Cosmos Heart

Hellooooooo......................yep, I'm back again with another more detailed step out for you. On my 'launch night' over on PaperArtsy's blog I showed a step out of a papier mache heart using this new stamp set designed by 'yours truly'!!

But I actually had a lot more step outs than what I showed last week so I thought I'd take the opportunity to show you them on here so that you can really see how I go about building my projects!

So this is what I gathered together before I made a start on this project (see above).

 So to begin I gave the papier mache heart a base coat of Snowflake so that I could begin adding colour onto a white base. As you can see I used the reverse side of a small piece of Cut-n-Dry foam to apply the acrylic paint.

 Next I sponged on A Hint of Mint which is a beautiful (very pastel) shade of green - to be fair you can't really see any difference from this photo and the one before but I promise you it is on there and it did tint it a beautiful pale minty green!

I then stamped the frond grasses along the bottom and sides of the heart using a small piece of Cut-n-Dry (again) to apply Sage paint to the stamps. (This was my first time stamping with acrylic paint and I was amazed at how well it captured all the fine detail of my stamps.)

Next I stamped out one of my flowers using black archival ink but you might be able to see that as the papier mache isn't a smooth surface there were parts of the stamp that missed. However I always have a black multi-liner for occasions such as these so I just drew the missing bits back in!

I then began painting my petals in with Sherbert and Lilac Fresco Finish - both of these are opaque colours so I dipped my paintbrush into water each time before picking up some paint in order to make the paint a little more translucent.

As you can see from the picture above I carried on adding layers of Sherbert and Lilac in this way with a wet paintbrush and then did the same with Pansy - using a wet paintbrush to blend this darker colour into the lighter colours. (You can still see the stamped detail showing through these layers of colours due to applying them with a wet brush.) I then painted in the stems with Sage (also an opaque colour) but this time my brush was only slightly damp and you can see how that then obliterates the stamping underneath.

Here's a bit of a closer shot so you can see what I mean!

After painting in the flowers I felt that the grasses that I had previously stamped with the Sage acrylic paint were too pale so I traced over them with a light green Copic marker.

I felt that the heart was still lacking some colour so I then chose to sponge Sherbert all around the edges which immediately framed the flowers and added some much needed subtle colour.

I had purposely left an area vacant on the heart in order to stamp some words onto it. Before stamping my word with Pansy Fresco Finish I painted a little strip with Snowflake Fresco Finish in order to help frame the word. (As these stamps are based on Cosmos flowers which bloom mid to late summer I wanted the words on this stamp sheet to reflect warm summer days hence the words 'dreams', 'dreamy' and 'days of summer'. Even though 'days of summer' is all one stamp, enough room has been left between the words so that you can snip between them with scissors to give you more variations on this theme such as 'dreamy summer days', 'summer dreams' 'dreamy days of summer', 'day dreams' etc...)

Before adding Pearl Glaze to the flowers, word panel and the edges of the heart I added little dots of colour to the dots on the flower and grass stems and then drew all the detail back in onto the flower petals using that same black multi-liner that I spoke of before! (I tend to have several of these to hand in all different sizes but the one I used for this project was a 0.1mm.)

Once the Pearl Glaze had dried the whole thing had a thin coating of Gloss Glaze purely just to protect the heart.

And here it is all finished with some tiny rhinestones added. This is actually a fridge magnet so they make great little handmade gifts!

 Many thanks for stopping by and taking a look - I shall try to do more step outs in the future but meanwhile I have quite a few other bits and bobs to show you that I've been creating recently so do stop by again!!

By the way as I write this my stamps are back in stock at The Craft Barn!!!

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United Kingdom
Artist Trading Post, Wirksworth, Derbyshire.
Birds in the Barn, Marks Tey, Essex.
Blade Rubber Stamps, Bloomsbury, London.
Clacton Arts and Crafts, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.
Countryview Crafts, Potton, Bedfordshire.
Craftylicious, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.
Imagine That..., Upminster, Essex.
Loobi Crafts, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
Papermaze, Ipswich, Suffolk.
Stampers Grove, Edinburgh.
Swanstitch, Deal, Kent.
That's Crafty, Romford, Essex.
The Artistic Stamper, Faversham, Kent.
The Craft Barn, Merstham, Surrey.
The Craft Box, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

The Craft Den, March, Cambridgshire.
The Forget Me Not Kraft Kabin, Hockley, Essex.

