I'm excited to announce my latest live online workshop, "Circle Play," in partnership with Stampers Grove in Scotland. In this live, 2-hour online class we'll mix collage, monoprinting, stamping, and mark making to turn circular stamps into fabulous flowers or other creations. We'll start with a layered background and then combine stamps, mark making, and collage to turn ordinary circles into a delightful mixed media garden.

I hinted yesterday in my post announcing my latest rubber stamp release with PaperArtsy, and now for the big reveal... I'm teaching an all new live online class, in partnership with Papercraft Clubhouse in Westbrook, CT,  featuring my new EGL09 stamp set (or the faces, motifs, or images of your choice.)

Pocketful of People will combine stamps and stencils, painted papers, pens and markers, and heat embossing to make fantastical art dolls that live together in a pocket in your art journal or another substrate of your choice. (Or just make the art dolls and skip the pocket!)

In our private Pocketful of People Facebook classroom, I'll share ideas for alternative options for faces - other stamps and images, as well as ideas for turning the pieces into something else if you prefer not to make art dolls. They can also be totems or even a uniquely whimsical Pocketful of Posies.

The main class is taught during a 2-1/2 hour Facebook Live in a private group, but it also includes exclusive downloads, an additional live video and demo from me where I'll discuss shape and form in choosing your images as well as ideas for coloring and preparing art parts for the class. (There's some homework, so make sure you join early to get ready!)

I'm excited to share that today is the big reveal for my next three rubber stamp sets designed for PaperArtsy. These sets continue the trend of 100% hand-drawn designs that mesh together influences from my travels and many cultures around the world. Below you can see each of the new sets (which are also now available in my shop,) as well as a few samples using them.

First up, EGL07 - the one I call my India set.

I love the motifs here... the lotus, hamsa, and elephant are all more detailed versions of some of my hand carved stamps. The paisleys and the octagon were drawn based on vintage Indian textile patterns. I love to combine these with my other stamps, but for the release I've done a few projects that just use this collection.

First up, a stamped background that could go onto a scrapbook layout, an art journal spread, or be done on a smaller scale for card and tags.

I've also made four little stamped spreads in one of my mini art journals (this one measures 3" x 3", so the double spreads are 6" wide by 3" tall.)

Next up is EGL08, or my Mark Making Circles set. I wanted a bunch of circles that were full of my own hand-drawn images and marks, but I also wanted to be able to layer them so I created two frames that will fit around all nine of the smaller circles. (I snip the centers out of my frame stamps so that I can see to position them when stamping around the pattered circles.)

​You can see more images of these art journal spreads on the official PaperArtsy release blog post.

For my Mark Making Circles set, I made a quick and easy card, stamping 9 of the 10 images in the set onto painted cardstock. Then I used acrylic and dye inks on collage for the background and repeated the circles to make a cruciform shape as the focal point. I love the versatility of this set.

The last set is probably my favorite of all of my sets so far... it's a bit of an odd duck, and a total and complete mix of many different influences combined with a large dash of whimsy. EGL09 is the one I call my "Tribal Faces" set.

I made a very quick card with a watercolored background and some marks to show how you can stamp these without doing detailed coloring and still get cool results.

I also made a set of accordion art dolls using all of the different elements in the set - not just the faces. To complete the look, I gave them all Ikat printed robes that I drew and colored based on Uzbek chapins and textiles. (I call this piece, "The Usual Suspects."

I also did one more mixed media piece that uses all three sets together:

You can see a short tutorial for the above piece on the PaperArtsy blog as well as more photos of the finished project.

I hope you like these new stamps as much as I do. And keep an eye open for an announcement tomorrow for a brand new live online class featuring one of these sets.

My latest live online class is now up and open for registration. "Stick, Stamp, Paint." is a fun 2-hour mini workshop hosted in partnership with Country View Crafts in the UK. The class, which is in a private Facebook group, will be live on June 6, 2020 from 1-3pm London time (8-10am Eastern in the USA.) 

We'll use inks, rubber stamps, collage, paints, and mark making to create layered mixed media artwork featuring a variety of fun techniques. I hope to see some of you there!

Just popping in to let you know that my quarterly column on the StencilGirl blog is up! Today I'm sharing part of the process for making this mixed media piece, which includes stencils, stamps, heat embossing, and water-soluble cold wax mixed with acrylic paint and water-soluble wax paints. Head on over to see more photos and get details on how it all came together.

