I'm travelling into a new way of working, a new country, a new language, and a new hobby which I'm passionate about. Come with me for some of the journey...

Saturday 28 January 2017

New Lynne Perrella Part III

I always enjoy a triptych or a trilogy, so I'm back with the third and final part (catch Part 1 and Part 2, in case you missed them) of my Lynne Perrella launch collection.  That sounds rather high-faluting... it's just that I made a lot of samples because I was having a lot of fun!

I'm finishing up with my favourites, which you have already seen in the launch night post, but which I wanted to display in detail here in my online craft scrapbook, especially since the samples themselves have gone off to be displayed on the PaperArtsy boards, so this will be the only record I have left of them.

I love stories, and I love history, and Lynne's stamps are always full of both.  They're like visual poems - already captivating at first sight, with beautiful, intricate images which delight the eye.  But their complexity keeps you coming back for more - you're always discovering a fresh detail, a new layer... the stories keep unfolding.

So, we have a pair of jumbo size #10 tags (that's 8.5x4.25 inches, but only approximately, since I cut my own most of the time)...


... and a pair of regular size #8 tags (that's 6.25 x 3.125 inches - wish I could get fractions on here... a quarter and an eighth if anybody's panicking!)...


I love Lynne Perrella's women.  Their direct gaze is so powerful.  Even though my way of working is to combine words and pictures, I find I use only minimal text with Lynne Perrella stamps - the odd word or two to reflect something I've seen or felt whilst playing - because these women seem to speak directly to the viewer.  Whether medieval (as so often with Lynne's stamps) or in these 18th and 19th century versions, they are women with dignity, strength and intelligence.






For the jumbo ones, I started with some Fresco Crackle Glaze over French Roast Fresco paint.  There's Snowflake waiting to go over the top once it's dried.  It's my go-to weathered crackle combination - a good neutral from which you can head in any direction.












I knew I wanted to echo the leaves in the images with some Tim Holtz die-cuts, so I powdered and spritzed some book pages with Infusions.  For some, I used In The Navy...














... and others the Sleight Blue - such a cool combination of tones.







I stamped my images on Specialty Stamping Paper.  As you'll have seen on launch night, I experimented with various colours of ink, but in the end I went with Archival Black for these tags.  (It's pretty unusual for me to stamp in black.)


Leandra wanted us to use the Infusions for the samples but I wanted more access to blues and greens for all that lovely landscaping and leafiness.  So I decided to bend the rules and blend the two.








In places I watercoloured with straight Infusions (spritzed on the craft mat and applied with a water brush), and when I needed more blues and greens I added touches of Sleight Blue to the Fresco paints I wanted to use.















This meant that the Hey Pesto, Hyde Park, Glass Blue and Blueberry paints took on the hues and tones of our sample palette so that everything (I hope) will blend nicely once up on the boards.














I always work with watery washes in any case when I'm "colouring in" an LP image, so it's great to work with the Infusions as watercolours as well as with translucent Frescos and washes of opaques and semi-opaques.












You don't want to obliterate all that fabulous detail, so I build up the colour in delicate layers until I'm happy.












You already know how much I love this landscape woman from LPC 036 - she's straight out of a literary romance.

You remember in those Jane Austen adaptations when a character stands at the window of a stately mansion and looks out on a sweeping vista - the landscaped gardens giving way in the distance to woods and hills, and maybe even a small village?  Well, that's what was in my mind as I played with her - she delights me.












But this magnificent horsewoman from LPC 035 runs her a close second.  All those frills and furbelows, and the delightfully frivolous ringlets... but in the firm set of her lips, and in that stately plinth on which she sits, you can feel the determination and power she has.













For their skin, I used a light watery wash of Blush Fresco, and then for the additional tinting I added a few granules of our final Infusions colour, Violetta. 












I worked out quite early on that the large Movers and Shapers Shaped Arch would work well to frame these images, but positioning it was pretty dodgy given it was a tight fit.

So instead, I cut an arch out of some spare card and drew around it before cutting it out by hand.  That meant I could get it in exactly the right place and not risk cutting off parts of my carefully tinted images.