Continental Europe
Expression-Hobby, Marcinelle, Belgium.

PaperiSaDe, Turku, Finland.

Kerudoc Creation, St Yvi, France.

Stempelfee-Shop, Hilden, Germany.
Stempeloase Munich, Munich, Germany.

Bianca's Toko, Drenthe, Netherlands.
Hobbycompleet de Duif, Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
Leuke Stempels, Nijverdal, Netherlands.

Big Time Stempel, Gockhaisen, Switzerland.

USA/ Canada
Frantic Stamper Inc, Eagle Point, Oregon.
Simon Says Stamp, Columbus, Ohio.
Tupelo Designs LLC, Sugarland, Texas.
Vintage in KC, Johnson, Kansas.
- See more at: http://blog.paperartsy.co.uk/2016/02/new-pa-products-feb-2016-kay-carley.html#sthash.QSpFRDPd.dpuf

United Kingdom
Artist Trading Post, Wirksworth, Derbyshire.
Birds in the Barn, Marks Tey, Essex.
Blade Rubber Stamps, Bloomsbury, London.
Clacton Arts and Crafts, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.
Countryview Crafts, Potton, Bedfordshire.
Craftylicious, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.
Imagine That..., Upminster, Essex.
Loobi Crafts, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
Papermaze, Ipswich, Suffolk.
Stampers Grove, Edinburgh.
Swanstitch, Deal, Kent.
That's Crafty, Romford, Essex.
The Artistic Stamper, Faversham, Kent.
The Craft Barn, Merstham, Surrey.
The Craft Box, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

The Craft Den, March, Cambridgshire.
The Forget Me Not Kraft Kabin, Hockley, Essex.

Continental Europe
Expression-Hobby, Marcinelle, Belgium.

PaperiSaDe, Turku, Finland.

Kerudoc Creation, St Yvi, France.

Stempelfee-Shop, Hilden, Germany.
Stempeloase Munich, Munich, Germany.

Bianca's Toko, Drenthe, Netherlands.
Hobbycompleet de Duif, Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
Leuke Stempels, Nijverdal, Netherlands.

Big Time Stempel, Gockhaisen, Switzerland.

USA/ Canada
Frantic Stamper Inc, Eagle Point, Oregon.
Simon Says Stamp, Columbus, Ohio.
Tupelo Designs LLC, Sugarland, Texas.
Vintage in KC, Johnson, Kansas.
- See more at: http://blog.paperartsy.co.uk/2016/02/new-pa-products-feb-2016-kay-carley.html#sthash.QSpFRDPd.dpuf

United Kingdom
Artist Trading Post, Wirksworth, Derbyshire.
Birds in the Barn, Marks Tey, Essex.
Blade Rubber Stamps, Bloomsbury, London.
Clacton Arts and Crafts, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.
Countryview Crafts, Potton, Bedfordshire.
Craftylicious, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.
Imagine That..., Upminster, Essex.
Loobi Crafts, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
Papermaze, Ipswich, Suffolk.
Stampers Grove, Edinburgh.
Swanstitch, Deal, Kent.
That's Crafty, Romford, Essex.
The Artistic Stamper, Faversham, Kent.
The Craft Barn, Merstham, Surrey.
The Craft Box, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

The Craft Den, March, Cambridgshire.
The Forget Me Not Kraft Kabin, Hockley, Essex.

Continental Europe
Expression-Hobby, Marcinelle, Belgium.

PaperiSaDe, Turku, Finland.

Kerudoc Creation, St Yvi, France.

Stempelfee-Shop, Hilden, Germany.
Stempeloase Munich, Munich, Germany.

Bianca's Toko, Drenthe, Netherlands.
Hobbycompleet de Duif, Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
Leuke Stempels, Nijverdal, Netherlands.

Big Time Stempel, Gockhaisen, Switzerland.

USA/ Canada
Frantic Stamper Inc, Eagle Point, Oregon.
Simon Says Stamp, Columbus, Ohio.
Tupelo Designs LLC, Sugarland, Texas.
Vintage in KC, Johnson, Kansas.
- See more at: http://blog.paperartsy.co.uk/2016/02/new-pa-products-feb-2016-kay-carley.html#sthash.QSpFRDPd.dpu