Seth Apter Tag 4

Another sample, back to tags today. I am sure you must get sick of seeing them but they are such a convenient substrate on which to do samples. 

So the background is built up layers of Granny Smith, Cheesecake, Sugar Plum Sour Grapes and Snowflake. 

Now for Seth's stamps, first the criss cross background stamp in Tinned Peas paint, then the circles in Fern Archival ink and finally the stars in Olive Archival ink. 

I then added a layer of Crazing medium. These cracks are so tiny but i do love them. They show up brilliantly once you wipe French Roast over them. 

I used Seths stencil to add the words past, present,future in Cherry Red and Coral  paint. the ring is die cut from Robo Rings and painted with Blue China. 

I painted some smoothy with Coral and Cherry Red and stamped out my small flower from EDY18 

I then played around with them to figure out placement. I wanted to create another circle, but with dimension. I die cut the large coffee ring 5 times and glued them all together. This was painted black and then had Treasure Gold  added. 

Inside the rings I stamped one of Seth's stamps to create the lines and then over stamped with HP1303

The flowers were glued on in pairs to add height and the middles filled with liquid pearls. 

 Lots of details added with black and white pens. 

All done. I couldn't leave it at 2 circles, an odd number is always better.. so I added a third die cut from Ring Around. 

 Darcy x

Best In Blue

Here is number 2 of my embossed cards. i began by melting Melt It powder with WOW embossing powder in Whirlpool, and also some chicks cut from a hot glue stick ( the kind you put in a hot glue gun) I wanted the embossing to be less brittle and the addition of the glue helps with that. 

I poured everything out onto a non pourous sheet and spread it a little with a metal palette knife. I didn't want a solid piece, i rather like the gaps. 

While that was cooling I dabbed some paint onto a piece of card. I used PaperArtsy Fresco in Cherry Red, China and Pansy. 

I scraped the paint across the card, and added a little white too. 

I then added random amount of embosing powder over the paint. I used Vintage Amethyst, Whirlpool and Strawberry Crush. 

I have all my embossing powders stood in a drawer, lids upwards. to see which is which I took off each lid and pulled out the little foam/plastic circle. I then embossed a circle of card for each colour, popped it into the lid and replaced the foam/plastic circle. Now I can look down into the drawer and see at a glance which colour I need. 

Look at that random sparkle.. 

This card has a linen texture, I dry brush paint accross it, just enough to pick up the texture. I then embossed the text from HPXT03 using WOW Ebony. 

I peeled up the Whirpool embossing from the sheet and cut 2 hearts from it. I like how they are lumpy and a bit shabby... perfect. The text was mounted onto the dry brushed card and turned into a small tag. 

Just before mounting everything together I flicked some Nougat Fresco  paint across the background. 

Try some freehand embossing in your backgrounds.. 

Darcy x

A Hot Picks Christmas

Hi there, here with a couple of quick Christmas samples using the Hot Picks stamps. I made these a while ago but only just got around to taking final photos of them. 

This started as a PaperArtsy postcard, painted and stencilled. Just love the Emma Godfrey star stencil

over this I chose one of the Christmas texts from HPXM08 and stamped and embossed this all over the background using WOW Seaglass.

At the bottom I stamped the trio of fancy trees. This stamp also has leaping reindeer on it, but I missed those off and added them later. 

Here you can see the reindeer stamped in Professor Plum paint. 

This is a small canvas measuring approx 12cm by 15cm . 

Keeping this uber simple, I merely painted the canvas black.. Then I cut 4 pieces of smoothy card and painted those in mermaid, Moonlight, Professor Plum and Captain Peacock. 

I stamped the same tree on all 4 pieces of card, and added a little doodled edge with a dot of stickles in each corner. 

Then added them to the canvas with sticky foam. 

I finished the edges of the canvas off with a swipe of Pewter Treasure Gold. 

Darcy x

Some Journal Pages...

Hi there. I was going through one of my journals and realized that these pages had not been blogged. They are all from this year... no steps outs, sorry.. but I thought you might like to see the finished pages. 

For this one I played around with colours, and stencils. Then I stamped some of my flower stamps across the centre. The outer edges of the flowers were darkened a bit to make the flowers pop.

  The corners are Grunge Paste and Treasure Gold. 

This one is a mixture of paint and Dylusions sprays. Stencilling, stamping, white highlights. 

I adore this page. To start with I love, love the background. lots of browns and neutrals. topped with a smattering of WOW embossing powder. It was  hard one to cover up. 

I stamped the butterflies across the page first in paint, then I went over then in black archival ink. Then I stamped more butterflies onto painted card and cut those out, they were glued on top . The three layers of butterflies gives great depth. 

Finally this one.. this was fun... I went back to Lin Brown's limited edition paints from a while ago, (Chartreuse, Seaweed, Tikka and Chutney) I really liked this set and didn't do nearly enough with them when they first came out. 

I layered up the colours in the background, then continued to use the same colours to stamp the foliage and the side borders. 

Next I stamped the focal images onto book pages and cut those out.. 

On this side I stamped the thistles onto tissue paper, coloured the back of the tissue then tore them out and glued them on. 

This is a journal that I usually take to demos, so if you see me at a show then you will get to see these pages in person. 

Darcy x

New Stamps. Night 1: Hot Picks

Over on the PaperArtsy blog this evening we are launching new paints and new stamps. The paints are a new limited edition winter set, full of scrummy colours and the stamps are Halloween and Christmas themed. 


HPHW05

HPXM08

HPXM09

Do pop over to the PaperArtsy blog to see the full range. 

I had a little play with the new paints and Christmas stamps and made these 2 small samples. 

I started with Mermaid. Concrete and Captain Peacock blended onto a size 8 tag. 

I blended Blueberry into the edges and added the snowflakes using Concrete mixed with Metallic glaze. Then I added a hill of Dreamweaver crackle paste. 

Once this finished crackling I added the small trees. These were stamped in plum archival ink onto tissue paper, torn out and glued on with glaze. 

I rubbed a little stickles into the crackled paste. 

I stamped one of the larger trees twice, using Professor Plum and also Moonlight. Over these I stamped the fancy tree in black archival. 

I also stamped the main sentiment in black archival. The eagle eyed among you will note that to achieve this configuration of text.. and the snowlake in the background I had to cut apart this stamp and use the parts separately... shhh don't tell Mark and Leandra lol (oops, busted, according to the video Leandra guessed I had cut the stamp apart lol)

I love how this turned out, it looks like a proper vintage Christmas card lol The snowy hill was a little bare. So I used a tiny border element from another of the stamps and created this little fence. It is just stamped onto tissue paper using black archival ink. 

I finished off by adding white dots to the tiny trees. 

for the 2nd sample i made a little card. 

This started as a gelli plate print using the same colours as above, but also incorporating Emma Godfreys star stencil. 

I painted some smoothy card with concrete and used WOW black embossing powder to stamp the tree.  i them painted Captain Peacock and stamped the row of snowlakes. 

Then all I needed to do was layer it all up. I added splatters of  concrete to the background and a bow from leftover Captain Peacock. 

All these new stamps are now available from your favourite PaperArtsy retailer so do please support them. 

Darcy x