I've been busy playing!

I've been playing, and buying stuff, and buying more stuff, and watching videos online, and watching YouTube in the living room and...and...and...

I have been buying way too much art stuff, and magazines and books on art, and I need to slow down. I got myself a monthly membership to Crafting Daily which has lots of videos on both quilting and mixed media. So far I've only been watching the mixed media. I've been watching so much I think it is possible I only need to keep the membership for a couple of months, but that will depend. Several ought to be watched again.

I've bought so much art stuff that today I ordered a rolling cart and two sets of small drawers to put on a shelf on my bookcase, because I need them to hold the stuff.

And I've been trying out several techniques.     


But first the saga of the small journal. At first it looked like this. I used a bad choice of pen for the writing, and it smudged badly, and looked just awful. It turned out that it was reactive with water when it dried. So back to the drawing board. I liked the drawing I did of the lilac as seen from my window just beginning to get its leaves, but I ended up covering the entire thing, adding some music paper and painting again.

Now it looks like this. This is not the end of the process since I intend to do some writing with pens that actually work.

But I am not too unhappy with how it turned out and I learned a lot about making sure my pens have permanent ink, and how to put paper down for collage, and not to cut the paper, like I did here, but tear it instead. All good.

 I have been playing around with putting color on the pages. I've shown this photo before. But I'm doing it again because here I pulled most of the color off with baby wipes. I do not know why mixed media people are so enamored with baby wipes, but they are, and I admit they work.







The white stuff on this page is cheesecloth from the kitchen. Again I learned a lot doing this background but I have absolutely no idea what to do with a page with this much texture next. I'm going to just turn the page and do something else until I learn a bit more.

More paint just slapped on. This is going to need a whole lot more layers. But you will see it again. I know that there is another layer on this but you probably couldn't see it in a photo. I stamped white paint on it with cardboard.

And talking about stamping stuff. One technique that I've been seeing on YouTube and also on classes from Crafting Daily is making stamps out of fun foam. These are sheets of craft material that kids use. I bought a package from Hobby Lobby, and sure enough bought the wrong kind. I got the kind that isn't sticky backed. So I've ordered the right kind from Amazon today. I'll be able to use both of them.

You make the stamps one of two ways. You cut out shapes and attach them to another sheet of foam and/or cardboard. I like how attaching them to foam works.

That is what the round and the chevron ones are. Both of the ones I made were quite small, but I really like them and I'm going to make bigger stamps.

The other kind involves drawing on the foam with a skewer, or in my case a toothpick since I didn't have skewers. I really liked how those came out, but I learned that the deeper and wider the marks are the better. I've ordered a set of stylus from Amazon so I can try those out and see if what I end up with is even better.

The paper is just copy paper where I cleaned the extra paint off my brushes, which is why there is color under all of the stamps. That is another technique all the teachers use. Do not waste paint. Make collage sheets and cut them up for other projects, or just paint the extra paint onto empty journal pages where you will either use what is there, or you will just paint over it.

I'm off to practice my lettering now. That mess on the journal page wasn't only the fault of the pen. It was just ugly.