Art Journal Page: Make Art (and stop hoarding)

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In fear of being hoist by my own petard, I set to this morning to tackle something that has been building up for quite a while… I’d made a comment yesterday on the Craftwork Cards Fan Page in response to a post about hoarding craft materials: that it was only hoarding if you hadn’t actually used them. And then realised my collection of rubber stamps that hadn’t seen an ink pad was quite extensive #neverbeenused #nbu. So I laid them all out to start planning on using them all at least once… it might take a while:
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Art Journal Page: Nature’s Little Fireworks

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I’ve been a bit busy this last week getting things done in the garden (why did I have so much decking put in?), and getting samples made with the latest Craftwork Cards collections ready for the TV shows next week. Oh, and leading a workshop at The Studio yesterday at which there were some super mixed media art journal covers made.

And I got asked – what are we doing on Monday night? Referring, of course, to my monthly art journaling session. At the time, I couldn’t remember what I idea I’d had, but it came back to me today, and this is the result of my trying out the technique.

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Art Journaling: Dylusions Paints

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It’s been a while since I managed to sit down and create – I’ve been supervising renovation work at home and making tea every 90 minutes to keep the builders suitably hydrated. Rather than using a half inch paintbrush last week, I was attacking walls with a roller and emulsion. That’s left the room nicely decorated, but my carpal tunnel playing up.

Any hoo, last week a long awaited shipment arrived, including a set of Dylusions Paint by Ranger. Why on earth would I want yet more paints? They are billed as blendable acrylics, and they certainly do that. They come in wide jars, are quite fluid and smooth on beautifully with a foam blending sponge. The paint spreads thinly, but seems to be highly pigmented, so gives excellent coverage. It seems to have a little slow dry retarder in it, enabling the blendability which is excellent. That also makes the clean up easier as the paint was slower to dry on stencils and stamps. Thin layers on absorbent surfaces were very quick to dry. Subsequent layers took longer, even with a heat tool to speed up the process. Opacity in the main is good, with the white showing good coverage of the colours beneath. Also, a little paint goes a long way – each pot is likely to last a long time: all the stencilling on the image above was achieved with just the leftovers on the sponge. I’m certainly not disappointed with them, and will be introducing them to my art journal group sessions in due course.

Also never been used until this page: new letter stamps from Hero Arts – Kelly’s Shadow Letters and Kelly’s Bold Font, stamped in archival Jet Black and augmented with Signo white gel pen (thin and broad).

Never Been Used: more in my art journal…

I’m still trying to get a new trend going – tagging a post where I’ve used something that hasn’t previously been used by me as #nbu – never been used. One problem is finding time to do it myself! It’s part of my determination that nothing comes into my studio that I don’t then use in some way…. perhaps a rather weak way of justifying the purchase in the first place! Anyway, I finally did something last night with my Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous stamp set ‘Remnants’ (CMS130):

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Never Been Used: Spider Mum Stamp

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has a section of stash that has never been used. Shocking, I know. I have to admit my never been used pile is relatively small – but I have a lot of stash, so there’s actually a fair number of items in it! This situation is not good. Happily, I keep stamps out of the drawer until I have used them in a project and as the pile is growing, I thought I would do something about it.

So I’d like to introduce you to a new hashtag: #nbu – never been used. If you too would like to rise to the challenge of raiding your stash for something that you have never used so far, make a project with it and share the fact that you have one less thing that has never been used, remember to tag it with #nbu. Then we can all share in your success!

Here’s my inaugural never been used project. I have several Stampendous Jumbo stamps in my unused pile, and this is the first to be used – Spider Mum. I’ve stamped in Jet Black Archival onto watercolour paper and then coloured with Letraset AquaMarkers. The border is heat embossed with WOW! Superfine White Pearlescent EP.

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