Explore mixed media art journaling with these free printable stencils. Follow these easy mixed media tutorials and make fun and artsy pages.
Topic 17: Pigment Powders Hi everyone Leandra here to introduce a new topic for the blog: Pigment Powders. Pigments are such an important part of our daily lives. Without them, our world would be bland. Clothing, decor, textiles, beauty products, hair products...all the things that make our worls beautiful and appealing rely on pigments for vibrant, gorgeous colour. Here is an introduction to what is available out there, where they are from, and what they are like to use. You might already know the following product brand names: Bister/ Bistre, Brusho and Color Burst. Those are the focus of this post, but don't forget there are many other companies who also sell pigments in powder form, many fine art shops and companies, and there are also those we are more familiar with as mica powders which have both colour and metallic properties. 'Bister' pigments. These are a European product, around 8 rustic colours, HUGE pots with earth like vintage tones, the powders are like the brushos in that the consistency is more of a crystal. If you like vintage, you will like these as they are less 'gaudy' than the other 2 brands. Here is a video from the very lovely Beatrice a stamp manufacturer, Katzelkraft in France. (she izz using err craft sheeeet - private joke, love that French accent!) In this video, you can see she runs through a few techniques and you can see the actual size of the Bister pots - huge, and the resulting vintagey colour! But I also wanted you to see this video, again, you can see how (like brushos) the Bistre crystals are like several colours in one. In this video Nathalie shows you colour swatches of each Bistre, which is helpful, and you can see what I mean about the rustic tones. Skip to 5:00 for the colour swatches for each pot (her pots are different, maybe decanted), but there are other techniques she also shows that you can probably figure out, even if you don't understand French. 'Brusho' Powder pigments. These come from England by a manufacturer of 35 years called Colourcraft. There is a wide selection of bright colours. The pots are small, and you are advised to prick the top with a pokey tool or push-pin to assist when dispensing/ shaking out the colour. The 'powders' are more like blends of colours rather than a single pure colour, and so when you add water you see lots of different coloured crystals emerge. Inexpensive. £1.50 per pot ish. Below is an interesting video comparing Brushos and Colourburst. 'Colour Burst' are new this year (2015) from Ken Oliver. These are American made according to the literature, and have a handy, puff-dispense mechanism. The powders seem to be finer than the other 2 brands, almost chalk like powder which therefore seems to dissolve faster in less water, and give a true single colour. Pricey compared to the others for half the product or less. Below is a handy video from Ken Oliver showing a couple of ways to use the product. These are all pigment powders with intense colour. No matter which brand you prefer to use or find easiest to purchase, the principle is the same as to how you work with them. If you have watched the videos you will be aware that even after heat setting they are not permanent, and that you can work onto wet or dry surfaces. However, they all only show you using the powders with water. You can activate a powder pigment with any type of solvent: mediums, gels, oils, solvents etc, and you can make them permanent depending on what you add to the mix: gum arabic binder, mediums or perhaps gels for texture. Our contributors this week will show you many diverse ideas you may like to try. (Source: Pinterest) 'Brushos' are the brand that I have known about the longest, not surprising being a UK brand, with an impressive range of colours. The source Colourcraft, supply and manufacture paints, and numerous other products often for textile use, but of course their products are suitable for paper too. Textile artists in particular have been fluent with the use of Brusho products for decades! So what are powdered pigments? Well think back to traditional artists who would meticulously grind up raw materials, and then use the powder with other usually fluids (vehicles) to generate a paint or perhaps oil, wax crayon, water etc. That ground product can today be obtained from both natural and synthetic sources. Of course these pigments are used across numerous industries to make all kinds of products you use: fabric and hair dyes, nail colours, makeup products and so on. Pigments are strong (only very very very very little is required), and once dry they may or may not be permanent depending on how and what you mix them with. In the art sector, powdered pigments are used to tint dyes, paints, water