HeArt Art with a twist

Hi All

So we have got Valentines Day out of the way, and unless we are making cards etc for loved ones or the occasional wedding.  I know i tend not to bother too much about hearts.  However, we all like extra usage out of our stamps so here is alternative use, which I am sure some or all of you will have already thought of  - turn hearts into petals and make up a flower.

This was quite a simple canvas and came from an idea about using the three colours of Distress Paint which were sitting on my desk! Weathered Wood, Frayed Burlap and Victorian Velvet.  The three colours are all quite muted colours and as paints personally come into their own, working really well with each other.

I started off with a 12 x 12 canvas and added grunge paste through The Artistic Stamper Chevron 6x6 and Large Dot 6x6 Mask with Grunge Paste  

Whilst i was waiting for the Grunge past to dry I stamped 8 of the large hearts from the Roses are Red Plate with Black Archival Ink onto Tim Holtz Grunge Paper

And then cut them out and painted with a quick coat of Gesso not quite sure why as I didn't really need to!!

And also stamped the Chinese Background stamp onto a piece of beige tissue paper again with Archival

Then painted stripes in Weathered Wood and Frayed Burlap overlapping as i went across

Whilst waiting for the stripes to dry I painted all of the hearts with the Victorian Velvet.  The paint comes out a beautiful dusky pink, far less muted than the Distress Ink

I then stamped each heart with the Dots Background A6 stamp using Victorian Velvet Distress Ink

I also went around the outside edge of each heart with Ground Espresso Ink

Using the Dots Background again i added some Victorian velvet paint and stamped some random dots directly onto the canvas, and also added some bottle top marks from the lids of the three colours

Ripped up pieces of the tissue I had stamped with Chinese script and added that to the canvas using Prima Soft Matt Gel

And added the heart petals to make the flower using Prima 3D Matt Gel This gel is absolutely amazing.  You can use it through stencil or as an ordinary glue however if you put a dollop of it onto a project it will stay raised so that you can add dimension really easily.  Plus it adheres pretty much everything including metal and it dries really quickly.  You do have time to move it but you do need to be quite quick if you do.

I stamped the lovely flourish from the Swirls Splats and Dots Plate onto white white tissue and carefully tore around the edge.  I also stamped Follow your dreams from  Journaling Words #1 onto a bit more of the beige tissue and added it onto a piece of cardboard and painted in Weathered Wood and Frayed Burlap but when mounting ensured the colours were the opposite of underneath!  Stuck down the tissue with the soft matt gel 

I made three smaller hearts and coloured the same as the large ones however, this time i used Ground Espresso Ink to add the dots as well as to edge

Added a metal embellishment and a glass bead from my stash and there it is!

As always do let me know your thoughts good and bad, and don't forget to add your project to the blog, we do enjoy seeing what you have produced and you still have a few more days to go.

Happy Crafting Debs

No stamp for this project ! By Titbelsoeur

Hello happy maskers and stencilers ! this project is for you !
My challenge for this post was to use NO STAMP AT ALL, but Artistic Stamper's products though... and I succeeded !

And I hope you will appreciate this step by step :
Starting with spraying ink through Chevron Mask 6 x 6"

 positive and negative ways :

 then applying acrylic paint with a brush :

then Large Dot Mask 6 x 6" 

 which hid the chevrons... then back to chevrons, gesso with a brush :

 here it is :

Now let's use new masks such as Petal 6 x 6" 

 When finished, I cut the paper in 3 pieces : 2 tags and a bookmark

Last but not least : Word Mask 6 x 6" and Flowers & Leaves long © Lesley Matthewson 4" x 11"

You will find all these masks HERE

Thanks so much for stopping by,

your comments are very much appreciated.

I hope that my tutorial did inspire you and that

you will participate in our July challenge

 to win some fabulous Artistic Stamper stamps.

BUT you must use at least one stamp to participate...

I am the only one allowed not to use one :o)

Titbelsoeur

my blog

my Facebook page

Art journal page project

Hello happy journalers ! 
Do you like art journaling ? I hope so, since our May challenge is  Journaling your heART out!
For those of you who are not at ease with art journaling, I will share this project with you. I got inspiration from Tracy Scott's art.

