It's My Party

YAY! Tonight is my night over on the PaperArtsy blog. I get to finally show you my newest stamp designs... and something else!!!

So here they are and I hope you like them. This time I have gone for a more minimal look, but they still have little quirky bits. let me talk you through the sets then you can go over to the PaperArtsy blog and see some fabulous samples created by my wingmen this evening. 

On this set I adore the wings, they can be used whole or cut into 2 different shaped wings, team them with art dolls or hearts or whatever you like. I also love the dotty circles, they look really punchy when they have been embossed. 

Introducing frilly flowers, now I am not generally a frilly person but I love these. they are a great shape to colour in and they layer up perfectly. i love the spikey flower too, layerd up this makes an effective water lily, but who is to say that it couldn't be a starfish, albeit it with extra legs lol

Here I have a lovely delicate cherry blossom tree for you, this is great in backgrounds, but add liquid pearls to the dots and it brings it right to the forground. another little bug for you too, use with or without his wings. The circles are going to be so useful, either as stand alone elements or as flower centres. Always so useful is the Poppy shape, make it bold and red, or more delicate in pastels. 

I am really loving the text stamps on these plates too, I hope you will find them useful. 

Not content with stamps I now have stencils aswell... *squeal* how exciting. i can't tell you how long I have needed edge stencils. 

First a background of small butterflies and a large more detailed one, this larger one looks lovely when stencilled with 2-3 blended colours. Along the side we have a grass edge. Try bumping this in 2 colours to get great shading. Also try it along the top of a project as icicles for a wintery look. Maybe it could be done in orange and red as fire, or as Dragons teeth?

Next a bamboo tree, lovely for layering up in the background. Also a couple of lollipop flowers, again great for adding interest to a background with the stamped flowers over the top. The edge here is pretty random, and so I shall refer to it as the 'random edge' Great for sectioning off an area of a page, giving interest to the edges of journals or if you criss cross it then you get a great chequerboard effect. 

Finally some circle elements, who doesn't love circles. The hanging beads curtain will look great all year round, in bright happy colours or in metallics at Xmas. turn it around and you have bobbly grass growing up. 

The circle border is lovely just for background, it works great with texture paste, as do all the stencils. The edge here is what I refer to as 'torn paper' and makes the perfect edge to journals, tags and card fronts. but it can also make a great line for landscapes. 

As an extra we have the corner stencil, of course this can be turned around to fit any corner, either add to all corners, or just add to one to make it a feature. 

So there you have it. I am so very happy with these new designs and I hope you will get hours of pleasure using them.. I love to see what you make so do please show me. You can always add your creations to my stamp page on FB. 

Facebook Page 

Over on the PaperArtsy blog this evening you can see loads of fantastic samples from me and my trusty wingmen, there is even a funny challenge sample at the end. Please go over there and see them all, and visit my wingmen on their own blog's as they have worked so hard and deserve some praise. Huge thanks to Laura Bomber. Kirsten Sheridan and Gabrielle Price. 

All my new releases are available NOW, from your favouriite PaperArtsy retailer, please do support your local stores. 

I will be back on Sunday with a final roundup of other new releases and then starting next week I will show some of my samples in step by step posts. I have done many more samples and they will be on my blog through to the end of March, so please keep popping back. 

Here are some snippets of step by step projects that I have coming soon. 

Thankyou so much for all your support. 

Darcy x

United Kingdom

Artist Trading Post, Wirksworth, Derbyshire.

Birds in the Barn, Marks Tey, Essex.

Blade Rubber Stamps, Bloomsbury, London.

Clacton Arts and Crafts, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.

Countryview Crafts, Potton, Bedfordshire.

Craftylicious, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.

Imagine That..., Upminster, Essex.

Loobi Crafts, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.

Papermaze, Ipswich, Suffolk.

Stampers Grove, Edinburgh.

Swanstitch, Deal, Kent.

That's Crafty, Romford, Essex.

The Artistic Stamper, Faversham, Kent.

The Craft Barn, Merstham, Surrey.

The Craft Box, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

The Craft Den, March, Cambridgshire.

The Forget Me Not Kraft Kabin, Hockley, Essex.

Continental Europe

Expression-Hobby, Marcinelle, Belgium.

PaperiSaDe, Turku, Finland.

Kerudoc Creation, St Yvi, France.

Stempelfee-Shop, Hilden, Germany.

Stempeloase Munich, Munich, Germany.

Bianca's Toko, Drenthe, Netherlands.

Hobbycompleet de Duif, Leeuwarden, Netherlands.

Leuke Stempels, Nijverdal, Netherlands.

Big Time Stempel, Gockhaisen, Switzerland.

USA/ Canada

Frantic Stamper Inc, Eagle Point, Oregon.

Simon Says Stamp, Columbus, Ohio.

Tupelo Designs LLC, Sugarland, Texas.

Vintage in KC, Johnson, Kansas.

Asia/ Pacific

Tiny Dots, Chiba, Japan.

Crafters Cupboard Pty Ltd, Berwick, Victoria, Australia.

Painted Bow Video

At the Stamp Magic Show in Doncaster I demoed this painted bow, those lovely people watching asked if I would make a video.. so here it is. 

The video is also being hosted on the PaperArtsy youtube channel, and you can see more photos over on their blog. 

Darcy x

Guest blogging for PaperArtsy June project 1

Wow, the month has flown by so fast. it is my turn on the PaperArtsy blog again.

