When Is A Card...

... not a card. Well, when it starts out as a card and turns into something else. 

I fancied a little gell plate session. So I grabbed my plate, some paint, stencils and some heavy weight smoothy card. 

This was my first page, it started black with some stencilling..

Next I added pale green, then some pink and finally blue.. forgot to take more photos. 

This was from the 2nd sheet, first blue..

then orange.. more stencilling, and then yellow, again I forgot to take photos of each stage. 

These are the pulls that I made, the pink one is actually some of the yellow one with added pink. I can never quite decide whether i think gelli printing is worth all the effort, it took ages just for 2 sheets. I could have painted more than that in half the time. 

I used my new butterfly stencil PS029 to outline a butterfly on one of the prints. 

and PS030 to make the lollipop flowers onto the pink sheet. 

I used PS031 and some Stewart Gill paint to create an edge on my card blank. 

I then added my darker print to the centre. 

and added the other bits plus a title. 

I liked it, but somehow it just didnt seem finished.  Because I had used heavy cardstock, and few layers of paint, the front of the card was now quite  weighty. To balance that out I brayered on a little paint onto the back of the card. 

This made it feel better, but still I felt it needed more. then it hit me, it really was more like a book cover now than a card... so why not add pages. 

I rifled though by bit bag and pulled out some previously painted left over papers and cut them to size. Some are just paint, some stencilled, some marbled. 

I stitched them intothe cover..

and voila! a 6x6 travel size mixed media journal.. love it!

Darcy x

Calendar Challenge 2015: May

Time to link up again, many thanks to everyone who joined in last month. 

Here is a reminder of the rules for May. 

1.. Keep a part of the original picture and incorporate that into your design

2, Technique - Make marks,... scratching or stamping into texture paste/thick gesso/spackle/glue anything that will hold the shape

3. Add – an image that depicts your star sign/horoscope (drawing,painting,magazine image)

4. Blog your calendar page and link up from May 1st 2015

I really struggled with this page. I wasn't expecting to as i did think the original page had plenty of options.. 

Eventually I decided to keep just the 2 central characters, and I gessoed out the rest. 

I then began to transform them into 2 flamenco dancers, this is where I came unstuck. the image I had in my head was way better than this. 

I added text stamping around the edges

I applied grey and red paints to the bottom section and also added the same stamping. 

I felt the ladies needed feet, so added those, bringing them down onto the bottom page. 

I stamped the dates using  a ransom style alphabet set, and the month name from another set. These are both clear stamps and so old now i cannot recall who they are from. 

Next to add the elements from this months rules. I tinted some grunge paste and then made marks in it with bottle caps and a cocktail stick. 

The other rule was to add my star sign. mine is Aquarius and is depicted by zig zag type waves. I had cared this stamp a log time ago and it worked well as a border. 

I finished off the top half by adding various shades of Treasure gold over the grunge paste.

Not totally happy this month, there are elements that I like.. the colour scheme, the hand carved stamp, but the image not so much.. 

Link up your calendars and then go visit each other.

Here are the rules for June.

1.. Keep a part of the original picture and incorporate that into your design

2, Technique - Create glue or paint skins and add them to your page

3. Add – a receipt or ticket stub

4. Blog your calendar page and link up from June 1st 2015

Here is the link for May.

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