A Harlequin Infusion

Hello all!  I really don't like January... you have to take all the decorations down on the 6th, and there's the ever-present looming chore of the tax return, and all this grim, grey, damp weather.  Now is when we need the fairy lights to cheer us up!  Some crafting time also helps of course.  These pages came about because I needed to have a play with the PaperArtsy Infusions.

You'll have already seen from the sneak peeks at the PaperArtsy blog that there are some new Infusions colours coming, and Leandra wanted us to use them for samples of some of the new stamps (oooooh!).






Now I do have some Infusions, but I really haven't explored them much so, before the new stamps and the new powders arrived, I thought I'd better have a play with the ones I had to get some idea of how they and I would work together.










I used the Violet Storms Infusions for this layout, and started with the Harlequin stencil on some A4 card.  I've got no making-of photos, I'm afraid - I just set off to explore without really thinking there was any kind of project ahead.

But once I'd started, it seemed a waste not to use the results of my experiments.












Having shaken on some powders and spritzed water through at one side of the page, I flipped the stencil over and "printed" the surface inkiness onto the other half of the page.  This side has the original stencilling as its background...














... and this side is the flipped over print.  I pressed down some more of the extra ink on both halves to fill up the spaces around the 6x6 patterning made by the stencil.















There are still many book page tags left over from the excavated niche for my Hidden In A Book project from this time last year, so I grabbed some of those.














Some have been used to soak up excess inks at various points, so I layered up pairs of inky and non-inky tags on each half of the page.















And you'll see I did some white pen scribbling, from my story at the moment, as well as adding some fine twine through the tops. 













The Photobooth woman has been lying on the craft desk for months too - she somehow didn't make it back into the packet when I was clearing up.  Well, now she'll never get back into the packet... she has a story to tell.












Look at her eyes, full of intense excitement and determination, burning with what she wants to say.

Maybe some of her story is revealed in the book text, or just in the drifting autumnal colours of the whole spread.













I cut oodles of book page leaves for my best friend's wedding in November, some of which were scattered on tables, but some of which came home with me.













So now those leaves are making their way into projects and pages too.  I smooshed these in some Vintage Photo Distress Ink before glueing them down.

I only glued along the spines so that I could wrinkle up the edges for some dimensional movement.














The rings are cut with the Seth Apter Coffee Rings die, just out of white card.

I used a combination of the Violet Storms Infusions and Distress Inks in Hickory Smoke, Wilted Violet and Chipped Sapphire to create the shading around the rings which makes them pop that bit more.

I just put some of the powder and a scraping of each ink onto the craft mat and used a water brush to apply them.














There's also plenty of shading around the word stickers (these are from a sheet called Tiny Text by Cosmo Cricket - one of the unexpected discoveries as I sorted through the craft room before Christmas).













I've added Vintage Photo into the mix for this shading, picking up the autumnal tones of the leaves and book page tags.

There's some text stamping in the background - a Bo Bunny stamp I think.














I can't remember at what point in the process I cut the A4 page in half but, once I had, it was only a matter of time...













... before I decided that the 49&Market shabby stitching would be perfect to "attach" the pages into my kraft art journal.














Until I manage to make friends with a sewing machine, I'm just going to have to live with the stamped version of the stitching look I like so much!







So there you have it.  It was really useful to start to get the measure of the Infusions a bit, as I've now been immersed in sample-making with some of the new colours for the last few days.

The new PaperArtsy stamps I've been playing with have absolutely blown my socks off!  You'll see and hear more about that in about a week's time...

I'm hoping to squeeze in a retrospective of 2016 before then - anything rather than sit down and do my tax! - so perhaps I'll see you back here in a few days.  In the meantime, happy crafting all!

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
From The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss



I'd like to share this at Art Journal Journey where the theme for January is Tell Me A Story

With my Coffee Rings, I'll add this as another entry for Swirls, Whirls and Flourishes at Stamps and Stencils

And at Mixed Media Monthly they would like us to Put A Stencil On It