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

Fun Times at The Craft Barn

Last weekend I  had the pleasure to be teaching a class at The Craft Barn  I travelled down on Friday and arrived at the shop mid afternoon. Wow! What a fantastic shop. I had never been before, it is huge and really well stocked. 
I found my stamps...

So after meeting everyone,and having a cuppa.. we got set up ready for the Saturday Demo day. 
The very lovely Sandy and Ian(and Freddie and Harry) made me welcome in their home...and we went out for a nice meal. 


On Saturday morning we were up bright and early and off to the shop. I finished setting up my demo table and put out a few samples using my new stamps. 

I also had a display stand next to me which I completely filled with other samples and journals that I had taken. 

All day I had lovely people sat or stood around me, some just watching while others had a play and went away with little samples. We did lots of techniques, played with new stamps and also with the new limited edition paints. It was especially exciting for me to watch people trying out things for the first time. 

Across the shop the very talented Helen Chilton was also demoing, she was surrounded by people all day too. In fact we were both so busy we didn't get chance for more than a quick hello and goodbye. 

At the end of the day we cleaned up and started to prep the classroom ready for the Sunday workshop, then it was off back to Sandy's house for the night. 

Sunday morning and we were up early again and off to the shop to finish setting up as people were starting to arrive. just after 10.30am we got started and what a fun day we had slashing canvasses. 

This is the project.. 

We began by working on the back of our canvas.. lots of messy painting straight away.. 

Everyone hard at work.. 

Next we worked on the front of the canvas.. They all did brilliantly to keep up as the pace was pretty fast. 

a brief quiet period while everyone went off for lunch..

and then it got soooo busy, like super fast paced .. that I totally forgot to take anymore photos. Thankfully the girls  promised to send photos of their projects. 

This one is by Caren Sharp. I just love how she added the butterfly and bees to the background. 

Here is Kay Ballard's canvas.. so pretty, love the punched flowers dotted around. 

This one is by Hazel, go see her post HERE.. 

Here is Jane's canvas, love the little additions on here too.. 

So fantastic for me to see them finished, if any more finished ones get emailed to me I will add them to this post. 

Darcy x

New Stamps. Birthday Cards for Men.

Hello.. today I have a couple of really quick male birthday cards. When I saw the launch samples by Sue Carrington  I knew her background design would be perfect. You can see how Sue used these squares HERE. 

As per sue's instructions I painted some smoothy with gesso, and then with Smurf and Tinned Peas, wiping the paint back a little to reveal the gesso. I loved this worn out shabby look. 

On this card I edged the squares with a black pen and then glued them to a piece of white smoothy. I added some minimal decoration using a credit card for the lines and the background stamps from ELB15. These were stamped in Watering Can Archival as I didn't want them to be bold. 

I stamped  Alfie the owl onto prepainted card, and just added details with liquid pearls. 

the text is from JOFY14. 

The scrap of paper behind the owl is leftover from when I made paper-fabric postcards back in January. 

For this card I created a couple of little trees, using the triangle leaf from EDY14. 

This time I stuck the squares onto black card. Again I used the background elements from ELB15. The text is handwritten. 

 and also added the text square from HPXT07.

Love this background technique, thankyou Sue. 

Darcy x

New Stamps. A Date for Valentines.

Good morning, here is another sample with new stamps, however this time they aren't all mine. This sample uses the new Hot Picks text stamps, one of Lin Brown's flower stamps and one of my heart stamps from my first collection back in Aug 2013. 

So to begin with I blended a white/greyboard tag with Banana and Jade, 2 of the new limited edition paint colours. I didn't mix the colours I blended them with cut and dry foam, this gave me a green shade where they overlapped. 

I mixed some Purple Rain and Blueberry to create a dark blue and used this on the edges. 

This is another piece of white/greyboard, leftover from a previous project. I first painted it with the same Blueberry and Purple Rain mix that was used above. Then I stamped just the February text from HPXT07, as you can see I turned the piece of board on its side before stamping. 

As Valentines falls on a Saturday this year, I used the 'saturday' stamp from HPXT 08 and the number stamps from HPXT06 to make up 14. I covered the whole of the larger board with these. 

Next I used Snowflake to stamp Lin's new flower from ELB15, this is just an outline stamp and adds a lovely delicate layer to the background. 

On smoothy I mixed some Jade and Banana to crate a really nice green, I stamped Lin's flower again, this time in Archival black. I then painted more smoothy with Bougainvillea and stamped the February text, the numbers and my heart stamp from EDY01.

Now to layer them up, the flower and the heart went onto the small painted board and this was glued in the centre of the larger board. I used foam pads to slightly raise all the Bougainvillea elements. 

Finally I added some white dots using a Posca pen. 

Hope that has given you some ideas on how you could use the new text stamps this 

Valentines Day. 

Remember all these stamps are available now from your favourite Paperartsy retailer. 

Darcy x