Gothic Arch Niche for Paper Artsy Challenge

I made this for the PaperArtsy current theme which is Niches. I do like a good Niche! I die cut a gothic arch shape and covered it with some of the Chatsworth paper I had previously transferred onto canvas for a bit of texture and roughed up the edges, and stencilled on some Lin Brown leaves with Grunge Paste mixed with Hey Pesto. The niche was a compartment box from embellishments and I covered it with PaperArtsy Damask tissue. I coloured the Stampbord pieces with Portfolio pastels and stamped them with various gorgeous Lynne Perrella images and did a bit of scratching back for some white highlights.

I then set about making some shrink plastic flowers!  I used JoFy and Darcy flowers and Lin Brown leaves, and the pink one on the right hand edge is from the brand new French JoFY set. Love this!

To finish off I coloured a metal charm with Treasure Gold in ice fire and added a Lynne Perrella image to the centre. I call this the Alison Bomber angel as I had this stamp already and hadn't noticed the detail of this gorgeous angel until Alison brought it out in her beautiful stained glass samples. I thought the frame really highlighted it as it is only tiny!

I am entering this into the PaperArtsy Niches challenge.

Yellow, Purple, and a touch of Blue - 3 Up and Grungepaste Challenge for PaperArtsy

Last night I was 'curator' to 3 very talented 3 uppers over on the PaperArtsy blog - Miriam Grazier, Sandie Cottee, and Jane Castle. They did me proud, with three very different but equally beautiful projects on my chosen colour palette of Yellow, Purple, and a touch of Blue. I'd love you to pop over and see what they made here.http://blog.paperartsy.co.uk/2015/04/spring-2015-3up-purples-yellows-and.html I wasn't sure if anyone would want to join my 'team' - throw back to days of not being chosen for netball! - so I thought I'd better make something in the colourscheme just in case Leandra asked me to make up the numbers. I thought it would do as a Grunge Paste challenge entry if it wasn't needed!!

I started with an 8 x 8 piece of grey board. I'm a bit late to the party with grey board. I thought 'how special can it be?', but I'm hooked now. It is so lovely to work with, and doesn't buckle when you add lots of wet mediums to it. It's so easy to be able to grab pre-cut pieces that don't need any preparation as they have a white 'stampable' surface. I used a stencil with one inch grids on it and applied Grunge Paste through it and then stamped into it with a Lin Brown flower and text rubbed with water, and various of my icing tools to make little lines and circles. I then painted the whole piece with the various new mauves to create an ombre effect. I used a leaf stamp and Lin Brown leaf stencil and some stamps tone on tone over the whole piece and highlighted the grunge paste texture with Treasure Gold in White Fire.

The centre piece is Stampbord painted with Frescos with one of the new Lynne Perrella stamps and some scratching back, and some pieces of PaperArtsy damask and script tissue. I covered some Eclectica chipboard with Grunge Paste tinted with Frescos and stamped into it for the tulips, and added some shrink plastic JoFY flowers to the half backed spools. I hope they will have some more of the spools at Ally Pally on Sunday as I really NEED them! Give me a shout if you will be there; I'm very friendly.

I finished off with some photo corners from the pack of chipboard pieces I bought from Poundland, painted with Slate Fresco.

I am entering this into the PaperArtsy Grunge Paste challenge.

I wonder who I should give this to????

Eclectica Flower Birthday Card for PaperArtsy GrungePaste Challenge

I made this card for my dear friend, Pauline's big birthday today. I made the flower head in the same way as for the shrine in the PaperArtsy post here. The background is Chatsworth paper stamped with script from Hot Picks 1304 in Snowflake Fresco and the phrase from Lin Brown's new ELB20.  The stem is Eclectica chipboard with a strip of pearls added and the phrase, from an older Lin Brown set, is stamped on canvas and then frayed at the edges.

I am entereing this into the PaperArtsy grunge paste challenge.

Grunge Paste Icing - For PaperArtsy

Over on the Paper Artsy Blog I am delighted to have a little wooden shrine I have made with Lin Brown's new flower stamps and stencils, for the Grunge Paste theme. As well as the more traditional stamping into grungepaste, I also thought it would be fun to try other things that could be used to make patterns in the paste, and I came across these modelling tools:-

They were in the children's section of a general purpose shop and I honestly didn't know what they were intended for but I bought them thinking they would be fun for working with clay - that's for another day! Then I was out with my sister in law who is a magnificent cake baker and I realized they are intended as icing tools. Who knew?!

So I plastered some Eclectica Chipboard Leaves with Grunge Paste which I mixed with two of the new colours, Banana and Jade, to make a bright emerald green, as the other colours in the new sets are very vivid, and I used a dark Chatsworth background to soften the effect. Here are the leaves, but you can see the whole project on the PaperArtsy blog:-

I used the icing tool to make veins on the leaves.

I'll just add a couple of explanatory photos now that I didn't have room for over at PaperArtsy. Here's a pic of the Secret Garden wording going on, with a mixture of Grunge Paste and the new Bougainvillea Fresco Paint. Amazing how clear this stencil comes out each time!

For the side panels of the shrine I used the smaller Lin Brown flower from the more recent set ELB 20  with the new matching stencil. I used low tack tape to hold the stencil in place, and mixed the Grunge Paste with Zesty Zing and Banana.

I dabbed Tangerine Twist and Prawn onto cut n dry foam and applied to the matching stamp and pressed into the Grunge Paste without a block and peeled off, then cleaned the stamp immediately.

 

I hope you will join in the current challenge which is to use Grunge Paste. Details can be found here!