Materials :
paper or cardboard
acrylic paint
white gesso
black Archival ink
Artistic Stamper Mask : Large Dot 
Artistic Stamper stamps :
- Backgrounds : Hessian, Cogs,
- Katy Leitch : Messy Art, Encyclopaedia Botanica 
- Seaside : Seaside No. 1 # 018
- Neil Walker : Alphabet Soup

Start by painting the page with yellow, green and pink acrylics, and then stencil the large dots with gesso :

Stamp Dots Background with gesso and Hessian with black Archival :

Stamp Hessian, Cogs and Messy with black Archival, and again Dots Background with gesso on other places :

Draw circles with black acrylic paint on a thin brush, let it drip here and there, allow it to dry and then fill the circles with acrylic paints. 
Create shadows around the circles with paint or charcoal :

Stamp Alphabet soup with white acrylic, and with black Archival ink blots (from the Messy Art plate) and text (from the Encyclopaedia Botanica one) into the circles :

And here is the final page. Since my pictures from Gil Bruvel were relating to the sea world, I have finished by stamping some shells and starfishs :

Once you’re done with your art journal page, you can post it here to participate in our May challenge to win some fabulous Artistic Stamper stamps !

Thanks so much for stopping by,

your comments are very much appreciated.

Titbelsoeur

my blog

my Facebook page

The Brighter Side of Journalling

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here with you again... and with some more art journalling.  But rather than the wintry pages over at Words and Pictures, this is an altogether lighter and brighter bit of journalling!

It does make me smile though to see how similar elements seem to have bobbed up on this very different page.

I'm definitely having a thing with circles at the moment - and here there are two layers of them.  First, some Distress Spray spritzed large circles using the Large Sequin Waste mask, and over that I spread a very thin layer of the Viva Decor Croco Crackling Colour through the Large Dot mask and left it to get on with cracking while I went off to do something else.

When the large dots were dry, I did some stamping with Distress Inks in my Jan/Feb colours of vivid blues and greens.  There's the Sequin Waste background stamp in Mowed Lawn and the Mini Polka Dots in Broken China and Peacock Feathers.

Once stamped, I gave them a spritz of water to let the Distress Ink do its magic wicking thing, softening the look.

And I used Distress Stains to add some colour to the large dots, wiping away the excess so that the crackle is highlighted.

So, like the winter pages, there's lots of crackle too.

For my focal point, I chose the word from Journaling Words #5 (oh, for the missing L!  Ah well, the Americans will like it).  I stamped it in the matching Distress Ink colours and clear embossed it on a whitewashed book page.

It's layered up over some wire mesh, tea-dyed tissue paper (transparent - so you can see the stamping and the text through it - love it!) and another book page.

I had great fun with my metal pieces.  The Idea-ology flower is altered with Distress Paint, while the skeleton leaves have had a dose of my Ten Seconds Verday Paint (weathered patinas, until now only really used on dollshouse work).

I used a combination of the Verday Copper finish as well as some Distress Paint in Mowed Lawn and Salty Ocean to get the finished effect, and I love it.

And I edged the page with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain to pick up the rusty colours of the central layers, so we also have - at heart - the blues and browns of my winter pages, but transformed to a brighter version.

So having set out to do something completely different from the recent art journalling shared over at Words and Pictures, I have got something different, but somehow very closely related!

Thanks so much for stopping by today - it's always lovely to hear what you think.  And do come and play along in our New Beginnings challenge for a chance to win a gift voucher here at The Artistic Stamper - hope to see you there!

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper stamps: Journaling Words #5, Mini Polka Dots, Sequin Waste Open
Artistic Stamper masks: Large Sequin Waste, Large Dot
Distress Spray Stains: Broken China, Peacock Feathers
Distress Inks: Mowed Lawn, Broken China, Peacock Feathers, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain
Distress Paints: Salty Ocean, Mowed Lawn
Distress Stains: Mowed Lawn, Broken China, Peacock Feathers
Clear Embossing Powder
Viva Croco Crackling Colour - White
From my stash - gesso, wire mesh, tissue paper, book pages, metal flower and skeleton leaves, tea(!)

