JoFY patterns

So currently Paperartsy's topic/challenge theme is "patterns"  I love to make patterns with stamps and this time used my new JoFY large flower stamps from JoFY45 which are just gorgeous.
As usual there have been some fabulous posts featuring great use of patterns - check them out.

This is what I did.

I used Sky and Ice Blue for the background, and then stamped the larger flower repeatedly over the page.  For the purples I used (searches brain as I did this days ago...)  Pansy, with touches of Plum and Wisteria. white Sharpie highlights, and Eggplant and Plum on the edges of the flower petals.

I filled in the spaces with the little flower seeds (?) and mixed Plum with Satin Glaze to colour them

 Life IS good - live it!!

entering the Paperartsy challenge here 











as a bonus, you get to see the little journal page I did with Dolly and Little Dude the new minis from JoFY... such cute little fellas!

I made the background with the numbers  mini from Jo, and used archival inks in Vivid Chartreuse and Shadow Grey, a wash of limelight and concrete, then stamped the letters mini in Leaf Green and Watering Can archival (ie. slightly darker shades) and then a watered down wash of Limelight again I think..
Stamped the flowers from JoFY46 and the charachters on scrap paper and coloured with pitt pens.

Two very different journal pages

Been working on 2 different pages in two different journals - the first, my A4 hard cover journal which I started ages ago.. finally finished!

 I brayered Frescos in Blueberry, Snowflake, Bubblegum, errr  probably some other pinks too.. added stamped circles (mostly Emma Godfrey and EverythingArt) more paint, more stamping, more layers..

 Drips (Bombay Ink); added DecoArt crackle paste,

 Dylusions stencils and Little Black Dress Fresco, (decided just to use the two larger stencils) and text stamped on tissue (Invoke Art stamps)  added some more mark making stamps (Emma) and text (Sara Naumann)

 and some black Bombay Ink splatters

 loved the big crackles I got

used some Blueberry paint round the edges too.

I decided not to doodle within the stencilled girls, but I may go back and do that, you never know!








Next up, the A5 soft cover journal I use more regularly, and Infusions over a mop up paint background - before I got up yesterday I watched a You Tube video Leandra tweeted a link to.. and which I now can't find... how annoying.. it was by Vicky Papaioannou for Simon Says Stamps and used Infusions... as soon as I got back from shopping I set to to finish my page..

 this was where it had got to, paint left over and scrapings... lots of layers before I took to the Infusions, but no photos until...

 I had got to the stage where I had my stamps laid out on the background.  I can't tell you how many layers of colour I used until I was vaguely happy (it's still a bit dark in real life!)  Like Vicky, I mixed my Infusions with gel medium. (have now ordered a soft one, my regular gloss was a bit thick for this)

 stamped some of the flowers onto separate card, coloured with Infusions mixed with regular gloss gel again and added some white pen marks on he flowers and bubbles on the background (Snowflake, Lin B's stencil)
Stencilled (Darcy's) a border in LBD Fresco and scribbled white Sharpie round the edge of the black, round the border of the whole page.

 stamped the caterpillar on white card and coloured with distress markers, stamped him on the journal page so I could cut off his antennae safely,

and added the sentiment from the JoFY stamp set the flowers/caterpillar come from.

Had huge fun with the Infusions and gel on this one, might have to do another one now!

Thanks for looking.

WOYWW 349

Hello deskers... Julia hosts this weekly desk snoop - link here

At the risk of sounding repetitive.... I've bought some (more) new stuff from the Paperartsy launch... just one more parcel to come now... I have no willpower, do I hear you say?  Quite possibly..

oops!   these are the new Lin Brown flower sets... loving them all, will be inking them up soon (possibly even before this post publishes!)

I have been playing with some of my new supplies already, which is always a good thing, right - buy it, use it...

