A very special Fodder School - PaperArtsy - Words & Pictures collaboration

I'm so thrilled to show you in detail the results of a very special collaboration between Fodder School, PaperArtsy and Words & Pictures.  If you take another look at the Fodder School 3 project I will be teaching, you may be able to guess at some of what's coming up!

I am absolutely delighted to have had the chance to design a brand new, original stamp set especially for my Fodder School 3 project - the Fodder Berry Edition.  The plate has beautiful berry variations with complementary quotes and small ephemera for background detailing.

Plus I've curated three sets of their fabulous Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic paints, combining colours specifically geared around this project, for the backgrounds and for painting botanical imagery, but of course they will be great for that whether you're making this project or not! The sets are: Botanical Basics, Berrylicious Brights, and Background Blues.

Botanical Basics - Three primaries (chosen to create my signature "cool" palette),

a dark (my much-loved French Roast) and a light (Snowflake - well, of course!).  

This set is designed to create a palette for botanical painting...

... and you also get a glaze - for extra-shiny berries!

Berrylicious Brights - a fabulous berry bright palette, perfect for mixing berry or floral colours.

 It will also take you through the berry seasons from summer into autumn. 

A great way to augment the Botanical Basics.

Background Blues - steely cool blues along with a cool grey and a warm grey, 

designed to create subtle layered backgrounds to let bright botanicals pop over the top.

It's absolutely not required to buy any of them in order to do my class - Fodder School actively encourages you to use what you have already in your stash.  Not all of the berries you see on the houses are stamped... one element of the classes I'll be teaching is about sketching them for yourselves!  Obviously, the stamps make life so much easier, so they are there for those who would like to add them to their stamp collection!  You can find more details here on the PaperArtsy website and your local independent PaperArtsy stockists (worldwide) should be able to help you out if you'd like to get your hands on them.

And of course you don't have to be signed up to Fodder School to play with these new designs, but you might want to think about coming on what I have no doubt will be an incredible year-long creative journey.  If you've seen any of the Fodder Challenge inspiration on offer, you already know what an amazing opportunity this is going to be. 

The Early Bird Pricing offer is $207.00 USD plus tax for the year. As a lump sum, it feels a lot, but that’s an entirely new mixed media art course each month for $17.25 USD + tax per month - that's just over €15, or around £13.50 at current exchange rates.   (This deal will last for five days only from 21st - 25th July so grab it while you can.)

There are loads more details about all that in my previous post, so I won't repeat it all here.  I really just wanted to share my excitement about having these new PaperArtsy toys to play with.  You can see more of the houses on the move in my own little personal Fodder School 3 video (the full trailer was in the previous post)... see below or simply click here. 

I'm really excited about the whole Fodder School adventure, and about these lovely new PaperArtsy/Fodder products, and so grateful for the collaboration that has brought them to life. I hope you will be too.

Happy Sunday, all!

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
Wendell Berry (!)

On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels...
Charles Dickens

Winter Wood and Pine Panels

Hello all!  I'm back in the UK for three months for work, so once again I've had to pack more craft supplies than clothes in my suitcase so that I don't get withdrawal symptoms!  I'll share some pictures of my temporary craft stash if you're interested, but for now I thought I'd show you this pair of wintry panels I created just before leaving the Czech Republic last week.

I wanted the new Tim Holtz 3D embossing folders Tree Rings and Pine Branches the moment I saw them.  I knew they'd make perfect settings for my PaperArtsy botanical stamps, and I just had time to make one panel with each while I was doing my packing.

The first one was this weathered wood panel created with the Tree Rings folder.

I tinted the gorgeous wood texture with Distress Sprays and Crayons - sorry, I can't really remember what colours I used but Pumice Stone, Hickory Smoke, Walnut Stain and Weathered Wood were definitely in the mix...

some pinecones gathered on walks, and real twigs interspersed with die-cut ones...

and of course my EAB Hawthorn Edition stamps.

I kept the colours very muted and wintry - it's all done with Distress Inks, including the new(ish) Lumberjack Plaid mixed with Festive Berries.  The leaves are a combination of Pumice Stone, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and Weathered Wood.

The quote is from the same set, embossed in Wow Primary Bark powder, and it's resting on some coils of rusty wire.

The second panel uses the Pine Branches folder.

Again, the colours are a bit hazy - there's certainly some Rustic Wilderness, Speckled Egg, Evergreen Bough and Walnut Stain around...

a lovely Idea-ology Quote Token, with Picket Fence Distress Crayon highlighting the words...

the berries from my EAB29 Mistletoe Edition with a touch of Glossy Accents crackled with a heat gun...

background stamping with the theatrical ephemera from the same set...

and some more pinecones.

Of course, the BigShot was one thing I couldn't put in the suitcase (too heavy, too big, too awkward!), but I did pre-press a few more of these panels to bring with me.  Keep an eye out for them in future makes... they're definitely going to become a regular part of my creations.

I hope you like them, and I hope you are enjoying a gentle and peaceful weekend full of good things.  See you soon.

I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape--the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.

Andrew Wyeth

Inspired by a Movie

Hello all!  It's time for my final week in the Designer Spotlight over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, and this week we are "Inspired by a Movie".  It's not often that I spook myself at the craft table (and there are often skulls and skeletons around) but, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, I definitely got the chills as I transformed Tim Holtz's adorable Silhouette Birds into something deeply ominous!

It's been a delight and an honour to work alongside the amazing Simon Says Stamp Design Team for the month of June.

And this new theme, "Inspired by a Movie", has produced another round of their amazing creativity so, when you're done here, do hop over and check out what they've all been up to in order to inspire you to play along.

These tags were really quite simple to make, but I'm very happy with how effective they are.  I would never have believed that the Silhouette Birds - with which I'm completely in love - could become so scary!  Check it out while listening to the title sequence!

The backgrounds were made using my favourite dip-and-dab technique with Distress Inks and Oxides.  I smoosh the chosen ink pads onto the craft mat, spritz the ink with a little water (but not the tags usually), and then swipe, dip and dab the tags into the inky droplets.

I usually start with one or two colours, drying between layers, and then add more colours as the mood takes me, often being quite specific about where I'm dabbing to add the new colours.

In the mix here are Walnut Stain DI, Pumice Stone DI and DOx, Hickory Smoke DI, Vintage Photo DI and DOx, Ground Espresso DI, Crackling Campfire DI, Shaded Violet DI, Villainous Potion DI, Wilted Violet DI, Stormy Sky DI and DOx, with a little white paint spatter at the end.

And I added some subtle stamping using the Faded Type set in Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo.

Next up, selecting the right twigs and branches from my little stockpile on the windowsill.

If I go through them too quickly in the year, I sometimes have to head out into the garden to find some more...

I found the right shapes to create a balanced composition across the two tags.

And I love how much dimension they gave me to play with.

You probably spotted that I had already cut the birds out of Kraft Stock Stack Black Paper - some cut black-side up, some kraft-side-up, so that I could have them facing in both directions - and began to arrange them in my newly-created trees.  They were surprisingly cooperative about perching in position while I was working it out (or perhaps that shouldn't be reassuring).  I was tossing up between five birds per tree...

... and six birds per tree, and decided that six was definitely creepier.  

And it's especially creepy moving between these two photos, because that gradual gathering of more and more birds is exactly what Tippi Hedren's character experiences in the film.  I just love how these two in the middle are hovering three and nearly four centimetres above the surface of the tag (yes, I measured!).

With the branches so crowded, I thought it was probably best to keep everything else nice and simple.  Also, I wanted the birds to have centre stage for full impact.

So it was just a question of seeking out the right phrases from the Idea-ology Clippings Stickers.  These are actually from a seasonal Halloween set, hence their suitability for reflecting the psychological fractures and breakdown the film captures so brilliantly.

It also makes a huge difference sanding back the black paper to reveal some of the kraft colour underneath.  It seems to create more life and movement in the birds somehow.

They're definitely watching you...

Imagine yourself standing at the foot of the tags, just in the middle there... yup, you're surrounded!

So I hope you'll be "Inspired by a Movie" this week, and join in at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  There's absolutely no need to scare yourself in the process... you can pick a nice safe romcom if you like!  The Design Team have created lots more fabulous inspiration for you over at the challenge blog.

As always, the team will be selecting some favourite projects to go in the spotlight, and of course the challenge is generously sponsored by the Simon Says Stamp store...

... so one lucky random winner will receive a $25 voucher to go shopping there and choose some new stash to play with.

Thanks so much to Lorraine and the team for inviting me to guest design with them this month, and thank you to all of you for stopping today.  I hope I haven't started your week off too ominously.  Happy crafting all!

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. ... 

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

Alfred Hitchcock

Christmas Countdown Tags Part III

Hello all, and a very merry Christmas to you all.  And if that's not something you celebrate, then I simply wish you the warmest and cosiest of times tucked away from the winter weather.

I'm here with the final instalment of my December tags.  I had planned on 24, which would have been three nice even batches of eight each, but in the end I went for just one more to make 25 in total.

So today you get nine tags... a Christmas bonus!

I hope that, however you are celebrating, you will enjoy days of peace and contentment, and I hope that 2022 will treat us all a little more kindly.  Stay safe, stay well, stay creative all.

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.

Agnes M. Pharo

Freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin – inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night.

John J. Geddes