The original artwork from this post is available for sale in my shop.

I'm delighted to announce my third live online class, POCKETbook. I'm offering this class in partnership with my local store, Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria, VA.

In the POCKETbook workshop we'll be making a 5" x 7" handmade book with embellished paper and / or fabric pockets as the pages. The class includes tutorials, patterns, exclusive downloads, and, of course, the live online class. It's all hosted in a private Facebook group, and registration is open now.

Signups have begun and we'll start adding students into the private Facebook group on April 16th. The live class is on Saturday, May 9th, from 1-3:30pm eastern time. I hope to see some of you there!

I'm excited to share that my new live online workshop, "Mix & Morph," is now open for registration. I've partnered with Papercraft Clubhouse - a fantastic shop in Westbrook, Connecticut, for this live class which will be held in a private Facebook group on Saturday, April 18, 2020 from 1-3:30pm eastern time. And, it's open to anyone, regardless of location, as long as you have a Facebook account.

Hi all! It's been a while, but I was finally able to finish up a tutorial I've had in the works for about the last two months. I've used kraft-tex from C&T Publishing as the basis for a fun new mini accordion art journal. There's plenty of collage, some stamping and heat embossing, and even some stitching.

Here you can see a peek at the finished outside of the journal, but be sure to head over to view the full tutorial for details and step-by-step instructions and photos.

I have a new tutorial available today over on the StencilGirl blog! I'm sharing one of the ways I like to art journal on top of layers of paint and images left over from cleaning off my stamps and paint brushes on the blank pages of my journal.

If you'd like to see more on how this page came together, make sure to head over to StencilGirl Talk to see my step-by-step photo tutorial.

I'm thrilled to start 2020 with the announcement of three new stamp sets that I've designed for PaperArtsy and so excited that I'm finally able to share these new designs.

The first set in this release is all based on drawings and designs from my art journal which were inspired by Australian Aboriginal artwork (a long-time fascination of mine since the first time I saw examples of this art form, close to 20 years ago.) All of the designs in this set are hand-drawn and incredibly detailed. And... fish, of course.

The designs in this set are some of my absolute favorites. The patterned scalloped border can be repeated both end-to-end and back to back to create various borders and lines. The small fish and the stamp with the irregular shapes and dots can also both be repeated to make backgrounds and patterns. Of course, you can really repeat all of them to make a variety of collage papers and backgrounds, as you can see in my sample below.

The second set in this release is again hand-drawn and entirely based on a set of hand-carved stamps that I made over the last year.

These designs were inspired by the huge Southern Magnolia tree in the backyard of my family home - I love seeing it covered with huge blossoms in the spring, and nearly year-round it's full of birds flitting in and out of the tree. We see lots of cardinals, blue jays, even woodpeckers. But I have a soft spot for the adorable, tiny finches as they hop along the branches.

The final set in this release is the one I call Plus Signs. This is one of my personal symbols; you'll see it show up very frequently in my journals and artwork, so I was excited to create variations on this symbol and have them made into stamps.

The five circles down the right side are all one stamp, so you can use them as a border. I actually cut them apart in my set so that I can use them individually or rearrange them into a different order or configuration. (Of course, as the designer I have more than one set, so my second set keeps them all together.) You can repeat this and the smaller plus sign border to make long lines. The scattered plus signs and the circle plus sign cluster can also repeat to make great backgrounds and larger patterns. I like using the large plus in the scribble circles as a focal point, or even as the eye in a portrait as you can see in my sample below.

For my release post over on the PaperArtsy blog, I also created a new piece using all three stamp sets. I really wanted to feature the little finch stamp from EGL05 as the focal point and then built up the layers under and around it to mix all the designs together.

I even used real branches for my little bird to perch on; they're stitched to the page and I positioned the colored and cut out leaf stamp images so they looked like they were growing out of the branch.

Make sure to head over to the PaperArtsy blog for the full release post. I have handmade card samples for each stamp set as well as the tutorial for how to make the piece above featuring all three stamp sets.

I'm so excited to be able to have my designs available in stamps... I love using them in my own artwork and I hope that you love them as much as I do - I can't wait to see what you all do with them!

The new stamps are available in my shop (along with my original three sets,) or check with your local store to see if they've already got them in stock.