I was playing with the new metallic Fresco paints - the copper here in the background, is gorgeous - and the white fire, in the middle is even gorgeouser (I know, I made it up!)

the robot is from one of Jo Firth Young's new sets

I've tweeked this since, but not got a photo of it - I painted a piece of card with the pewter (older metallic) paint, then stamped and cut out the robot and layered it onto the tag.  It wasn't my idea, I confess, it was Leandra's herself, but the pewter is a more robot-y colour!

I've also got a very pink start to a journal page... not sure yet where this is going - it involved a lot of splodging and dragging paint with a credit card (an old one, not the one I'm using to buy new stash with!)




Better go and catch your desks, now - but before I go, if any of you like orchids, I went to Kew on Saturday for the start of their annual orchid display... if you didn't catch the link on facebook or twitter head here for some visual delights!

Dragons Dream - Tag It On - Brown and Crackle

So, Wednesday again... and time for another challenge from the Dragons at Tag it On - this time, the super talented Julie Ann's choice which is - brown, and to use crackle.. Any choice of crackle you prefer - paste, paint, whatever.

I reached for my trusty Paperartsy crackle glaze, because I was in a bit of a hurry to get this started before I went away for last weekend (nothing like last minute round here!)

I used Chocolate Pudding on the base tag and Buff on top... quite subtle cracks.   I added the honeycomb stamp from JoFY 30 in Potting Soil archival ink.

I stamped the bee hive on white card, and took one of the chipboard shapes that matches the large bee from the same set, before stamping the bee on the shape. Coloured it with Inktense pencils
Stamped some of the little bees direct on the tag, and and the text; in black archival.

Do come and join the Dragons and see what my team-mates have dreamt up for you this fortnight - to join in, you need to use one real stamp on your tag. have fun!

Dragons Dream TIO - Purple and Circles

Hello, and welcome to another challenge from the Dragons.. This fortnight, it's the choice of Catherine, who'd like you to use purple, and circles, on your tag.  This one was great fun!

 I started with a size 10 tag, and a Prima stencil, and Dylusions paint (crushed grape).  Then took a JoDY flower - stamped it onto the tag, and then just the heads onto book text paper, cut that out and painted it with Purple Rain Fresco paint, stuck the head onto the stems.. saves trying to cut teeny thin stems from paper!

 added a third JoFY round flower stamp and painted that - this one is on tissue, so it's painted Snowflake from behind to make the colour pop on front.

took a small tag and stamped a JoFY text, and added some more circles in the Dylusions paint (this is a Lin Brown stencil for Paperartsy)

Finished with some pinky-purple ribbon, edged the tags with the Dylusions paint (there was enough left on the cut and dry foam) and mounted the small tag with pop dots.

Hope you'll come and see what the others have dreamt up for you, and join in - don't forget to use one real stamp somewhere on your tag.

A double Journal page

I bought some DecoArt Crackle paste recently and finally got round to opening the pot and having a play..
I started by painting a page with Jade Fresco, then applied the paste with a palette knife through a stencil (Lin Brown for Paperartsy)

 The paste splodged quite badly under the stencil, I tried to scrape it away without damaging the flowers, then decided to leave it overnight to dry.

then this morning I was reading Sarah Anderson's blog - adding layer on layer, and decided to rescue this page. Out came one of my earliest stencils I ever bought, and the Buff Fresco...

 another layer, just in random places (over the worst of the splodges, so technically not random at all....) in Prawn Fresco, and then the 'art is' stencil (quite possibly my favourite ever stencil) in Slate Fresco

 Took some of the Finnabair sets for Prima, and the hearts (one from each) and stamped in black archival.

Added matt glaze to the hearts (Decoart) at this stage, not sure what I was thinking would happen next...

 added some drips of DecoArt mister in Turquoise, from the tube, just letting it drip down the page, spritzed a bit of water to help spread the ink.