First up this month I played with fabric.

After seeing THIS VIDEO... I knew I wanted to use the phrase 'Make Good Art'

I made myself an art apron, I love it...now my only problem is can I bear to use it and get it messed up lol

Go on over to the PAPERARTSY BLOG... and see how I made it. If you join in and made something inspired by my post you can win a prize. 

I will be back tomorrow with another project.  So watch this space.

Slideshow..

A slideshow of a few things that I have made..

Have your tickets ready please...

I adore vintage ephemera, especially tickets. I would love to have a roll of old bus tickets lol I have simple ambitions hahaha

Recently I was pointed to this video, in it the lady decorates and paints some die cut tickets.

Aren't they the loveliest tickets you have ever seen? I immediately wanted to buy the die....

BUT THEN..

the wonderful Dana made this video showing how to make blank tickets without the need for a die..

All you need are strips of card, a pattern wheel and a hole punch..simples.


So I made loads of them, some in smooth card and some in watercolour paper.

I contacted Dana to say how brilliantly simple her way of making them had been, and asked if she wanted to swap some. 

These are the ones I made for her, the flower ones are more vintage style and are on watercolour paper. The bottom ones are more modern and funky, done with markers on smooth card. 

Here are the gorgeous tickets that Dana sent back to me. I just love them, thankyou. 

working so small is definately a challenge, but I love how they all turned out. 

why don't you give it a go, and better still swap some with a friend. 

Sample book

When I buy new pencils,paints or markers I usually make a sample book or chart of the colours. I find that it really helps, as you really never can tell how something will look just from the bottle or barrel of the pencil. Some mediums also change quite dramatically once you add water .

So I have lots of sample books,charts and bits of paper all over the place with various colours on them. I decided it really was time to make a 'master' sample book with them all in one place.

I used one of these Moleskines, they come in packs of 3 and are available in black,tan,red and blue ... in the UK you can buy them HERE...

They are also the same ones that I used in the circle journal from previous posts. When painting on the pages I glue 2 pages together as they are a little thin, but for this sample book I used the pages as they are.

When making samples always use the paper or card that is appropriate for that particular paint/pencil/marker.

So for markers a smooth card, for watercolour pencils and aquamarkers use a watercolour paper for alcohol inks use a glossy photo paper etc.

This means cutting pieces of paper in whatever shape you like and gluing those into the book, you cannot colour directly to the pages, markers will bleed through and water activated mediums will cause the paper to fluff up and buckle.

Add the colour samples to the book with names of the colours..

i also added tabs at the side so that I can easily find each section..

I ended up with 30 sections and a very fat book.  I ran out of pages and had to add some more.

Here is a video flip through of the whole book. 

When I grow up I want to be a paint mixererrrr!

Last night I decided to mix up some new paints. I have a journal class to do with Kirsty Wiseman and I quite fancied some shimmery new paints to use in it.Of course no money to buy any, so I looked at my supplies..

As luck would have it, I also knew of a great little video by my friend across cyber space...Paula Phillips

So I gathered my ingredients..
Artist grade acrylic paints..matte medium...gloss medium...pearl ex powders..some Ikea wooden coffee stirrers..and some little jars.

How cute are those little jars, they only hold 28g which is 1 ounce, but for trying out new paints they are perfect. They are free too, if you happen to have a liking for cream teas as I do, then when you are given your little pot of jam just take it home with you.

Then I watched Paula's video... <--- click="" for="" p="" video="">So I mixed up 9 colours. See the shimmer in them..

Don't ask me what I put in each one, I haven't a clue. I just played. they are one offs never to be recreated hahaha.

I then thought i would give them names....this was a 3am idea obviously..

Here they are all painted out, they are fairly translucent.

It is very difficult to show you the shimmer.

As I said to start with these are for a little journal i am doing, first job was to decorate the front of the book.  

I brushed on the 'Daisy Duck Egg' added some splashes of 'Lily the Pink Lime' and then using the rim of a coffee mug I added the rings in 'Oddly Oddly Conker'. Here is a close up, hopefully if you open the photo you will be able to see the shimmer.                                                                                                            

Finally the title of the book is added...

Ok guys here is a very quick and super quiet video preview of the art portfolio, I will get the photos organized and start posting them, spread out over the next few days.

http://youtu.be/k8h73O28eJs

How can it be a week already? hello Wednesday. Well I am back from the wedding in London, it was a pretty manic weekend. Some wedding photos are in the previous post.

Today's desk, my machine is out again, still making denim bags. Though by the end of today Iwill have them finished and they will have been delivered to the driver who is taking them to Moldova. I ran out of denim and time, so only 36 will be finished.

On my desk you can see that small pile of denim, no piece is bigger than 6 inches. That is all that is left from 14 pairs of jeans, 2 skirts and a metre of denim fabric. (The wool at the back, is to finish off a baby blanket, started 3 years ago)



Finally I can show you the wedding stuff, this is the card I made for them.

An easel card in the main, but with a slidey out bit at the front.

This is the gift box...

which contains the photo album that I made...I couldn't get a gift box to fit, so I bought a document box from WHSmiths, padded and lined it...added organza ribbons.

At last, here is the book that I made. It is full of tags and pockets and bits that are hidden and pull out. I am so pleased with the way it turned out.The bride loved it.

(It was made using instructions from Laura Denison )

This is the only full length photo of me where you can see my dress,necklace,bracelet cuff and bag .lol