Launch Night #4. It's Meeeeeee!

Finally it is launch week. The past 3 nights over on the PaperArtsy blog have seen lots of new products being launched for 2015. So much goodness, gorgeous new colours of paint, some limited edition paints and tons of new stamps. 

Tonight it is blast off for my new stamps.. It is such an exciting time for all of us designers, waiting, waiting, waiting.... trying desperately to keep things a secret...of course there are always sneak peeks, but we have wanted to show you the stamps for agggggges. 

The process starts way back in October/November, that is when the sketches start... so you can see keeping a secret that long is so hard. Of course the nearer the launch date gets, the more we worry about whether you will like them!

So here they are.. 

Please join us over on the PaperArtsy blog to see some samples of what can be made with these stamps. There are projects from myself and also 3 guests.. 

Here are some snippets.. 

Here is a cool video for you, showing all kinds of goodness with my stamps.. They are available NOW from your favourite PaperArtsy retailer. 

Come over to the PaperArtsy blog and see all the samples from me and my guests.. 

Here are the steps for one of my samples.. This is a set of wooden drawers. I first covered them in 2 coats of gesso. 

I knew I would be using translucent colours, so starting with a base coat of white will keep the colours truer. On the bottom half I used, Guacamole, Tinned Peas and Hyde Park.. on the top I used Beach Hut and Inky Pool.

Using coordinating Archival ink, I stamped the small background stamps from EDY11 and EDY13 onto white tissue paper, and used this to line the drawers. 

I painted tissue paper and then stamped the large flower from EDY11, before gluing the tissue to the side of the drawers I first stamped the grasses, from the same plate, directly onto the wood.  I painted some Brown Shed onto more tissue, and then stamped the border I cut this out and glued it over the bottom of the stems. 

 I used the same technique on tissue to create the mushroom from EM09 for the side of the drawers. Again I stamped grasses directly to the wood, and added the fence-type border to the bottom. 

This is one of my favourite techniques when using fiddly stamps, or stamps with small areas that need colouring. I colour my substrate first, in this case tissue paper. it means you can add a pattern with stencils and then stamp over that. I added extra shading with Fibralo pens, these are translucent and allow the colour and pattern from underneath to show through. 

I painted the tissue with Pumpkin Soup, then added random marks using Autumn Fire and some splatters of Snowflake. Then I stamped the  border from EDY13, and coloured the boxes with Fibralos. 

These were cut out and glued to the front of the drawers, of course cut in half first..

I used almost all of the flower heads to create the pediment. First I painted some smoothy card in greens, yellows, oranges and blues then went crazy stamping the flowers and leaves. I also stamped the text from EDY11. The text was glued on hinged card to the top of the drawers and all the flowers and leaves piled up around it. 

I painted more smoothy and glued this to the back of the flower pediment, this covers all the joins and criss cross stems ...plus it adds strength and makes this top part really stable. 

Here it is finished, I love it.. so bright and funky

There are more photos of my other samples over on the PaperArtsy blog, in total I have about 12 projects to show you, and starting next week I will blog the step by step instructions for the other projects here on my blog. So do pop back here as there will be lots of photos. 

Darcy x

Official Launch Night

eeeee! how exciting! As you may know my newest stamps have been released and are already in the shops, however tonight is the official online launch night. 

Come on over to the PaperArtsy blog and see them , read about my design process along with some colourful samples by myself and a secret guest. 

Here are sneaks of my samples, come over and see them in full. 

Pop back here next week as I will have some more blog posts with full step by step photos and instructions on how I made my samples. 

Darcy x

Guest blogging for PaperArtsy Project 4

Well here it is, my final post of my final week of my semester of blogging for the wonderful people at PaperArtsy. I hope that after the past 4 months of seeing their products being used that you are now in no doubt as to how great they are...and how much you need them all...

Back in February I made some samples for PaperArtsy to take to Birmingham, 2 of them were painting of girls with big hair. I should stop calling them that, their names were Miss. Emily... and Miss.Eva...

Anyhoo, it seemed only right to finish my semester with another girl ..

So today I am going to introduce you to Miss. Fleur.

this is how she started out...

At this point I had to put her away as  I was still working on July projects. I also was lucky enough to visit PaperArsty HQ, where I explained what I had in mind for my final painting. I told Leandra I really wanted to use hearts and clocks in her hair. Now clocks are not a problem, PaperArtsy have a few plates with very nice clocks and watches, but not so many hearts. Then Leandra said..well you design them and we will make them!

OMG!

This was only minutes before I was setting off back home, so I didn't really have time to digest that suggestion at all till I got home. I seriously debated switching to another theme completely, one that was already on the shelves. But then I figured, hey why not, can't be that hard right?

Not so right...if you have ever wondered what goes into the initial drawing behind stamp designs, then let me tell you I drew hearts solidly for 2 weeks. This pile is several layers deep.

But between the 3 of us, me Mark and Leandra, a million drawings,scans,emails and phone calls, we pulled them together. Then this arrived in an email.

and then this one...

OMG they were being pressed....

I was beside myself with excitement, and wasn't able to tell anybody lol

The very next day, they arrived at my house..

They even have my name on them...

Here they are 

THEY ARE ON SALE --->...HERE... AND ...HERE...

So I was finally able to play with them and create Fleur. 

I hope you like her and the stamps. If you would like to see how I created her then pop over to paperartsy where there are lots and lots of step by step photos. 

Huge,huge thanks to Mark and Leandra for their encouragement, and help, and for giving me this amazing opportunity.