Eclectica Card from Julie

Hi Everyone

I am so excited to present my first design team piece for Crafters Cupboard - which I must confess was not what I had originally planned, but I was so excited by the new release's that I changed my direction totally leaving behind a half finished project which hopefully I will finish and share later.


 

Supply List  

Stamp Lin Brown Eclectica ELB15 
Paper Artsy Chalk Paint Eclectica Limited Addition - Lin Brown
Paper Artsy Chalk Paint Hyde Park
Ranger Archival Ink Jet Black

Prima 12 x 12 Finnibar Elements Bubbles Stencil

Ranger Cut & Dry Foam

And from my stash gesso, craft card, water colour paper & tape.

First step was to apply a coat of gesso to the water colour card.

On the card blank I applied Tangerine Twist using a piece of cut and dry foam & the bubbles stencil, then when dry re positioned the stencil  and applied  Bougainvillea.

On the water colour paper I applied with a old credit card Caribbean Sea and when dry, I then dry brushed some Banana .

Using the Ranger Jet Black Ink & Eclectica Lin Brown Stamp Set, I stamped my image.

Using a tooth pick I put daubs of Bougainvillea on the ends of the flower and also on the stem. Next was to add some colour to the flower using the dry brushing method and Tangerine Twist  and  Bougainvillea, then using Hyde Park for the stem and leaves. 

To create a frame I used Bougainvillea and dry brushed the edge, and using my tape, mounted it to the Card blank.

I will confess that I am in love with the new colours & stamps, and had so much fun working on this project.

Hope you enjoy and get some inspiration. 


Until next time have fun & create 

Julie

These new Fresco chalk paint colours from Paper Artsy are gorgeous Julie and you've done a great job on this card, using the new paint colours and one of the new stamps to full advantage to create your beautiful card. Thank you - I'm sure our blog readers will enjoy !

Art Journaling with Dylusions Stamps

Hello Crafty Friends!

Danni here today to blog my first DT Tutorial with Crafter's Cupboard.  A tad excited I might add, and hopefully you'll find it inspiring as well.

Unfortunately I have been tied up with work this month and haven't been able to get down to the Awesome Crafter's Cupboard shop to check out all the lovely new releases from Paper Artsy.

You can check the new releases here. I cant wait to get my greedy little hands onto some of those exciting new stamp plates and the wonderful range of paints. Till then, I will have to make do with my last purchases at the Crafter's Cupboard which were a few of Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions stamps.

I 've been pondering over them for quite a while. I would say that they have been calling my name every time I enter the Crafter Cupboard shop, but they are just a little out of my comfort zone so I had been resisting them.

Last month I found myself in front of Angus's perfectly arranged shelf of the Dylusions stamps, and once again wondering what I would create with them. So, this time I bit the bullet and brought a few sets home with me!

Believe it or not, todays post is all about these wacky and fun stamps. I managed to create a fun double journal page and I quite surprised myself with the finished project.
Now I know there was quite a few Dyan Stamp set's left on the shelves at Crafter's Cupboard shop that I will now most definitely need to get!

So my journal page started as they all do -  blank. I picked a few stamp sets that I wanted to play with

Bits of these -DYR34605, Ruby Rainbow-DYR34377, Shrooms-DYR44529

And I had a few more stamps on standby just in case .

 Next was to pull out my Dylusions spray's -  another product that's a little bit out of my comfort zone, but that I am pushing myself to use as I quite like the effects.

 Once colours were sorted, I grab my handy dandy spray booth - a chips box from Aldi

 ( a wonderful tip I got from Jennifer)

and sprayed to my hearts content also adding a water spray over the top to help with the blending of the colours

Once I was happy with the coverage on my pages I whipped out a stencil

as I wanted to give ghosting a try.

 This is a method that Dyan is well known for when using her Dylusions sprays. It involves spraying your background, placing your stencil down and spraying water through the stencil. This causes a reaction to the dylusion inks so when you lift your stencil and dry the area with paper towel you are left with a ghost print of the stencilled image.

as seen here

This was a really cool technique that I would try again . But next time I will make more of a feature with the technique.