Had we but time...

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here with a cri de coeur.  There doesn't seem to have been any let up since the house move, and I've been feeling the pressure of deadlines - work and crafting ones.

So the words used in today's journal page have been revolving in my head for days: Had we but world enough and time...

I know that in the poem they come from they're actually being used to try to seduce the listener into bed with the poet - but that's not where they're coming from in my head and heart at the moment.  I'd just like a bit more time to myself - at the craft table, preferably!

And yes, of course, I did have some time to create this - but in between planning the next batch of workshops I'm delivering, so it wasn't as free and easy as I'd've liked.  Ah, well - I'm pretty happy with the end result, nonetheless.

This page is the first time I've put ink to paper in my Dylusions art journal, bought several months ago... and I have to say, they really are gorgeous pages to work on: sturdy but smooth, taking ink and other media beautifully.

I started out with two of the new Artistic Stamper masks - two sizes of circles, and I stamped some text through the larger one and used a palette knife to scrape some embossing paste through the smaller one.

The text didn't stamp all the way to the edges of the circles, but then I wasn't trying very hard to make it do that.  I quite like the gentle waves it created in the background.

I also added some more texture through the Crafter's Workshop Art Is stencil.

Once the texture paste was dry, I started adding ink (all the blues - Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky, Chipped Sapphire) and paint, and some more layers of stamping, using the Sequin Waste and Mini-Dots, as well as some more text.

Some of the stamping is done in Archival - Coffee and Cornflower, amongst others - and some is done in paint - Gesso or Snowflake Fresco mainly.

While all that dried for a bit, I cut the Tim Holtz Weathered Clock out of some cardboard.  I splodged Picket Fence, Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky Distress Paints onto it and spritzed it with some water to get them to blend.

Once that was dry, I gave it a good coat of Rock Candy crackle paint and left it to get on with its magic.

I also used a couple of the Tim Holtz masks - Clockwork and Dot Fade.

The Gibson Girls were clamouring to put in an appearance - they have a quality of yearning and frustration about them which seemed to connect in to the words.

I stamped them onto tissue paper first so that I could have a play with their positions.  Initially, I had those two corner women the other way around but, in the end, I felt the thoughts were most strongly expressed by having them facing away from the centre, each wrapped up in their own problems.

It's pretty much coincidence or luck (or subconscious planning) that the central woman found herself on an almost un-inked area of the page, leaving the face free to connect directly with the viewer.

A bit of Vintage Photo and some Gathered Twigs around the edges helps to draw the eye towards the centre of the page, and then I couldn't resist adding a bit more Rock Candy Crackle paint.

I particularly concentrated on adding some extra texture over those lovely bubbly circles, and that was when I suddenly realised what they were...

With the addition of some green pencil shading and highlights, the circles had become little planets - the "world enough" from the quote - completely unplanned, but once I'd seen it, so clear that that's what they are!

I stamped the words on a separate piece of card, cut them out and inked them, and added them to the page.

I suppose it's unsurprising that, with limited time at my disposal, I ended up playing with my favourite colour combination yet again.  Those blues and browns just seem to end up in my hands without me even thinking about it, so I hope you're not bored by them.

Don't forget our November challenge is up and running now... we'd love to see your Christmas creations, so come and share them with us here at The Artistic Stamper.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and see you soon!

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper Stamps: The Gibson Girls #1, Mini Polka Dots, Sequin Waste, Calligraphic Mat #4
Artistic Stamper Masks: Large Sequin Waste, Large Dots
Dylusions "Perfect" Journal
Crafter's Workshop Stencils - Art Is
Tim Holtz Layering Stencils - Clockwork, Dot Fade
Distress Inks: Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky, Chipped Sapphire, Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs
Archival Inks: Coffee, Cornflower Blue, Aquamarine
Distress Paints: Weathered Wood, Picket Fence, Stormy Sky
Gesso
Fresco Finish Paints: Snowflake
Rock Candy Crackle Paint
Grunge Paste
Sizzix Dies - Weathered Clock (from my stash)

Had we but world enough, and time,  
This coyness, Lady, were no crime  
We would sit down and think which way  
To walk and pass our long love's day.
From To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell