Video: Keeping Track of Sprays, Paints, Markers and more

I made a new YouTube video where I show just how I keep track of my many art supplies, like sprays and paints.

I use a mini binder and different pages to track different things.  Check out the video below.  If you support me on my Patreon page you will get the blank grid sheets to help track your own supplies.

Let me know what you think.  I hope this will you with tracking your supplies. :)

Recollections Washi Crafting Tape - Review

I have to say right off the bat that this is one product I am seriously disappointed in.  I found a couple of the tapes that I liked and had some wonderful ideas for them but now they just sit all sad on my craft table.

Those are the two tapes I bought.  I had some really great ideas of ways to use them.  The back of the package say that the tapes are "repositionable" and "ink-friendly."  This is unfortunately not true.  The butterfly one was going to be inked and used on the edges of a book.  However this did not go as planed.

 Below is the corner of the book that I had to scrap because as you can see the tape is not re-positionable.  It peeled away a layer of the colored cardstock when I went to go move it.

Thinking that maybe it was just the cardstock paper - mind you it was a double sided piece, so it was not a cheap piece of paper to loose out on - I decided to test a different piece of paper.  This is just a scrap piece of paper I had laying on my desk.  I laid the small piece of tape on it, gave it a gently run over with my finger and then tried to gently peal it off.   As you can see that did not succeed with out peeling off some of the paper.  So this tape is far from re-positionable.

Okay so it's not re-positionable. You say you can live with that as long as you are careful when you place it.  Inking it still gives you plenty of options.

So lets try inking this tape.  I laid down a small piece of tape on a piece of scrap paper.  Brought out my Tim Holtz Distress Stains and multiple ink pads.  The results are the same no matter what you use, the ink beads up and none to very very little color is absorbed.  "Ink-friendly" it is not.

I am very disappointed in these tapes. I really liked the designs on these tapes and had such hopes for them, but they let me down.  They advertise to be re-positionable and ink-friendly neither of which is true. I kind of feel like I wasted my money. :( Here's to hoping I'll find a use for these the way they are.

   

The making of a mixed media journal

I love being able to combine all different types if media when working on a project. This book was made over the course of a few days.

First I had a picture in my head of what I wanted the base cover to look like, so I gathered what I thought I would need for supplies. Tissue paper, inks, mists, glue, string and book board to work on.

Next came the layering... Starting with the twine. I glued the twine to the book board in the pattern/design I wanted.  Then layered on pieces of tissue paper.  Once dry, inks and shimmers were added until I like the way it looked.

After all that was dry I added embellishments.   Some fabric flowers, brass key and leaf, and a filigree button with black rhinestones.  

Then it was a matter of assembling the final note book with lined pages and a black wire spiral.
It is currently available for purchase at my Etsy shop.  

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #6

I love coloring, ever have since I was little. My husband being an artist means that I have a wide variety of media to play with; markers, paints, inks and all of my crafting goodies.  Armed with all of these at my disposal I still don't have a lot to color or practice with.  

I recently found, and I do not quite remember how, Make it Colourful coloring challenge from Make it Crafty.  Each month they have a new coloring challenge.  I found this to close to the end of the last challenge so I figured I would wait.  Well this months challenge was just that a BIG challenge. 

Browns.  Easy right...not so much.  They have two different challenges with in the theme, Easy and Hard. Easy challenge is to incorporate brown into your image. Hard challenge all brown, no other colors allowed.  Well I just could not resit that challenge, use nothing but brown on a picture.  I've never colored a picture before in monochrome. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I set off to decide on my image.  Rule is that one image must be from Make it Crafty.  It took me forever to decide just what image from them to pick.  All of the images are wonderful and detailed. 
I ended up deciding on something that I could frame and put in my kids hang out room if it came out good once I colored it.  So the image I chose was their "Alice with Cards Digi Stamp".

 

And so I set out to color it.....

All done in brown watercolor and inks.

Here's what I used:

Derwent watercolor pencils - Bronze and Raw Umber.
Windsor Newton watercolor pan - Burnt Umber
Tim Holtz Distress Stains - Vintage Photo and Antique Linen (shading and background)
Pebeo Drawing Gum (used to mask off edges of image to color the background)

Let me know what you think.