ART TIP OF THE DAY!!!!!

I know this isn't a new tip, but

PLAN AHEAD!!!

Remember to take the appropriate sized vehicle

when buying oversized art supplies 

OR 

have a great sense of humor 

or both!!!!

See the PT Cruiser in the garage?

Wouldn't it have worked so much better for this large canvas than the Audi TT?

In all fairness to myself & Patrick, we didn't KNOW we were gonna

buy a canvas when we headed out to spend our gift cards this morning.

ps - thanks Jessica for the new canvas!

heARTfelt gift idea

I'm sure you are all crazy busy right now so the last thing you need is another Christmas gift to make!  That's exactly how I felt when this idea popped into my head when I should have been sleeping Friday night.  I already had some gifts that HAVE to be finished THIS week (we're celebrating on the 19th at our house).

So what did I do Saturday morning?  I started three new gifts!  I was even diligent to take photos of the steps so you could see.  Unfortunately I messed up with renaming the files and my computer ate them so you only get to see the finished product and hear about the steps. 

The idea behind this is to give something very personal yet displayable (is that a word?); to share my thoughts and feelings with them in a way where neither of us would feel too exposed if others saw it; to give them art and feelings at once.

Those of you who do art journaling and collage might want to make these using your regular techniques but with the twist of a hidden personal note written just for that special person.  

Here's how I did it (again, sorry there are no pictures):

1. adhere book pages to heavy paper -- I used watercolor canvas because I didn't like the watercolor paper in my stash
2. do the masking tape technique
3. hand-write a personal note to your friend -- I used pencil but you could use a pen as long as it's not water-soluble
4. paint with white gesso -- this will cover a lot of the writing but not all
5. adhere assorted papers on top -- I really like to use tissue papers and hand-made papers for this step
6. your message should be pretty much obscured - if you want to be sure nothing too personal shows, scan it and look at it on your computer screen - it's amazing what shows there!!!
7. add paints as desired
8. if anything is water-soluble, hit it with a coat of clear matte spray paint
9. think of one word for them for the coming year - your wish or prayer for them - and add it to the collage either with calligraphy or your printer -- guess which one I did?
10. present to your loved one by telling them what you wrote

Anyway, after making these and destroying my schedule even further this week, I've decided that in the future these would be perfect for birthday gifts - sort of a blessing and prayer for the coming year.

I also realize some people might not feel artsy-fartsy enough to make them and am trying to figure out how to make them for others - perhaps they write the feelings down and I put that as the first layer on a collage and end with the word of their choosing.  Any ideas on that?

Okay.  Better go.  Still have those original gifts to finish in six days!

CitraSolv Tests

After reading about CitraSolv Concentrate and National Geographics on Pam T's Art Loft and on Approachable Art, I went to the CitraSolv website and just KNEW that I absolutely HAD to try this. So I hunted CitraSolv down at a health food store here in Oklahoma City. Then I bought 20 National Geographics at a local thrift store for $2.

Somewhere I had read not to use pages that had lots of black ink so for my first test, I pulled out all the pictures with too much black. And I don't think I used enough CitraSolv. All my results were rather muted, with the exception of a few amazing pages that kept a lot of the original photo (I used one of these in Rest). Anyway, for the most part, my pages looked a lot like this one (click to enlarge - feel free to copy the enlargement for use as a background):

Not bad but not what I was expecting. So Saturday, I left in darker images and squirted on a lot more CitraSolv. And my results are much more dramatic. Here's a sample (click to enlarge - feel free to copy the enlargement for use as a background):
Both times, I kept the pages in a stack in a plastic tub in the garage (PLEASE don't do this in the house, the very strong orange aroma will make your eyes water tho it won't hurt you) for about an hour then pulled them apart and laid them out to dry. I've noticed a few things:

• you can't find this stuff just anywhere - Whole Foods, Akins & other health food stores carry it - their website lists several online stores as well as a zipcode/locator tool (which I couldn't make work for me)
• you need more CitraSolv on the top pages and less on the bottom because it runs down to the bottom
• pulling the pages apart or wiggling them together causes the smears you see most places on the web
• but sometimes you can get an image transfer onto text or another image if you have just the perfect amount of CitraSolv (the times this worked, I had sprayed it on), press it together and leave it alone
• as others have said, this doesn't work with fashion magazines
• however, I laid my images on top of my recycled paper to dry and guess what, it dissolved the inks on the JCPenney little catalog- the look is very different tho, soft with puddles of gray/black dots that used to be the type
• you get ink on your hands but the CitraSolv cleans it right up - we've actually started using it on our kitchen counters in less concentrated form

Hope this helps you all with your own experiments. Please share with me what you learn. Next I want to try getting more controlled results - perhaps leaving a part of the image as is and smearing what's around it. And I'm also going to look for something that will work on fashion magazines - I'm gonna try NevrDull and a few other stinky liquids sitting in the cabinets.

I'll let you know what happens ~ Sherry

added 4/26 - I just found out I received an honorable mention in CitraSolv's contest for my piece REST (you'll have to go almost to the end of the page)

Obscured Book Page Technique

aka - the masking tape thing

Perhaps you want to have some text as a background on your project (collage, card, scrapbook page, tag, etc) and the easiest way is to adhere a page torn from a book. Or perhaps you're actually working in an altered book. But you don't really want someone READING the book page - it's supposed to be the background. I mean, how many times have you put down a page from a book and then found something on it that was totally distracting? Or, worse yet, naughty?

This technique is great for obscuring the text - it still looks like a book page but it's not as legible. Kinda like you sanded it a lot but not as messy. Not sure who came up with this, but I learned it in a class taught by Beverly Seymour (B-Line Designs) several years ago and then forgot about it until I saw it on Tim Holz' 12 Days of Christmas 2009.

So I'm going to try to do my first HOW-TO here - since there are so many photos, I've made them smaller - but you can click on them to see them larger if you like. Here goes:

Supplies needed:

• adhesive (decoupage medium, soft gel medium, even watered down white glue)
• applicator (brush, sponge brush, your fingers)
• substrate (art journal, scrapbook page, card, canvas, canvas board, something you messed up before, wood, metal, whatever you prefer - you could even do this in an altered book)
• pages of text (from dictionaries, foreign books, engineering books, even phone books - I understand it works best with papers that don't have a shiny finish but I have no proof of that)
• old fashioned masking tape

Steps:

1. slap a little adhesive on your substrate
2. place your page on top of the adhesive (see, told you this was easy)
   
3. burnish in place - anything not adhered well will may up completely
4. let dry (hum-de-dum-de-dum - that's me watching paint/glue dry - hehe)
5. cover all or part of the page with masking tape ** if you want to make sure something shows when you're done, don't put masking tape on it **
   
   DISCOVERY: after I started covering these three pieces for the photos, I realized I needed wider masking tape but, alas & woe, didn't have any, so later I tried packing tape and it worked almost as well as the masking tape (and it's pretty cool looking so I saved it to possibly use later in another piece)
6. peel back the masking tape, starting inside the piece and peeling toward the outside
   
   Now you have a beautiful, obscured text background that is HIGHLY ABSORBANT. It's perfect for receiving color now but if you want to protect it, just coat it with your adhesive.
   

Art with Obscured Text Backgrounds:

close up of KEY TO MY HEART.............close up of PEACE.............tag made at Ephemerites

So that's it for my first HOW-TO. What do you think? Would you like to see more?
Thanks for stopping by ~ Sherry

linked to the Something Old Challenge at Mixed Media Monday and
the torn paper challenge at Theme Thursday