Took some of the Finnabair sentiments from the same two sets, on white card and glued them to the page.









close up of the crackle... it buckled a bit but has dried out even further today and is much flatter now.

 on the other page, is the leftover paint, daubed from the cut and dry foam pad, (the turquoise isn't actually in the other page as the stencilling I started with it didn't show up enough over the jade)

stamped the flower from JoFY 32 and Fleur from JoFY36 and painted them with Prawn and Rose for the centres

Filled the gaps round the flowers with the honeycomb/circles from JoFY32 in Watering Can archival - was still a bit too prominent, so dabbed a bit more Buff over the top.

 

This isn't what I was meant to be doing today, which was a Paperartsy challenge piece for the Niche topic, but I am idea-less for that (or at least the idea I had wasn't coming together), so had fun with these instead!
Thanks for looking.

Tag and ATC swap

These are my tags and atcs for the latest swap I'm in organised by Sam. The theme was black and white tags and monochrome or 2 colour atcs; theme set by Emma - thanks Emma I had a blast with this, especially the tags.
I don't have any step by step pics, I was so in the swing with the tags and am really happy with how they came out.

 I decided to do one black with white and one white with black - the tags are manilla so used a couple of coats of white gesso and one of Snowflake Fresco, and black gesso on the other.

 the stencil is a window frame from Stencil Girl, and the butterfly from Finn.

The sentiments are from Dina Wakley.

I stencilled in the middle of the frame too.

 I didn't have a white organza ribbon (or at least couldn't find it in the ribbon box), or a black satin one, (and forget to get white organza at Ally Pally, I KNEW there was a particular ribbon I wanted!)

for the atcs I decided to stick to shades of blue, used mainly new Frescos though I haven't recorded the colours.. the diamonds are a stamp from JoFY34

 and the little houses and text from ELB13

The next theme's already been announced, time to get my thinking cap on again.

Another Journal page

I poured out too much Jade paint when I made my MDF tag before, so dabbed it onto another journal page.
I scraped some spare crackle glaze randomly over the top and added Hint of Mint as my top colour.

 I added some stencilling using Peacoat (opaque variety) with the Tattered Lace stencil and some stamping (the criss cross hatch from JoFT36)
Sanded it back,

 Sealed the page with clear gesso

 stamped some JoFY flowers (JoFY35) and the dangling vines (JoDY33) and painted them with Bougainvillea and Lavender,(flowers) and Lavender (vines) used a Pitt pen in yellow for the dotty bits on the vines.
Leaves are painted with Hey Pesto.

stamped the 'hear the song' from JoFY33 down the side of the page.

That's it for today, going to watch the rest of the Golf!!

Playtime!! Bee Happy...

Morning, all.  Was itching to get playing with some of my new purchase from yesterday - so despite a late night (was crafting at 11pm which I never do - you'll have to wait till Wednesday for that!)  and the F1 Grand Prix, I got started.

I took to a journal - the A5 one. The page had been used to use up various blues/purply colours from something or other but I added a touch of Buff (from the JoFY limited edition set I picked up yesterday) - I applied this with a brayer

 then I took the Prawn from the same set, and the Emma Godfrey stencil

 I stamped the honeycomb/circle stamp from JoFY32, in Cornflower Blue, and coloured the shapes with a light yellow and slightly darker yellow, gelato, which I blended with a barely damp paintbrush.

I planned to stamp over the top of this, so I sealed the page with the clear gesso (Prima, from Finnabair's line) - I obviously hadn't completely heat sealed the gelatos as the yellow smudged a little, or maybe I applied the gesso too vigorously, but it wiped off ok.

 in the end though, I stamped the beehive from JoFY30 on tissue, and painted it with watered down Pumpkin Soup to make it more translucent, and the roof with Snowflake.  Painted the reverse with a light coat of Snowflake to make the colours pop.  Stamped the bees and the texts, from the Beehive set.  I know beehives are traditionally white, but allow me some artistic licence!


I was doing this just for fun, but I happened to see that the Craft Barn weekly challenge is Quintessentially English - and I don't think there's much more English than a beehive, so entering this here


Now, what shall I play with next...?