I found that you get a lovely marbled effect with the Infusions on the Specialty Stamping Paper, so I used some at the edges to draw the eye inward to the image.














You won't get this on all paper finishes - it's the coating that causes this particular effect.














I arranged my leafy die-cuts around the "windows"...















... trying to get some of each colour/shape onto each tag.















I like a sense of balance and symmetry when I'm working in pairs.














As I said, I rarely feel the need for lots of words when I'm working with these images.













Just as with the last collection of Perrella samples I made (Through A Glass Lightly), I've simply added the odd ChitChat sticker with individual words which felt right.













The kraft mounting gives everything a nice finished look, as well as providing some extra durability - important when the samples are heading off into a busy life on display.
















And I've kept the toppings simple with some twine.  No need for extravagance - it's the stamps we're interested in.














Now, finally, on to my romantic Rococo pair.

In my imagination, these two are in some leafy bower or rose garden awaiting an assignation with a lover - that's one bower and one lover each, no funny business!














This woman is even a little impatient - you can see by the clock that her mysterious lover is running late.

Sleight Blue and Violetta Infusions got me just the perfect dappled summer garden look.













These were probably the simplest of all the makes, though they did involve fussy-cutting, something I tend to avoid if I possibly can.  Worth the extra effort for these two though, I think.










I die-cut two regular size tags out of white card, and printed one down on the excess ink left on the Harlequins after an initial spritz on an A4 sheet.  I then laid the other tag down on top of it, head to tail.

As I peeled them apart, I got myself two delicately dappled backgrounds - one slightly more colourful than the other, but definitely a pair.











And although one of these two images is from LPC 035 and the other is from LPC 037, they feel like a pair to me too.

Look at those leafy flourishes and feathers in their hair, and they're about the same height too (3 inches).












I used the same paint technique as for the other pair of tags... when I added my green Frescos, I mixed them with some Sleight Blue to vary the hues.

And that heart is done using pure Violetta as a watercolour paint, as are the roses in the other woman's cap.













Some leafy tendrils wind their way around the tags...














... a kraft mount frames them, and some simple twine provides the topping.














And then there's just the odd word or two...














... in helpfully kraft-coloured ChitChat stickers.













I don't often indulge in pink, but some of the colour effects of this pairing of Sleight Blue and Violetta Infusions made me pretty happy.

So, that's your lot.  Thank you so much for your company and lovely feedback over this trio of posts - three hefty tomes, so thank you for bearing with me.  If I've tempted some of you into purchases, then I really look forward to seeing what you get up to with these glorious new Lynne Perrella stamps.  Happy crafting all!







It is not possible to find a landscape which, if it is painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture.  No one knows, until he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by nature.
John Ruskin

One was a lady, attired in an elegant, blue, velveteen riding-habit, with hat and feather to match, and with silky brown hair falling over her shoulders down to her horse’s croup.
From Brighter Britain by W.D. Hay, London 1882

 Come into the garden, Maud,
  For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
  I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
  And the musk of the rose is blown.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Yes, three sets of words because in any sane world this would have been at least three separate posts!  There's one for Landscape Woman, one for our Equestrienne, and one for the Romantic Rococo pair to share...

Tuesday 24 January 2017

New Lynne Perrella and Infusions Part II

Hello all!  So glad you've been enjoying yourselves with Part I of my sample-sharing on the Lynne Perrella launch night, as well as all the other amazing PaperArtsy releases.  As promised (threatened?), I'm back to share some more of my projects, and there'll be one final instalment in a couple of days.

I'll be fairly quick today (I hope)... we're photo-heavy but not too wordy.  I've some sets of ATCs and a tag to share with you.  As well as launching the Perrella sets, Leandra was also after samples for the Infusions display boards.  She suggested some ATCs would be useful for filling in the gaps, so that set me off on these sets.


First of all, I wanted to get the measure of the colours we were playing with - Sleight Blue, Violetta and In The Navy.  








I stencilled some gesso onto ATC cards and tried out a couple of combinations.  This is the Sleight Blue with some In The Navy.
















And here's the Violetta in action with Sleight Blue.














I don't know whether Leandra will have a use for these on the boards given they have no stamping on them...














