Paperbabe Stamps - Birthday Card

Hi everyone, it seems a while since I've posted here but I hope you're safe and well. Today the Paperbabe team members have a little blog hop going on starting at Terri's blog where you'll find links to all the team members posts. Why are we holding a blog hop today? Well it's Kim's birthday and we thought we'd celebrate and send her some love! Happy Birthday to my lovely and talented friend, this card is on it's way to you, I hope you have a perfect day.

My card is a little bit of Kim and a little bit of me :)! I water coloured the flowers and used Kim's stencil Iso Fun, Flourish and Grow Stamp Set, Just Because and Butterfly Pieridae stamp sets for the rest of the card.

I added distress oxide through the stencil all around and in between my watercolour flowers, and then I started the outlining with black pen.

the panel is finished off with stamping and ink splats.

I added a pink mounting layer and glued to a blue card base to finish off.

I hope you enjoy the hop and as I mentioned all the team links are on the Terri's blog.

Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps January Release - Flourish and Grow Stamp Set - Alphonse Mucha-resque

Hello again. Today we're showcasing the Flourish and Grow stamp set and such a great set it is too! Perfect for building your own sentiment combinations or for that bold large sentiment that says it all, there are endless possibilities. I've combined it with the Flourishing Hair Stamps and Templates and the Female Face 3/4 View Left Dinky stamp set

Since my teens I've loved the work of Alphonse Mucha, I think, the original designer of illustrative posters and product advertising. 

I was lucky to see his original art in his birthplace, Prague and also a couple of years ago at an exhibition of his work at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool. I can highly recommend the Walker for pre-raphaelite art too. His four seasons series of posters have been the subject of a few stamp sets from various companies over the years. Anyway, I thought of  his artwork when I saw these sets and lots of possibilities for the stamps. This is how I ended up with a long panel card with the hair swirling down, it was easy to join in the separate curl stamps to the main hair stamp as well.

All of the new sets will be on sale in the Paperbabe Stamps shop tomorrow and of course there is some fantastic inspiration from Kim and all my teamies linked at the Paperbabe Stamps Blog.

Back soon,
Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps January Release - Flourishing Hair Stamp Set & Templates - Golden Eye

Hi everyone, It's my first post of this year, I hope you're well and have had a happy start to the new year. 

I have my first project for Paperbabe Stamps January release and this gorgeous new set is 'Flourishing Hair stamps' and templates, I've combined it with a sentiment from the new Flourish and Grow sentiment stamps which are showcased tomorrow, the  sketchy roses stamp set and the Female Face Dinky Stamps.

You can see from the examples below the templates are the perfect masks so I was able to ink and stamp my background whilst retaining the paper colour for the face, absolutely brilliant and makes everything so quick and easy! I used distress inks in fired brick and festive berries and stamped the outline rose stamp in fired brick and chipped sapphire, I used coloured pencil to highlight the petals and for the face. I love the shape of the hairline in the flourishing hair stamps and there are lots of extra curls so you can make it your own, there are some sweet flowers too that I've scattered about and lots of lovely small accent stamps across the new sets that are so useful and which is something I really love about all Kim's stamp sets.

There's lots of inspiration with beautiful samples from Kim (sigh) on the Paperbabe Stamps Blog and links to teamies projects as well. I'll be back tomorrow with another project sample. 

Paberbabe Stamps November Release Day 2

Hi everyone, I'm back for the second day of the November Paperbabe Stamps release and today we're introducing the right facing three quarter view stamps and hairstyles.

This time I cut my image out and because of the way the hair falls it makes that really easy and I like that there are two different faces to choose from as well.

Everything will be ready for purchase tomorrow in the Paperbabe Etsy shop. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps August Release - Stencils

Hi everyone, I'm back today with my project using the new Paperbabe Stamps stencils. The August release has been in full swing on the Paperbabe Stamps blog all this week and all the new products will be for sale in the Paperbabe Stamps Shop on Saturday.

The designs are fantastic, so many uses for them too for mixed media backgrounds, patterned hair and clothes, masterboards etc., etc.

Doodle stars

Star Masks

Cross Hatch

Dots on Stripes

Dotty

Iso Fun

Lino Cuts

Pebble Rows

I love stars so it was the first one I picked up for this project but I'll be enjoying using them all I know.

I made an abstract style birthday card and used a lined index card as my substrate with transparent Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics so that the lines showed through. Over the top I put some paint coloured Grunge Paste through the stars stencil and brushed over with some Mica powder when it was dry. I just added a die cut sentiment to finish it off also dusted with mica.

There's lots of lovely inspiration from Kim on the Paperbabe Stamps Blog and links to all the gorgeous projects from the Paperbabe Team as well.

Happy shopping tomorrow and have a lovely weekend!

Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps August Release - Mini Templates

Hi everyone, there's a new release reveal all this week on the Paperbabe Stamps blog with lots of new goodies to choose from which will be for sale in the Paperbabe Stamps shop on Saturday.

Above you can see the project in full using the new Mini sized versions of the dinky's previously released. It's good to have a template size for every type of project and I've made a large card with the Side Swept Waves, one of the Mini Torso's and the Mini Face stamps from an earlier release.

I started off with a sepia only colour scheme in mind but as you can see it couldn't be much further from that :D. The figure was originally coloured with vintage photo distress ink then I used coloured pencil over the top. There's highlighting with white gel pen and a mixed stencil background. You can see some of the new stencils to be revealed tomorrow here, I used Distress Oxide ink which I knocked back a lot for a muted effect in the background but I used the stars one again on her bodice where it's more prominent and outlined in white pen.

I enjoyed doing her hair and creating waves, highlight and shadow. Close up the black is blacker, the photo didn't pick up on it too well this time.

I hope you'll pop over to the blog to see all the lovely inspiration from Kim and links to the Paperbabe Stamps team.

I'm back tomorrow for the stencils reveal.

Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps Challenge 97 - Sketch

Hi every one, hope you've had a good week. There's a new challenge starting on the Paperbabe Stamps Blog today and this fortnight the theme is a Sketch which can be interpreted in many ways. s

I made a card with the  Female Face Dinky Stamp Set, Mixed Media Templates ~ Portrait Face Dinky Set and a Roses Stencil.

Although it's not that obvious I started off with gel plate print which gave me a duotone of pink and blue, the pink at the bottom gave me the background colour for the face.

I used pastels for colouring, distress oxide inks through the stencil and created the bottom diagonal section from the sketch by using a die cut stencil and adding lots of glitter glue on and under it.

Hope you can join us in the challenge, as always there's a lovely prize from Kim.

Have a lovely weekend.

Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps Challenge 96 - Spots and Stripes

 Hi everyone, hope you've had a good week. There's a new challenge today on the Paperbabe Stamps Blog where the theme this time is 'spots and stripes'.

I made a card for a lovely friend using the gorgeous new Profile Face Right Dinky Stamp Set and the Mixed Media Template Set Profile Face Right these are for sale at an incredible price at the moment.

I started off this project with a left over gel print that had some splashes of gold paint in with some pink and peach toned distress Oxide inks. I'm enjoying using some WOW Pearl Gold Sparkle embossing powder at the moment as it's the first one I've found that keeps it's sparkle. I used it for the spots element of the challenge sponging embossing ink through a medium spot stencil and then embossing with the powder. 

The stripes element is added by scraping out some stripes with a craft knife from the gold cardstock which has kraft core and I really like the texture this gives. The colouring is Prismacolor Pencils over a base of Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in Nougat and Terracotta.

I hope you'll join us in the challenge, there's a lovely prize from Kim for the winner.

Have a great weekend!

Chris x

Paperbabe Stamps Challenge 95 - Picture Inspiration - Floral Constructions & New Release

Hi everyone, there's a new challenge on the Paperbabe Stamps Blog today where we have a lovely inspiration photograph to work from.

There's also a new release of stamps and templates in great new dinky sizes just right for all the smaller projects such as cards, tags and ATCs so I'm sure they're all going to be flying off the Paperbabe shelves. I'm sure they'll be very popular for cards especially as with a set of face stamps and a set of templates there are many options and combinations to put together for a new look every time.

I enjoyed putting together my concertina booklet to show some variations in the figures using different hairstyles and skin tones and using the different face/template shapes. The new roses and leaves and the little daisy type flower, crown and alphabet sets are the perfect accents.

I started off my project by cutting and scoring my card each panel of which is roughly ATC size. After that I've used Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics and a baby wipe to apply several different colours over the entire piece which is a very quick way to start off. I find I get a better result if I don't think about it too much, just dab it on and re-work when it's dry if I don't like parts of it.

The new Dinky templates are my starting point for the figures, I used them to put paint through and then I stamped over them and added a bit of rough sketchy shading with pencils.

There are all the hairstyles in the Dinky templates and some new styles too, I mixed and matched around my figures and sometimes used different hair stencil parts from different sets to create my own hairstyles, it's very easy to make the figures your own. I love that the dinky face stamps are a complete face stamp too, very easy to work with at this size.

The little flowers and the new alphabet stamp sets are great accents and I added some paper clipping words to meld into the background. I coloured all the negative space around the figures, the word stamping and roses with black pen and stamped the little daisies over the top of it. Some doodling and glitter glue finishes everything off.

All the new releases are now in the Paperbabe Stamps shop ready to fly off the shelves and there's lots of inspiration from my team mates on the Paperbabe Stamps Challenge blog.

Have a lovely weekend!

Chris x