Hot off the Press - PaperArtsy Hot Picks

I told you I'd be back soon, didn't I?!  If you missed putting your name in the hat to win free tickets for Crafting at Ally Pally on 19th/20th September, you can do that here on my Ally Pally Alert post. You have until Sunday 13th to leave a comment.

But now, hello all and welcome to the first night of a whole week of PaperArtsy releases.  And tonight we're starting with the Hot Picks - new Halloween and Christmas sets which are such fun and very versatile.

I'm thrilled to have been one of the Hot Picks "wingmen", charged with creating samples with these new stamps.  And not only new stamps... there are fabulous new Limited Edition paint colours too, and they're all involved somewhere in the colour palettes Leandra gave us to play with.  You can see all the details over at the PaperArtsy blog this evening, along with sample sneak peeks from other PaperArtsy designers and one of Leandra's great videos.

I'm just going to share a quick look at my offerings tonight, and then there'll be separate follow-up posts with some how-to details.  As you'll see, there are lots of samples, and I don't want to keep you here all night!

So here's the full range of the Halloween creations, using the fabulous HPHW05...

Our colour scheme sounded delicious - Toffee, Caramel, Vanilla, plus the two greens from the new Limited Edition set, Granny Smith and Teresa Green (okay, you can leave Teresa out of the recipe, but otherwise...).






It won't surprise the regulars that my first thought went straight to bottles!  Labels for bottles...









My tags seemed to keep coming in pairs... but that's because the stamps really complement one another.








I also created a 5x7 panel.  You'll see there are elements and motifs which echo some of the July Hot Picks release - the chevrons and checkerboards for instance - so you can mix and match brilliantly.







And a final tag pair.  The green accents are done with the two new colours, Teresa Green and Granny Smith.








Now on to my (huge) collection of Christmas samples, using HPXM08 and HPXM09.  Because I ended up working in pairs again quite often, you get double your money's worth!

The colour palette for this included the other two colours from the new limited release - Professor Plum and Captain Peacock (you see what they're up to with the names here!) - along with Chalk, Concrete, Moonlight and Mermaid.





It's a really fresh, modern look for Christmas, but I didn't really find my way into it until I started adding kraft card into the mix.










I had lots of fun with clear embossing - you know me and light-reflecting translucence... 











And there's quite a lot of white embossing going on too - I love how it looks against the kraft.











Loving these tiny trees, and small images, great for little gift tags!











There are great festive greetings stamps in these two sets.

They're decorative enough to be focal images all by themselves.

The detail is exquisite and, as always with PaperArtsy stamps, you get a fantastic image from the quality of rubber.







So, as I say, I'll be back in the next few days with the full details of these, but for now do head over to PaperArtsy and see what the others have been doing.  And guess what... there are new releases every night this week, so enjoy yourselves over at PaperArtsy, won't you?

The skull is nature's sculpture.
David Bailey

The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature.
Andy Rooney

Oh, and don't forget you can win tickets to the Crafting at Ally Pally show just by leaving a comment on my Ally Pally Alert post saying you'd like to be in the draw.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon.