Happy in sunshine and in rain!

Hello all.  I'm on another round of quick sample-sharing from the recent launch of my latest PaperArtsy quote stamps (you can see all the samples in one shot at the end of the post).  I opened my Stowaway Heart to you earlier in the week, using EAB12 Travel & Journeys, and today's post is doubling up with quotes from both EAB13 Sunshine & Rain and EAB14 The Happiness Edition.  Why do the double?  Well, because it's Zinski time...

Somehow, at some point in the sample making, I always find I want to put some words in the mouths of one or two of these quirky characters.  As I had always hoped when I originally had the idea of word stamps, they can be adapted to all sorts of styles and genres.  So although the Zinskis are out of my usual crafting style, it's fun to see what they have to say for themselves!









The Sunshine & Rain tags are, of course, in the blue/yellow/purple colour palette assigned to that stamp plate.


















And the bashful little guy in this tag has the happy blue/green/turquoise/yellows of the Happiness Edition samples.
















The backgrounds are done with some more watery brayering.  For the Sunshine & Rain tags, there's Summer Sky, Periwinkle, Forget-me-not, Cheesecake and Haystack, and I left quite a bit of white space for a brighter effect.















The Happiness tag was done with a bigger spritz of water onto the paints on the craft mat (Summer Sky, Aquamarine, Cheesecake, Haystack, Lawn) before brayering.
















That high water content got me this fabulous effect, almost like an Impressionist painting.

I'll confess to being more than a little bit in love with this background!















I used the stamping platform for these tags.  It means you can stamp the figure, paint with opaque as well as translucent Frescos, and then re-stamp to recapture all the extra little details... the stripes on the jumper, the buttons on the jacket.















The quotes are stamped in Jet Black Archival on the Sunshine & Rain pair.  When I'm playing with the Zinskis, I generally leave off the actual author of the quote... after all, it's meant to be the character talking.












I usually do this by inking up the words and then putting a small scrap of tape over the author's name.  In this case, it's the poet Walt Whitman - sorry, Walt!













The quote paired with my favourite little Zinski girl is by writer Katherine Mansfield.  I doodled frames around the words in both black and white ink.













The black word stamping looks very bold and full-on to me, given I hardly ever stamp in black.  It's balanced by some dark tissue tape shadows underfoot.

The figures themselves are stamped in Watering Can Archival, just that little bit softer than black.














The words I've put in the mouth of the other little chap actually belong to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  If you've not read his book The Little Prince - which these words are from - I highly recommend it.

I just think his expression is perfect for the words!













This time I've stamped in Olive Archival (much more my comfort zone!) for a lovely tone-on-tone look.














The grassy hillocks under his feet are also stamped in green. 

















And the stamping platform was in action again to get the nice clear stripes on the sun, both on his tag...

















... and on the sunny one of the two Sunshine & Rain tags.

















Some framing with a couple of the border stamps (all the stamps used here are from ZA02 and ZA03), stamped in the complementary paint colours, and plenty of splatter, and we're pretty much done.
















All three tags are mounted onto white card...

















... and have some white twine to top them off, so that they all co-ordinate nicely.










Speaking of co-ordinating... here's just a quick insight into my thinking on these colour palettes.  I wanted to give each stamp set its own look, but the samples all needed to work together on the PaperArtsy display boards for the trade shows.

Having the same colours but in different combinations from collection to collection means you can quickly tell which stamp set the words come from, but there is a cohesive and hopefully attractive look to them when they're all mixed up together too.

We're back to some more autumnal crafting next.  If I get time to write the post, I hope to be with you at some point over the weekend, but in the meantime thank you so much for stopping by and happy crafting all!

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
Anthony J. d'Angelo