The next step once the page was completely dry was to stamp the little flower stems from the elements of Shrooms-DYR44529 stamp set with archival ink.

and then using other stamp elements that come from the stamp sets to compose my lay out

Once I was happy with the overall lay out it was time to try another technique!

I had been hanging out to try this one which involves colouring with aqua painters.  I filled each one with the Dylusion ink sprays straight from the bottle so that I could use them to colour my stamped images.

The colours are so vibrant and are not watered down so you can get direct colour into small paintable areas

Once all the images were coloured, I stamped out the crazy little bodies and heads, mix matching from one stamp set to the other onto 300gsm water colour paper.

 I then used the aqua painters to again colour the images up.

 

For the skin tones I used my copic makers E50, E51, E53 and E93

Once they were completely dried, I fussy cut around the stamped images using a craft knife for the really small areas.

The larger figure  needed hair as her head finished at her eyes. I had contemplated using the leaves but that would have just gotten too busy with the leaves that were already stamped around the boarder of the pages.

So another dig through my stamps and I pulled out

Dyan's Surivor- DYR44550 ...

and stamped the survivor head straight down onto the journal page

I then proceeded to matt medium the fussy cut stamped images down onto my pages

Once they were in position I felt the page needed a bit more black as the bright and intense colours were a little too overwhelming.

Another dig around in my stamps and I found Clearly doodle parts 

which has a few solid leaf stamps.  This was stamped around the boarders of the page to frame the figures and to also pull all the colours together.

 I actually think the extra black on the page makes the Dylusion inks pop

So now nearly finished … .. I used a posca fine paint pen to make highlights on the leaves and to put a Dottie pattern through the hair of the larger figure and

then finally, using another  Dyan stamp- Clearly quotes 

(Who Knew I had so many sets!) I stamped out two quotes that I liked and thought were appropriate for my images.

 They were stamped onto white cardstock and then I cut them out and used matt medium glue them to the pages…..

and voilà  a finished double spread.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it

if you have any questions please leave a comment I would love to hear from you

Until next time enjoy what you do and keep on creating

crafty hugs xxx

Dannii

Danni - We just LOVE what you have done with these stamps ! Great techniques that you have shared and I'm sure our readers will be itching to try them out - we certainly are !

Love the finished result - the colours are so vibrant and a great tip to use the inks in aqua pens for colouring to keep those vibrant colours in the characters as well as in the background page. Well done, and thank you from the Crafters Cupboard team 

There's MORE .. Extra JOFY release

Hello

Well, aren't we the lucky ones ! Jo Firth-Young has designed an extra FOUR new JOFY stamps on top of the recent new product {2015} release from Paper Artsy at the beginning of the month.

Very excited - they look awesome and will work so well with the existing Jofy's. Here's a peak …

They will be in store soon here. As with the earlier new releases, you are welcome to email us at customerservice@crafterscupboard.com.au if you wish to preorder. I think these new JOFY's are going to be very popular.

The newly released stencils are now available for us to order and we expect stocks of these and the new JOFY's in late next week !

Bye for now

Jennifer

Art Journaling Fun

Hello …

Wow, what a busy few days we have had at Crafters Cupboard. Everyone is LOVING the new paint colours and orders have been flying out the door - even across to New Zealand. I'm sure  the car is making it's way to the Post Office on Auto Pilot! While the cupboard is looking a little bare of new paint, the shelves will be filling up again with another stock order arriving from the UK tomorrow…..

If you haven't ordered yours yet, get over to our website and check them out.

We currently have several art journaling groups working through our six month art journaling basics course which has proved to be very popular. If you have been wondering what art journaling is all about, we've just started a new group. Give us a call for details - it's not too late to join in and details are on our website here under the classes and workshops tab.

Today we had our Sunday Art Journaling Workshop group. This great bunch of ladies started out with our 6 month basics course which they completed late last year. They asked if they could keep coming and they still do…. It's wonderful to see the progression they have made in their work from their early days until now.

