Jayne Nestorenko's Agapanthus

Hello there!  Have you treated yourself to any of these wonderful floral designs by Jayne Nestorenko yet?  Groovi plates or stamps;  you know you need them!  For now, I wanted to share a little piece of art I created using the beautiful new agapanthus stamp set.   

I'm going to concentrate on the frame first.  I wanted to get a proper gilded frame effect, so I did a little test piece first, to make sure my idea would work out.  And yay!  it did!  So here goes..

I stamped the frame and swirls into place onto stencil card using black archival.

  

Then I cut out the frame.

Next, I started to apply glossy accents to the areas of the design that I wanted to appear raised.  This stage required a bit of patience as I had to work in stages and leave plenty of time for it to dry.

Its very difficult to photograph, but I hope you can see in the details below.  I didn't stress too much if it wasn't quite perfect, as all I'm trying to do is create raised areas.

Once dry,  I washed over with DecoArt paynes grey acrylic. 

To add a greater sense of dimension to the frame, I went around the inner edge of the frame with another coat.  What I really love about this paint is that its transparency allows the stamped detail to show through. 

The glossy accents resists the paint.

Let it dry thoroughly;  then very, very gently so you don't overcook it, apply silver gilding wax.  The raised areas will pick this up and the whole piece will take on a metallic sheen.  Keep going until you achieve the lustre you want.

You can buff it lightly with a soft tissue too which will really bring out the sheen.

Now to concentrate on making the actual picture.

I made the background using antique linen and old paper distress inks;  first splodging onto my blending mat and spritzing with water, then "free" stamping (without a mount), in the same colours to add texture.

As well as this piece on stencil card, I also did the same on some paper that I could use for my decoupaged agapanthus. 

The flower was stamped in black archival and coloured with my gorgeous new Faber Castell polychromos;  the most fabulous present for my 50th birthday from my husband Martin.  I've just reorganised my craft room, so they can take pride of place.  I love looking at them, stroking them and using them! 

Preparing the layers for the decoupage involved a lot of very intricate fussy cutting, which I quite enjoy doing, although it was very fiddly.

The final touch was to add a little angelina fibre and film butterfly.

I mounted the finished piece onto some foam board.  I hope you like it.

Jayne's beautiful designs are a pleasure to work with, and I have a sneaky feeling that at least one more of the sets may fall into my shopping basket at Leyburn on Saturday. 

I am so looking forward to catching up with Barbara and all the Clarity team, and loads of Clarity friends.  Its sure to be a great day.  Till next time.  Xxx  

A fairytale day out

Hello there.  Well the best laid plans, good intentions and all that...  so much for blogging!  Its the 1st July already and so its time for a new theme over on the Claritystamp challenge blog.  Why don't you pop on over and look at all the fabulous inspiration from the rest of the design team?  This month's theme is "a day out:"  so where are you going to go to?  The seaside?  The countryside?  The city?  Its up to you!

I decided to take a fairytale trip to the land of far, far away.

I used a little Creative Expressions mdf shrine as the basis of my project.  I started by painting the back panel with white gesso.

I stamped the castle from the Happily Ever After set onto copy paper so I could decide on its position.  Then I put a moon mask into place.

I put the treeline mask into place, to provide a forest background for the castle.

Then I started to brush distress inks into place for the sky:  picked raspberry and wilted violet used here.

More distress ink added;  blueprint sketch this time.

Then I covered up the sky with the other half of the treeline mask. 

I sponged in the trees with green distress ink.  I put the moon mask outie into place and added a little mustard seed distress ink.

I then used the treeline stamp to add in some more trees, this time in green archival.

Then I stamped the castle into place with black archival.

I then stamped the castle again in black archival onto some stencil card and added some subtle colour with spectrum noir pencils.  I added a delicate shimmer by applying a thin coat of DecoArt Interference Magenta which gives a pearlised effect.

This was cut out and mod podged into place.

The rest of the mdf was coated in black gesso.  I set to work now on creating a colourful, floral background for the front of the piece.

I started by spritzing mustard seed, picked raspberry and mermaid lagoon distress inks and schmoosing them around onto stencil card.  I find I get better results by working with each colour separately and drying the card in between;  the colours seem to stay truer, with less risk of muddying into one another.

