Happy Smiles

Hello all!  A couple of those Rustic Wilderness backgrounds I shared last week have made their way to completion with the help of a pair of Paper Dolls, and a touch of ephemera collaging.  Take a look...

The background stamping is courtesy of the Forest Floor stamp set.  The large fir branch in the background has a softer look as I spritzed the inks on it (Rustic Wilderness Oxide and Peeled Paint) with a bit of water before stamping.

The pinecones are stamped in Archival Coffee as far as I remember and it's all over a background of Antique Linen and Vintage Photo with maybe some Pumice Stone in the mix (only because there usually is some Pumice Stone in the mix round here!).

The darker, shorter-needled branches are stamped in pure Rustic Wilderness Distress Ink... such a rich deeply pigmented green.  It makes for perfect layering with the ability to put something really dark and impactful over the rest of the stamping.

The two girls are wrapped up warm against the winter cold, and have happy smiles...

... if not quite the twinkling eyes suggested by the Clippings word stickers!  This one clearly has more important things to do with her time than have her photo taken.

I hope you like all the winter foliage around here at the moment... it's been a long time obsession of mine from way before I was crafting.

The large tree and jugs and vases full of ivy and holly are the most important part of the Christmas festivities for me... along with plenty of candlelight and music.

So having these new foliage stamps to play with along with the fabulous rich green of Rustic Wilderness has certainly put a happy smile on my face.  Even with my limited craft time/energy, I'm loving the moments I do manage to grab at the craft table.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon.  Don't forget to come and join in with our very last ever challenge at A Vintage Journey - we'd love to go out with a bang.  But most importantly stay safe and well until we meet again.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

John Muir

I'd like to play along at Country View Challenges where the theme is Anything Christmas

At Tag Tuesday it's Christmas or Anything Goes

I'm hoping the twinkling eyes and the gleaming pearl droplets provide enough Christmas Sparkle to join in at Try It On Tuesday

Simplify, Breathe

Hello all!  Apparently July is World Watercolour month, so the new challenge theme at A Vintage Journey is well-timed.  The lovely Deb is our host, and she's in search of Watercolour Wonders.  You don't have to use actual watercolours, just any colour medium which is reactive with water... Distress Inks, pigment powders and so on.  All the details are over at A Vintage Journey, along with lots of inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides, so do check it out.  First of all, though, here's my watery offering for you.

Rather than watercolours, I used water-reactive Distress Inks for my backgrounds on these thistly tags.  But I am setting myself a daily watercolour challenge through July too, so keep an eye out for weekly (?) updates here.  I thought by saying it out loud to you here, that might encourage me to stick to it!  I love playing with watercolour, but I haven't done nearly enough of it lately.

You can see the wrinkle-free distress backgrounds in all their glory here in the early stages.

I think Faded Jeans, Broken China, Bundled Sage, Peeled Paint and Mowed Lawn are all in there somewhere, along with plenty of watery spritzing, smooshing and layering.






When I'm smooshing, I always work with multiple tags to make sure I'm using as much of the ink on the mat as humanly possible, so I ended up with a pair to work with this time.












I decided I'd play with this fabulous thistle stamp, one of Tracy Evans' designs for AALL & Create.  (I don't generally work with clear stamps - some of my earliest purchases were clear stamps and a couple have deteriorated quite badly - but there are some of Tracy's images which have proven simply irresistible!)














On one tag I embossed the image with Wow Bright White embossing powder.  And on the other I used my much-loved Earthtone Pepper, also by Wow.















The "watercolours" or watery inks are meant to be the highlight of these tags, so I didn't want to cover them up too much.












There's some fine twine wrapped around the lower end of the tags and I tied on a couple of Philosophy Tags which I altered with the same 
powders.













The one on the white thistle tag has a coating of the Pepper (I was relieved when the words continued to be visible - I hoped, but I wasn't sure!)...













... and the one on the pepper thistle tag has a coating of Bright White.  I deliberately roughened the edges before heating the powder so that some of the metal would show through.












I did a bit of extra stamping using just the text from the image to balance the tags.  It just wanted a bit more detail to the side of the main stamping.














The tags needed a little something more so I fished out some sequins and stuck them in various places.














The glossy embossing is already doing quite a good job of catching the light with that reflective dimensional surface.















But the sequins are of course especially designed to reflect light, and they do it so well!












I did a bit of doodling with my dip pen and white ink to create some frames around the edges, and the same fine twine finishes things off at the top of the tag.