This month's 'challenge brief' was a simple one - limited products to use, some recycling to be done and some journaling. Not too hard, especially as the 'limited' products they were able to use were the new 'limited ' edition paint sets  and some of the new stamps  designed by Paper Artsy with a leaning towards art journaling.

Here's some peaks of the work that the group did today. Some still need to finish their work off at home, but you will get a bit of an idea of the vibrant use of the new paints here - the colours are stunning and fabulous to work with. Trust me, these paints do NOT disappoint ..

Julie kept us guessing where she was going with her piece and we all loved the end result achieved  with multiple layers and stencilling with paint to create depth, colour, contrast and interest ..

Margaret's work was also very bright - awesome use of those new paint colours and clever use of recycled tags from clothing purchases which hide her journaling underneath.. Love it.

Kate's piece was designed to cleverly hide journaling in unobtrusive places within the spread using recycled tags and she made good use of some of the new stamps which have been designed with the art journaler/pocket scrapbooker in mind….

Brianna also used recycled tags in a clever way, picking up on pre embossing in the tag and using it as a feature, along with some of the new stamps. These sneaky peeks give a good indication of just how bright and vivid the new paints are. Brights are an upcoming trend and the new Paper Artsy Fresco paints certainly tick all the boxes for art journaling.

Some of our ladies couldn't make it today for various reasons, so they'll be playing catch up next month… If they are reading this, they'll get some clues on what they've missed.

In the meantime, I'm playing with the new purples and loving them. 

My page isn't done yet, but they are awesome colours to be using in a monochromatic spread. I'm using them with a new Lyn Perrella plate …  Work in progress ….

Until next time

Jennifer

Mixed Media 12 x 12 with Geraldine Pasinati - Upcoming workshop

Hello, Good Evening or Good Morning (depending where you are in the world)

We are very excited to share with you that Geraldine Pasinati has agreed to hold two workshops in the coming months doing three 12 x 12 Mixed Media layouts. They will be amazing days - Geraldine's work is gorgeous ! We were so pleased when she joined our design team and look forward to sharing her work on the blog. However, having the chance to come along to one of her classes is a real treat and a great opportunity.

Sneak peeks here ….

Geraldine has so much to share and you won't be sorry to attend one of her workshops where you will learn some fabulous techniques that you can apply not only to your scrapbooking layouts, but also all the other projects that you like to do. It'll be a 'full on' day but you will be very happy with the 3 layouts that you produce through the day.

If anything related to mixed media and/or scrapbooking is your thing, then these workshops are not to be missed. 

There are 2 dates to choose from - 1st March and 26th April. All the details are on our website under the Classes and Workshops tab. Check it out here

So, if you want to improve your mixed media skills, want to have fun learning with like-minded people, then these are the classes for you. Come along and enjoy !!

Here's another peek - just to entice you some more

See you there !

Til next time

Jennifer

Introducing Dannii Scholz - Our Fourth New Design Team Member

Good morning everyone 

Another gorgeous sunny day here in Melbourne ...

Such a lot of excitement going on at the moment with all the products from the Paper Artsy release arriving in store. The gorgeous TO DIE FOR  new paints arrived yesterday and lat night I was into them big time. Sufficient to say, I am in LOVE with them. The colours are bright and vivid and superb to use. In no time at all I was into an old book I am converting into an art journal and before I knew it, not only were 4 pages painted up but also a piece of card to use as background for card making. I could have painted for hours and I strongly recommend getting over to our website and having a look at them.

Remember, these are limited editions, so they won't be around for ever. Stocks are already flying out the door. We have some left currently, and more on order. Email customer service@crafterscupboard.com.au if you want to pre order to guarantee you get your order as soon as stocks come in ….

Coinciding with the new Paper Artsy product release is our release of our new Design Team. We have a bunch of talented ladies lined up to share their work with you in the coming months, and of course, we will be showcasing the new Paper Artsy products which have been released this week.

Today, I'm delighted to introduce Danni. You will have seen a snippet of her lovely work yesterday when we blogged about the February challenge 'Hearts A Flutter'. Danni loves colour and exploring new concepts and she has had an amazing time in the last year with her art journal journey and I'm sure you will enjoy her work in the coming months via our blog. So, without any more from me, here's Danni with her intro to the design team ……

Hello,

I am Dannii and I am excited to be a part of the Crafters Cupboard design team. I have had some sort of craft project going whilst juggling my real life of husband, 3 children and floristry business, for as long as I can remember. 

Crafting is my sanity, my stress release from real life. Stamping, scrapbooking and card making have been my passion for at least 15 years, but I recently found art journalling and feel like a whole new world of self expression and discovery has opened up to me.

I am also an art and craft supply junkie so finding Crafter's Cupboard has been a real god send to this 'got to have everything! self obsessed' craft junkie ( I know you know what I am talking about!!) 

Over the next few months I look forward to sharing my work with you and seeing all the wonderful and inspiring talent out there through Crafter's Cupboard monthly challenges. Until then keep on crafting and enjoy what you do! 

Hugs Dannii

First Challenge for 2015 - February Challenge "Hearts A Flutter"

Hi All - It's Julie …..

We have a new challenge for you and an opportunity to win a $20 voucher to spend at Crafters Cupboard. You can find all the rules and guidelines at the bottom of this post for our challenges, so make sure you are up to speed with 'how to'.

This months challenge is Hearts a Flutter -  a broad topic - but it is the month of love!  We can't wait to see what it inspires you to come up with. 

The design team have been creating to give you some inspiration, before you get cracking with an entry to see if you can win the voucher. 

Art Journal Page - Dannii

Dannii has created a vibrant art journal page using a variety of products - some from Crafters Cupboard and some from her stash. Isn't it great … hope you are inspired to create your own page. 

Products used:

Paper Artsy Fresco chalk paint in Cherry Red, Beach Hut, South Pacific and Chalk

Semco acrylic paint in flesh colour (you can pick this up at Spotlight and is a great colour for realistic skin tones )

Ink Intense water pencils

White and black acrylic paint pens

Black charcoal pencil

Jet Black archival ink pad 

Kaiser mosaic background stamp

Oil pastels

Altered Heart - Bri

Bri was inspired by the 'love' theme and has created a decorative 'heart' as a decor piece. It would look great as decoration on gift wrapping. She's made this using a wooden heart from her stash with die cut words. The heart has been coloured with Silks and the words with Treasure Gold. If you haven't used Treasure Gold before, then you don't know what you're missing .. a fabulous product to give any project vibrancy and life.

Products used:

Silks - Guatemalan Green & Love Struck

Treasure Gold - Limited Edition #1 &#5

Book Cover - Julie

I have created an altered cover, this could be a journal, address, note book or recipe book.

It would also make a great card topper!! Try making one for the 'man in your life'.

Products Used:

2 - 5x7 Canvas's, Faber Castell Gelatos, Inktense Pencils, Jet Black Archival Ink, Grunge Paste, Eclectica Stamp Darcy Series EDY01, Various Stencils, Gold Leaf, Tim Holtz Zip & Treasure Gold

Challenge Rules and Guidelines:

All entries must follow the chosen topic for the challenge entries that do not follow the topic will not be considered for the prize.

You can enter any kind of paper craft to be eligible for the prize.
No back linking is permitted entry must be new and not entered into no more than 2 other challenges.

The InLinkz link up tool will close at 23:55 (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on the last day of the month with the winner announced on the blog on the 5th of the following month.

The DT will vote to decide the winner of each challenge and their decision will be final.

The voucher will be emailed to the winner and can be used via the website or shop.

February Challenge closes 23:55 (AEST) 28th Feb 2015

Our Design Team 'Leader' - Introducing Julie Collins

Hello Peeps … Jennifer here (again) ….

There's no show without punch .. today it's my pleasure to introduce Julie Collins to you all. Julie is our fourth new DT member here at Crafters Cupboard, and she is also the 'team leader' for the design team. It's her job to keep the ball rolling with a steady flow of great blog posts showcasing all the teams projects in the next few months. Julie is a huge fan of Crafters Cupboard and she LOVES Paper Artsy with a passion as well as all things crafty, be it Journaling, Canvas, or Scrapbooking in it's many shapes and forms. We are delighted to have her on the team and we are sure you will learn from her projects so keep an eye out for her posts ……

And just so you don't think I've left town, every now and then, I'll pop in with the latest news from Crafters Cupboard. Keep watching our Facebook page as well for updates. So - here's Julie ….

Hi I am Julie and I am from Melbourne Australia, and a mother to 3 adult children and married to Steve who support me with my addiction to crafting. Through my years I have pursued sewing, patchwork, card making, scrapbooking and now my newest passion -  mixed media & art journaling. My supply stash is ever growing as there is always something new or that 'just have to have item'.  My craft offers me a escape from the real world and as I like to say, is cheaper than therapy. I am excited to be a part of the Crafter's Cupboard design team and look forward to seeing all the other members work along with entries to the monthly challenge from all of you.

Cheers,  Julie 

New {2015} Paper Artsy Releases - Lynne Perrella and Hot Picks

Hi Di Hi …

Back again - yes, new stamps are still coming!!

We were really busy yesterday with a new Art Journaling Basics group starting up here at Crafters Cupboard. Great bunch of ladies and they had a ball !! First class of a series of six workshops - and what a great time to be starting with all these wonderful new stamps, paints and stencils to play with.

First up today we have …….

Lynne Perrella

Lynne is one of my favourite Paper Artsy designers. I love her stamps and she hasn't disappointed in her new range which are based on a stained glass theme. Love them all and so happy to share them with you along with some samples. These can all be seen on the Paper Artsy blog including a video from Leandra showcasing both the stamps and the samples ……….. but here's a sneak peak here for you …

Along with some awesome samples … and there's more over on the Paper Artsy blog. All the samples of work that we have shown this week are all from the Paper Artsy blog and have been contributed by a wide range of artists and the stamp designers themselves. 

We encourage you to get on over to the Paper Artsy blog and check out all the designers work as well as that of the various contributors. There you will find the links to all the artists individuals blogs as well where you will find lots of fabulous tips on 'how to' to achieve the end results that you see here.

The list is extensive, but each of the blogs is well worth adding to your blog reading list. Blogs are such a fabulous way to learn new ideas and get inspiration for your work.

Love the use of metal embellies in this one and the colourings - check out the Paper Artsy blog to find out how they did that … clue: new paints ….

These next 2 samples are in some of my favourite colours …. just love them … great use of the same stamp in different ways ...

You can check these and more out on the Paper Artsy blog and of course they are available  on our website at CraftersCupboard. Needless to say, they've been going out the door quickly, but if the one you want is showing as out of stock, email us at customer service@crafterscupboard.com.au to pre-order or keep checking the website - more stocks expected in soon.

Hot Picks

As a result of popular demand, Mark has designed 3 new Hot Picks stamps which will fill a gap. How many of you are looking for stamps which can be used with numbers, days of the week, months etc to date your journal pages, scrap pages, cards etc? Well, now we have some … Plenty of days/dates/months/numbers here to choose from ….

And some ideas on how to use them .. from making calendars or to make backgrounds through to using the stamps on fabric to make journal covers and even zip bags for storing your craft tools, pens .. or whatever…

I'm so glad we have these 3 stamps out and have no doubt they will be so versatile in so many ways …..

And that brings us to the end of the current {2015} release of new stamps, paints and stencils from Paper Artsy. As you know, we are the largest stockist of their products in Australaisa so spread the word to friends and family who like them. No need to send to the UK direct any more, when you have them here in Australia, right on the doorstep. We post orders every day and can have in-stock items in your letterbox very quickly.

This coming week the blog will focus on 2 more new Design Team members along with our February monthly challenge - your chance to try out some of the new stamps maybe? or to do something with your current range. Give it a go … there's a prize !

Til then, have a great Sunday and don't forget to check out the Paper Artsy UK blog for more examples and info, plus videos on this last week of an extraordinary number of new releases, which means months to come of fun and play for all our CraftersCupboard customers

Jennifer