... but I thought they were pretty with all that gesso texture, so I popped them into the sample parcel anyway.






The next sets focus on one Infusions colour at a time, and now there are stamps involved too.  One of the things I'm learning to love about the Infusions is that even in "one colour" there are granules of different tones - making the whole thing very exciting when you spritz with water and see what emerges.






So here's the Sleight Blue trio, with their little touch of metal.  I love this colour - is it blue, is it grey, is it green?  It's all of them and more!













I adore this little house and handwriting collage from LPC 036... I can imagine it on bookmarks and journalling pages.













You've already seen this splendid woman from LPC 035 in action on my 6 x 6 cards - she's perfect for an ATC-sized project.











And how riveting is the gaze from the centre of this border image from LPC 037?  Hypnotically "eye-catching"!









There have to be words of course - just a couple of them though... Chitchat stickers, usefully giving a kraft accent to match the frames.


I know there are lots of colours within one powder but, looking at those close-ups, I'm thinking a couple of stray granules of Violetta may have infiltrated these!







Now for the pure Violetta version of the trio... metal heart brads for these ones...












I have to say, it's a bit full-on for me in terms of pinkness when you use it in isolation.













I know there are plenty of you who will love it just like this, but for me it comes to life once you start to mix it with the grungier colours.













Violetta is certainly vivid, and the hits of purple are fun, especially when you get these little firework explosions swirling across the paper.






And you do get those brownish granules which were perfect to tie in with the colour of the ink-stamped images...


... as well as working helpfully to echo the kraft frames and Chitchat stickers.






Last of the ATCs... here's your In The Navy re-working of the same design trio.  (How sweet is that little ivy leaf, determined to put in an appearance?)












The making-of couldn't be simpler, really.

A sprinkle of powder (making sure not to cover the whole ATC)...














... keeping slightly in mind the shape of the stamps and where they will sit...












... a spritz of water, and then the Potting Soil stamping of the images.









The Chitchat stickers, metal embellishments, and framing cardstock are all just finishing touches.


Layers of cardstock are also useful to firm up the samples - they're going to have to be fairly durable.






Finally for today I've got a tag to show you.  This only came about as a way to use up one of the lighter secondary stencil prints you saw in the Part I post.

You may just be able to see soft-edged pale Harlequins hovering somewhere in the background, just adding a distressed look to the stamping really.













I stamped this magnificent horsewoman (I'm pretty sure that's a riding hat) from LPC 035 in Potting Soil and clear-embossed her for added presence.
















I added the wonderful eye panel across the foot of the tag with the same method.











Then I used Weathered Wood Distress Ink to stamp the different sections of the panel onto the background.

Using Distress Ink means you get a softer edge to your stamped image.











I think that works well to give a sense of complexity and detail to the background without taking the eye away from the main images too much.

They're not in any particular order.  I stamped one section at a time and mixed them around so they were fairly random; and I wasn't trying to be perfect, so in places they overlap or don't quite meet.











There were still some kraft diamonds hanging around on the table so I added those to the tag along with some simple twine to top it off.









And, of course. just a couple of words to keep me going.

As I mentioned in the main launch post over at PaperArtsy, I find I'm inclined to use fewer words than usual on a project where there are Lynne Perrella stamps - they seem to speak for themselves pretty clearly!










Thanks for stopping by again today.  I'll be back with my details of my final samples in a few days - saving my favourites for last, of course - including another horsewoman, but even more magnificent!

I'm in snowy NYC for a few days' work at the moment, so apologies if I don't repay the visit for a week or so, but I hope I'll see you again soon either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

UPDATE - sadly it's not snowy at all here!!







Yesterday a strange and surprising creature was seen to pass through our town on horseback. It had the face of a young woman, stuck full of patches ; a perriwig which hung down to its waist; a hat cock’d with the smartness of a young officer; a huge bunch of ribbons fastened behind its left shoulder; a shirt laid in large pleights on the breasts and tied close at the neck and wrists, which, with a vest of white satteen, trimmed with black, had much the resemblance of a shroud.
Richard Steele, mocking female riding habits in The Tatler, 1724