through both holes, then the loose ends wrap in the centre and cinch together.

If you liked this project, then you'll also like the mini book (pictured at the top of this post). The full colour 2 page instructions with step outs for both projects will be sent with you order for this bundle offer from PaperArtsy.

Have a great weekend and don't forget that our January sale is on now!

Leandra

PaperArtsy Sale on NOW !

Helllloooooo and Happy New Year Bloggers!

I hope you have lots of cool exciting thing on your NEw Year to do list! You should not put those boring negative things on your lists, just cool fun stuff! Enjoy every day, have a bit of a laugh, and she'll be right mate. (Kiwi wisdom! LOL)

You may have had an email if you are on our mailing list about this awesome sale idea we've got, but I though I should let blog-land people know about this too, just in case you haven't heard - here's the low-down!

Because we are ocassionally a bit in divvy-dizzy land, we only just realised that we actually forgot to have a sale in 2008 as we were too busy in August when we usually do that kind of thing. OMG, and you guys didn't remind us! So we are having a sale now, and to make up for the omission, we are offering 30% off all orders over £50.00 (GBP).

Once the subtotal in your shopping cart hits £50 pounds, then the discount will automatically be activated.

So that should put a nice big smile on your dial..now all you need to do is pop over to the website when you get a mo and stock up on some stuff!

Have a great weekend!

Leandra

NB. The offer expires on Feb 15th, and cannot be used in combination with any other offers.


Oh, hmmmmm, here's a question for you.....what could you make with all this lot????? Well I've got some ideas, and I'll be sharing those with you in detail next week......