sprays etc. and can be used on canvas, paper, watercolour paper, fabric etc. So when you have a raw pigment powder product you can do so much with it to create a wide array of products and effects effects yourself. It's a lot of fun! A craft scrubbie (soft pumice block to clean your hands) might be useful afterwards that's for sure! An excerpt from EMG zine "Pigments can be categorized into inorganic and organic pigments. (Synthetic pigments fall under organic pigments - confusing if you're an organic food person, huh?) Inorganic pigments tend to be quite light-fast, coming from the earth, and/or manufactured from metals or minerals. (The original "Lead White" paint being a great example of an inorganic pigment. The cadmium colors are inorganic too.) Organic pigments come from plant or animal sources, or they can also be synthesized - though some people note that not enough of the synthesized pigments have been studied for long-term effects. The pigments from plant and animal sources tend to be safe - but the colors do fade, making them "fugitive" colors." In the last 2 years pigment powders have emerged (or perhaps re-emerged is a better term) onto the radar of Paper Crafters with a vengeance. Here in the UK, brushos have been used for decades. I blame the recent resurgence on dye sprays partly responsible for the renewed interest in dry pigments. Sprays are so easily made from pigment powder, a bit of binder and water and we all know how popular that product has been for several years in the 'crafting' world? Making your own dye sprays with pigments is a doddle, and you can even add mica too for that bit of sparkle. Personally I do love using sprays without mica because of the translucent layers and depth you can create, so for me, using brushos to make a spray is lots of fun! Over the course of the next 2 weeks, our blog contributors are going to show you all kinds of ideas with pigment powders. For example, I found a blog post explaining the sample above using texture paste with pigments. There are also some great samples I found online that I have pinned, so if you have time, pop over to my Pinterest Page for bog Topic 17 take a look and get your creative juices flowing. I am sure you are going to love this topic. There is scope far and wide to do all manner of things. Enjoy the process! ~Leandra PS Ally Pally Ticket winners are : Bracken Sparkes Sarah Philpott Lucy Edmonsdson Rebecca Harris Topic 17: Pigment Powders PaperArtsy Blog Challenge We'd love you to share your ideas and link up your creativity to this page. Please familiarise yourself with the challenge guidelines below before entering. All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Pigment Powders link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Sept 27th , winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00. 1. The challenge is a chance for you to show how you have been inspired by a particular technique of the fortnight. Your entry should contain: - a mention of which post inspired you and why, and - a link in your blog post to that original post on the PA blog. The whole concept of this challenge is 'play along with us'. You are encouraged to put your own twist on ideas you see on our blog. We love to see how you are inspired and your twist! 2. The link you put on our linky page must lead directly to the specific post on your blog where you have explored the technique/ idea mentioned in point 1 above. Don't link to the home page of your blog, or we will be unable to find the post to leave you comments. 3. Spam links will be deleted. 4. We prefer your challenge post is created exclusive to our challenge, but if our topic fits perfectly with another challenge, then of course your post may link to both if you feel it is appropriate. 5. You are most welcome to use stamps/ products/ substrates you have to hand from a variety of companies, we do not expect you to exclusively use PA products - it's lovely when you do though! 6. You can enter as many times as you like in the fortnight. We don't want to restrict your creativity or participation! Link closes at 17:00 Sunday Sept 6th (London Time) 7. The winner of the random draw will receive a £50 credit to be redeemed on the PaperArtsy Website, the credit includes VAT and postage. We request that one of your purchases is an A5 rubber stamp. You can add any other items to your basket, but the final total should not exceed £50 8. Each Sunday fortnight the winner will be announced at 19:00, also, in the same post, the link for the next fortnight will be posted. It's your responsibility to claim your prize coupon from Darcy: email her [email protected] Good Luck! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
Explore mixed media art journaling with these free printable stencils. Follow these easy mixed media tutorials and make fun and artsy pages.
