• Art - Blog - Creativity

    Inspired by Summer

    As I sat down to create in the midst of a summer that I hadn’t planned, my mind wandered to the beautiful things. The things that make me appreciate summer. Beautiful colors. Flowers. Birds singing. Breeze blowing through open windows.
    All this had me in the mood for an explosion of color. I used my fingers to loosely apply paint in a tribute to a gorgeous sunrise or sunset. The colors were a little too bold. Too in your face so using a baby wipe I blended and softened the page until it made me happy.
    I pressed uninked rubber stamps into the paint to create some interest on the background as the stamps pulled even more of the still wet paint away with them as you can see above with the grid pattern.
    After heat setting the page I used a harlequin stamp with white ink to lightly stamp randomly around the background using white embossing powder over top to provide a little more kick to the white.
    Digging through my stash I found some rub-ons that fit my theme perfectly. The black really pops against the background.
    A canning jar full of flowers screams summer beauty to me, Casual, simple, perfect.
    I really wanted it to appear that these flowers were indeed inside a glass jar. This gave me a bit of a challenge.
    I stamped the jar twice. One was clear embossed for later use. The first was adhered directly to the page. I then stamped my bouquet of flowers onto tissue paper using black Staz-on ink. I adhered the tissue with matte medium and placed on the page, partially “inside” the jar.
    Next I cut out windows in the clear embossed jar. I cut a piece of vellum to fit and gave that a bit of shimmer with clear embossing as well. I carefully stacked and glued the pieces of the jar over the original stamped piece. Much to my great pleasure, the stems of the flowers shone through the “glass” as I had hoped.  I used a Tim Holtz word sticker to sum up my thoughts.
    The jar seemed to be missing something so I thought about the basket of goodies I carried home from a friends house like Little Red Riding Hood.
    The perfect embellishment was right there.
    I’m linking up today with Art Journal Journey for Inspired by… the theme chosen by this months host Gil from gibbyfrogettcraftations.
    Art Journal Journey
  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Paint pouring process

    I know its taken a while but I’m finally going to show you how I do my acrylic pours.  (This is a photo heavy post)acrylic pour walk through

    Lets talk about the colors I used first off.  I use all brands of paint, even house paint for my pours. I really only care about the color I achieve in each cup. I mixed the 2 browns until the color felt right. I did the same with the 2 reds in the right of the photo.

    acrylic pour walk through

    In all I have 7 colors. As I’m mixing these I add a product called Floetrol, which is a paint conditioner. I plan to use some of this in my paint for the front door…hopefully eliminating my brush strokes.

    acrylic pour walk through I use about a 50/50 mix of paint and Floetrol. I eyeball it…this girl doesn’t measure. If the paint is still quite thick (which is almost always is) I add distilled water very slowly until I get the proper consistency. For me that is the paint running in a thin line from my stir stick. acrylic pour walk through

    Now comes the dirty pour part. I always start with a small amount of white in the bottom of the cup then begin adding streams of color in a varied order. I pour from different heights which distributes the color in the cup in different ways.acrylic pour walk through

    As you can see I tried out colors from my paint drawer on the canvas before preparing my cups. It doesn’t matter what is on the canvas before so feel free to reuse an old canvas. After filling the cup with enough paint or what I assume is enough…remembering that some paint will be poured off the edge in this process….I’m ready to pour or flip as the case may be.acrylic pour walk through

    Some people quickly flip the cup over onto the canvas…I have yet to be brave enough to do that since I am working in such a small space. Instead I flip with canvas over.acrylic pour walk through

    And now we wait a minute or so for the paint to settle. Not sure how necessary this is but its the way I do it. I also tend to put a little paint at the corners to get the pour to flow over the edge quicker.acrylic pour walk through

    Every time I’m amazed by the designs that come straight from the cup.acrylic pour walk through

    Already cells are forming from the paint bubbling up and popping. No silicone used or needed.

    acrylic pour walk through

    I sometimes lightly blow on the paint to pop the surface bubbles before tilting the canvas to begin the flow.acrylic pour walk through

    acrylic pour walk through

    acrylic pour walk through

    acrylic pour walk through

    So much fun!!acrylic pour walk through

    Here is the completely dry canvas. I did drizzle some paint left in the cup at the bottom of the canvas to add interest. Not sure if I entirely like that addition but its all a grand experiment.

    Here is the second one I did with the same colors.

    acrylic pour walk through

    Crazy how different they are from each other. I love this this one…so does Mini-me. The colors work as a perfect accent in her room which was why I used them in the first place.

    Special thanks to Mini-me for her photography during the process.

  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Acrylic pouring

    Ever heard of acrylic pours? I hadn’t until a couple months ago. I watched endless streams of YouTube videos on the process. It looked like something I could totally get into given time, space and willingness to get messy. Two out of three aren’t bad.

    I did manage to eek out some space to at the very least make due so I could try this out.

    My very first attempt I used red, orange, yellow and white with Golden polymer gloss medium. Some videos use silcone or WD-40 in the mix as well but I am not a fan of using any sort of aerosol in the house especially in my minimally ventilated basement. acrylic pour

    I’m pouring onto a previously used canvas board that I coated with gesso. I put a bit of white paint around the edges to hopefully assist with the paint moving all the way out to the edges.

    acrylic pour

    I did what is called a dirty pour. You dump each of the premixed paints into the pour cup in alternating fashion. I really had no idea what I was doing so I just poured them as I felt like at the moment. I then turned the canvas board upside down over the cup and flipped the whole works over. Flip cup technique OR dirty flip cup technique as some have coined.

    acrylic pour

    I was amazed at what happened. The colors mixed and migrated. Color bubbled up from underneath.

    acrylic pour

    It was mesmerizing. Even the paint that flowed off the edge was beautiful.

    acrylic pour

    These colors made me think of agates…especially Lake Superior agates.

    acrylic pour

    When I moved the canvas to allow it to dry I ended up losing some of the magic. I fear the secondary location wasn’t completely level so more paint rolled over the edge than I had wanted.

    acrylic pour

    Here is the end result. A little more pink than I’d hoped but interesting none the less.

    I’ve created several more and even took a video of part of the process on one attempt. I’m pretty sure its my favorite end result. It’s so darn fun. I’m experimenting with cheaper pouring medium. I’ve only had one big failure and guess what!?  I just did another pour straight over the top of it.

    More to come…I promise.