Then I stamped the flower bouquet randomly in the same colours.  For this sort of thing, I often work freestyle with the stamp in my hand for a less perfect result.

This piece was then cut to cover the front of the shrine.  I drew round one of the tree framer stencils and cut it out.  As the card was textured, I added a little bit of interest with a tiny touch of gilding wax.

You can see here that I had stamped Alice onto a piece of stencil card, coloured her in and cut her out.  Then I started to lay out possible compositions until I found one I was happy with.

I used some Sweet Lilac flowers, coloured to match my project with diluted distress inks and glued them into place.

You can also see how I gathered some organza ribbon to make a grassy bank for Alice to sit on and added a little fairy toadstool.

I made tiny bunting using the letterbox shapes on shrink plastic and a couple of teeny weeny fairies (also shrink plastic) to hold it in place. 

Let's take a closer look and check out some of the details.

 

An Angelina fibre butterfly was the final finishing touch.

And here's the final finished piece...

I hope you like it.  I am so looking forward to seeing where you each of you will be taking us for a day out. 

Don't forget, the winner of the £50 Clarity voucher is chosen completely at random, so why don't you give it a go and join in.

I'm looking forward to a wonderful crafty weekend;  a Clarity workshop with Maria Simms at Shrewsbury on Saturday and Barbara on the telly on Sunday.  You're going to love the new stamps and stencils.  So this time I promise I will back soon.  I have one of my samples from the show in particular that I want to share with you.  Till next time.  Xxx  

Are you an angel?

Hello everyone.  Hope you're having a lovely weekend.  Did you manage to catch Barbara on the TV on Thursday;  if not you can now get them on catch up on Hochanda.com 

 

I just love the artist set of stamps.  I thought I would start by blogging my favourite piece.

Not quite sure where this idea for an angel with paintbrush arms and legs came from.  Here's my little practice one made out of copy paper and tissue, where I made sure that I could actually do what I pictured in my head!  

Yes, crack on Barbara, this will work.

I planned to make a little canvas, so I started with an old book page and sprayed on some white Dylusions ink spray to start to soften and obscure the print.

 

As I wanted a very random effect, I didn't mount the "You are a brilliant work of art" stamp, but just used it in my hand.  With such a large stamp, this makes it easier to vary the pressure and the areas of the stamp used.  I used vintage photo distress ink here.

Then I used the palette and the paintbrushes to add more texture;  stamping with Paperartsy Fresco Finish in Limelight, and trying out some Paperartsy rusting powder.  This didn't come out as expected (need to play more with this to better understand how it works;  watch this space).  At this point I thought I might have ruined it, but decided to keep going.

More random stamping in garden patina and cactus flower archival (these are new Wendy Vecchi colours), and chalk and snowflake Fresco Finish paints.

Once dry, this was mod podged onto a small canvas board.

 

I stamped out my words and letters on stencil card, "an" was done by masking off the unwanted letters in "brilliant."  The check frame was stamped on copy paper.  

I arranged everything on the canvas board until I was happy with the layout.

Now I set to work on the angel.  I decided to use Annabel's head for the finished piece and stamped her in black archival.  Let's make two;  just in case...

Then I stamped the paintbrush into position on another scrap of stencil card for her body and legs.

I used the other paintbrush for her arms, curving it on the mount before stamping into place. 

The wings were made using an NDC butterfly and angelina fibre.  I forgot to take a photo here, but its very easy.  If you're not sure how to do it, take a look at Barbara Gray's You Tube video here.

Wemt round the edges very gently with a blending tool and a tiny bit of garden patina.  Don't want to overdo it...

Edge the words with a ruler and a black Sharpie pen so they match the letterboxes before mod podging into place.

Mount onto a larger canvas board using an adhesive sheet.

Colour the angel with spectrum noir pencils, then cut her out.

I then cut a long strip of pink organza and gathered it along one edge.  This was attached in place around the neck of the angel.  

 

I then added the arms and glued everything into place using pinflair glue gel.

  

 

She's cute isn't she?

 

 

I hope you like the finished piece and that maybe it has inspired you to look at these great little artist stamps in an entirely different light. 

 

I'll be back soon.  Till next time.  Xxx