2017 Topic 16: Rustification Hello everyone, it's Leandra here with you tonight, before we launch into the new topic, which I sense you are all going to LOVE! Let's see who won the last challenge for the Pearlescent topic! The winner is: Craftyfield from Crafty Endeavours She got on a bit of a roll with challenge entries over the last 2 weeks, and even snuck an entry in at the 11th hour of the challenge deadline! The random number fell on her black and white entry, but all of them were quite different with a touch of pearlescent about them all! Congratulations! Email Darcy to claim your prize. [email protected] So we had no shortage of bloggers wanting to play with rust for the new topic, and that doesn't surprise me, as the whole concept of making things look rusty has been super popular in mixed media circles for the last few years. Whether you are working onto fabrics, wood, metal, even glass, creating a rust patina can be done in all kinds of ways, and in this post I'm going to share a few with you. Please feel free to join in the blog challenge by linking your own creativity at the foot of this post to any of you online social media links. Experiments from Alice Fox onto fabric with objects that can be rusted. There are loads of photos from Alice on Pinterest, it is a good way to get some inspirational ideas of how you could rust fabric... I particularly loved the blog post she shared of an exhibition, the piece below was one on show. It is fascinating how rusty fabric is so popular, yet lots of Artists create their own take and pull together the inspirations in different ways and methods. Jennifer Coyne has created a rust effect by printing onto teabags. You can see the process in this link here, where she took a photo and then extrapolated that onto teabags. She explains on her blog how she stitched it all together to create a much larger print. You will need to follow a few posts on her blog to understand how it all came together! Amazing! As below a work in progress... And then here is the finished piece being exhibited. See here. I also loved discovering about Jule Mallet She also uses her fabrics rusted in all kinds of ways to create a wide range of objects, dimensional and flat! and she makes prints... Even displaying rusty fabric can be done simplistically to great effect. And one of our own designers, Lin Brown, is also a dab hand at rusty fabric too, here is just one photo from her blog, but there are more if you follow the link. I adore how she brings her layers together so perfectly! Charlotte Hupfield, a ceramicist, is inspired by pieces like this rusty panel.... ... to inspire her when creating her ceramic art such as the samples below. Cracks, layers, light and dark. Beautiful! and how amazing is this! Take a bureau, add some paint, tadaaa. Here is our own mixed media specialist at rusting things...or at least, using Frescos to make something look rusty! Nikki Acton is a genius at this, see the details here on her blog. She has many posts using paints to create rusty effects, and the example below is gogeous with thos classic colours of patina and rust! The textured heart allows for shades to play in the light. Totally gorgeous, love the crackles too! Plus she gets loads of Seth Apter stamps and dies in the mix so cleverly! Deb blogged this piece over at Paxton Valley Folk Art , such a beaut using all kinds of products, including metal tape, embossed and coloured, die-cut shapes painted, and the whole frame ebellished. And here is Finnabair with one of her typical layered compositions. The cool thing about this idea, layers of textured objects, is you can apply any colour of paint to your base layer, then create a rust effect from there. This could be purely with paints and stippled layers, tickled with Treasure Gold waxes, or (and I've been wanting to try this for ages) ...how about painting shades of patina blue/greens onto the base, and then applying Rusting Powder?? I'm thinking a base in shades of turquoise-green patina, then you could apply a layer of gel medium, sprinkle all over liberally with rusting powder, tip off the excess. Once the gel is dry, you are then ready to rust the powder by keeping the powder damp for at least one and probably more like 2-3 hours, and of course, the rusty effect will develop. If you add a bit of acid (vinegar) to your water it will speed up the effect, or you could just put the canvas outside and let the natural elements do the work for you over a period of days or even weeks! Another rusty mixed media guru is Laura Bomber. If you check out this blog post she shares how she created all these frames using different painterly techniques. Brenda Brown created another gorgeous piece here with paints, and there are wonderful photos on her blog explaining how she created this. Ruth Mescall is another rust addicted crafter. Check out this post for more ideas. And how cool is this from Sally Mankus!! An acrylic skin with embedded rusty stuff! See here for details! OK, so I could go on and on sharing mixed media rusty things, so let's move on. What about rusted objects? What can you find in a local dump, on the side of the road or have you got a stash of hidden objects in the corner of your garden with some rusted treasures? Not sure you will have any of these to hand, but they are nice to look at! A typesetter... Corrugated iron always rusts to perfection! We actually have one of these rusting here on the farm...a newer version though, so not quite as 'pretty' as this! Old train... A sewing machine! (*shocked face*) or maybe you have loads of these lying about?? Finally some art, the layers of peeling and cracked paint always has massive appeal to me, I could fill any room with this type of creation, I love the colours and this style of abstract art. How hard can it be to do something like this ..worth a go I reckon! So as I said at the outset, no shortage of ideas for this topic! I think you're going to