And there's splatter in complementary colours too - some white spatter on the pepper thistle tag... and some grey/brown spatter on the white thistle tag.






So there you have it... some water and some colour and away you go.  I hope you'll be inspired to join us on A Vintage Journey some time this month with some Watercolour Wonders of your own.  Check out the inspiration over there too, and have a fabulous weekend.  Thanks so much for stopping by and I'll see you again soon.

Because watercolour actually moves on the paper, it is the most active of all mediums, almost a performance art.
Nita Engle

The theme over at Country View Crafts this month is Do More of What Makes You Happy, so I'd like to play along there.  Watercolouring makes me very happy, and I haven't done any in months.  In fact, any play time with inks and water makes me happy.  So I'm very happy that World Watercolour Month is going to make me spend more time doing just that!
At Crafty Cardmakers they would like us to Create Your Own Background - this is one of my favourite ways to do that

Words and Zinskis

Hello all, and happy summer solstice to you!  (Or happy winter solstice, obviously, if you're in the southern hemisphere.)  And happy Sunday too.  I hope the day is being kind to you.

I'm just here with a quick post today to start sharing some of the samples from my latest stamp release at PaperArtsy.  Thank you so much for your amazing feedback both here and at PaperArtsy and, of course, over at the dreaded (ssshhhh, whisper it) Facebook.  If you missed the launch post, you may also have missed my first ever Facebook Live - so do take a look if you fancy it.

For now, I'm just going to offer up a couple of close-ups of the two tags I created for the launch using the Zinski characters, and some of Kay Carley's lovely meadow flowers.  One has a quote from EAB18 Gardens & Growth, and one has words from EAB19 Life & Living.






Let's start with Gardens & Growth and the little boy.  I began with some brayered tags, applying the paint with plenty of water spritzed on for a soft effect.














For both backgrounds I used Kay Carley's lovely meadow grasses from EKC17.  I stamped some in Olive Archival, and then decided I'd like some yellow grassy stems, like hay.  So I painted some Cheesecake and Haystack onto the craft mat...














... and used that to stamp into and layer the stems with thicker heads over the others for a grain/cereal look.  There's a little white spatter (of course) and the Zinski "ground" stamp to go underneath the boy's feet.













Here he is, stamped on a separate piece of card using the stamping platform so that I could stamp, paint him and then re-stamp to retrieve all the details.

He's mounted on some padded tape which is what gives him that lovely shadow, making him pop from the background.  I added slightly darker shadows beneath him with some walnut ink.













Here are some of those Olive-stamped grasses in close-up...
















... and the yellow stalks layered over the top.










And here are those words by Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of The Secret Garden.  You can read the words two ways, I realised.  There's the primary one, which I think was probably in FHB's head: if you look at the world the right way, you can see good things everywhere.

But there's another possibility, if you choose to hear it: if you have the right appearance, the world will be a garden to you.  If you don't look the right way - not so much.





Onwards to Life & Living and the girl dancing her way through life.  Her tag started out with a sponged background.  It's one of my favourite ways to blend Fresco paints onto a tag.

I flatter myself that you can get quite a "Monet-esque" effect!












Some more of Kay Carley's pretty grasses - this time all stamped in paint for a lovely soft focus look.
















Some are in the light Spring green, and some have a little of the darker Lawn mixed in.














And again, I stamped some Zinski "ground" beneath her feet and added some walnut ink shadows.














The girl herself I stamped on separate card again, using the stamping platform - same process as before... stamp, paint, re-stamp for detail.  But when it comes to cutting this sweetheart out, there are a lot of fiddly bits to deal with around the edges.













So I took the easy route and also stamped her direct to the tag, embossing her hair with Wow's Primary Bark embossing powder to give it a dark, glossy sheen.  Then you can just cut the easy way and have the details ready and waiting on the tag when you stick her down!





And finally those words, stamped in Archival and then embossed with Earthtone Pepper embossing powder by Wow.  I find it's best to stamp in Archival rather than an embossing ink.  You get a sharper image for the powder to cling to - important when you're working with fine detail stamps like these words.

I know I'll find lots of other uses for this fabulously positive quote, but somewhere in the back of my brain it will always be linked with this exuberant little girl!

So there you have it... the first of the samples done and dusted.  I'll be back with more over the coming days and weeks.








But before all that there's some new journalling coming your way, also using a quote from one of these new sets.  Watch this space...  Thanks so much for stopping by today.  Stay safe, stay well and I'll see you all again soon.

If you've never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden.
Robert Brault

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