enjoy yourselves! I know our bloggers have! Wait to you see what they have been up to ober the coming 2 weeks!.... Have fun! ~ Leandra Don't forget to follow Darcy and Leandra's Pinterest boards if this topic pushes your buttons, you will see plenty more examples to whet your appetite there! I am really looking forward to seeing what you create over the next 2 weeks! We hope that you learn something interesting from our blog. Our bloggers deeply appreciate your comments so much, so please take time to let them know you've been inspired! Why not join our challenge by blogging your interpretation of the current topic and link it here? The current topic link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, 12th November 2017, and the winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00. All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. An InLinkz Link-up Challenge Guidelines The challenge is a for you to show how you are inspired by the current blog topic. We encourage you to play with us and explore your personal creative style. Please mention which PA blog post inspired you and and why (link directly to that post). Please don't link to the home page of your blog because then no-one can track back to easily find the original post. We prefer your challenge blog post is created exclusive to our challenge, but if our topic fits perfectly with another challenge, then you may link to both if appropriate. You are most welcome to use stamps/ products/ substrates you have to hand from a variety of companies, we do not expect you to exclusively use PA products - it's lovely when you do though! You can enter as many times as you like. We don't want to restrict your creativity! NB. Link closes at 17:00 Sunday 12th November, 2017 (London Time) Prize: The winner will receive a £50 credit voucher to be redeemed on the PaperArtsy Website. The credit voucher includes VAT and postage. We request that one of your purchases is an A5 rubber stamp. You can add any other items to your basket, but the final total should not exceed £50. It's your responsibility to claim your prize coupon from Darcy. email: [email protected] NEW Challenge/ winner: Each fortnight on Sunday, the winner will be announced at 19:00 (London time). In the same post, the link for the next fortnight will be posted. Good Luck! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
a mixed media tutorial altering a Project Life journal card using Gelatos, matte gel medium and stencils
Hi everyone! In one of my past videos I used some handmade collage fodder made with our Sketchy Leaves stencils and the Gelli Plate. Today I am sharing a full process video for them. They are so ve…
Explore mixed media art journaling with these free printable stencils. Follow these easy mixed media tutorials and make fun and artsy pages.
What you need to know to make layers on your art journal page - tips, ideas and techniques to master the art of layering in your art journal
Do you ever use acrylic pastes with your stencils? Acrylic pastes can create beautiful dimension and crisp images in your art journal, if you know how to apply them. Here are some tips and techniques for how to get fantastic results with acrylic pastes and stencils. Hop-A-Long Studio is reader-supported. When you buy through links
Discover an easy Gelli Plate printing method using stencils. These colorful prints make fun backgrounds for more mixed media art.
Tips for sourcing and using stencils in encaustic painting
Make a Bridged Stencil From Any Image: When I first tried stenciling, I worked from drawings and traced the images onto marking paper. I could make black and white stencils this way, but it was difficult to produce color stencils or stencils with more than one tone. With this method I ca…
Learn this Raised Stencil Texture Technique - it's fast and easy!
Create this fun mixed media book made of Dina Wakley MEdia Heavyweight Watercolor Paper and follow along as Megan Whisner Quinlan shows you an inventive stenciling trick using Dina's chipboard shapes.
Hi everyone! I haven't posted a video in a while, and I just found a bunch of video clips that I had done over the summer. So, I decided to try to put some of the pieces together into a few videos to show how I play with paint and the Ranger craft sheet. This
Art Journaling with StencilGirl Stencils
I started out making a card this morning, but just wasn't "feeling it" . So I gathered everything up and put it to the side and started wi...
To help you prepare for new mixed-media art projects, I’d like to share with you Kimberly Santiago’s tips for painting on glass, metal, and plastic.
10 clever tips for working with stencils every crafter should know to get amazing results and stencil like a professional
5 reasons why you should start Card Journaling.
A great introduction to creating gel plate prints using different unique papers! I was making background papers for my brand new art journal and pulled you along for the ride!
Learn how to make mixed media texture paste for all your textured art needs. Use with stencils, backgrounds, prints and even make 3D sculptures and flowers.Just That Perfect Piece
Much of this information was previously published on my street team blog, or my main blog, but I have gathered it all into one place to encourage you to make your own stencils or masks, or both! The July/August 2012 Somerset Studio had an article about stencils, in my column...
I learned something new + want to share it with you in case you didn't know how to do it either: how to add an isolation coat to your mixed media painting.
Using watercolors with stencils may seem like two things that don’t go together in your art journal. The loose nature of watercolor appears incompatible with stencils. But with a bit of experimentation and imagination, you can get some amazing and unexpected results using watercolors with stencils. Hop-A-Long Studio is reader-supported. When you buy through links
