Hot Glue Flower Masks

I'm so excited.  (it doesn't take much).  I was browsing around Traci Bautista's site about a month ago and saw a short tutorial on making designs out of hot glue, then using them as stencils and masks in your backgrounds or wherever you think they might look good.

I kept meaning to try it, but I couldn't find my hot glue gun.  Then, of course, when I found the gun, I couldn't find the glue.  Then, I found the glue and couldn't find the gun again, and so on, and so on.

Today, I happened to run across the gun and the glue so I knew that today was the day.  In her tutorial, I believe that she says to do this on a teflon mat.  I don't have a teflon mat, so I used freezer paper.

I took my time and carefully formed each design.  No I didn't.  I just started making designs willy nilly.  I had glue strings everywhere, but I figured that I could cut them off at the end.  I was surprised at how easy it was.  I let them completely cool, then began pulling them off the paper.  If I had used the teflon, they would have popped right off.  Mine stuck to the paper here and there, but for the most part, I just used my fingernail and scraped them off.  The glue is strong, so they didn't break or pull apart.  On the ones that stuck to the paper, I just scraped or cut the paper off with a small exacto knife.

I tried them out right away on a piece of art that I was never happy with.  I sprayed Dylusions Ink, but you could use any kind of spray paint.  You could even put paint or ink on the flat, back of the designs and use them to stamp.

I am pleased and plan to make some more.  They will be great for using on backgrounds or art journal pages.  I don't know if Traci Bautista made up this technique.  She probably did because she is so creative and talented.  Anyway, thanks Traci!

Here's some pix.

You can see the paper stuck to this one.

Looking Glass Paint

I am thrilled!!

I have been looking for Looking Glass Paint by Krylon for a very long time.  I probably would not have found it today if I hadn't had my friend with me, who spotted it on the shelf.

I had been looking for a regular 12 ounce can of spray paint.  The Looking Glass paint comes in a small 6 ounce can.  I found it at Walmart, of all places.

So now I am ready to make everything look like mercury glass.  I can't wait to try it tomorrow.  I found a small glass lamp today at Goodwill that would look beautiful with the mercury glass paint.   However, I'm going to try it out on something small first to get the hang of it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

My Art Journal

I've been meaning to start an art journal for a long time.  So I actually worked on my first page.

You know it's funny.  All of my llife I have worked with numbers.  Right out of high school, I went to work at a bank, then moved into real estate for 25 years.  I did a short stint as a mortgage broker and an insurance agent before I stopped working full time.  A couple months ago, I left the part-time bookkeeping job that I've had for the past 2 1/2 years.  It's always been NUMBERS!!

Even though I've been surrounded by closing statements and spreadsheets most of my life, I have always dreamed of a more artistic life.  So, it's time for a change.  I'm trying to create something (no matter how simple or small) every day.  I have found, however, that I'm much more comfortable with more linear or geometric designs (it's that "numbers" thing again), but I'm pushing myself to be more free with it.

Here's the front and back of a folder that I made to hold my pieces of art.  I got the idea for this from Mary Ann Moss at dispatchfromla.typepad.com.  I've tried stenciling a few times and I stumbled upon this blog.  She offers an online course in stenciling.  The first thing that she has you do is make one of these files for your work.  Here's the link to the stencilry class:  http://dispatchfromla.typepad.com/dispatch_from_la/online-class-information-for-pure-experimentation-stencilry-.html

 And then, I had to get my fix by drawing some lines:

I'm kind of proud of my cute little leaves!

Playing around with stencils

My original idea was to paint a canvas with lots of different colors, then cut out paper dolls and attach them to the canvas, then paint white over it.

So I flipped thru several fashion magazines and carefully cut out the models.  Then I glued the magazine models to cardstock and cut out the dolls again.  I was pretty happy with the way that the canvas turned out.  I used spray paint and acrylic paints.  Then I made a mistake.  I started stamping various designs over the paint with archival ink - bad choice.  It seems to repel paint.  So when I spray painted the canvas white, you can see little black flowers peeking thru here and there.  As you can see, the paint got under the stencil so I didn't get the sharp lines that I had envisioned.  Even though I'm putting a photo of it up now, I'm going to do a lot more work on it.  This will just be my bottom layer.

However, I did discover that any time you cut out a paper doll, you also have a reverse stencil, so I played around with some of my citra solv papers and convolution papers that I have made and this is what I came up with.

I think these are kind of cute. Maybe I will make some small ones that I could put on greeting cards.  Sure - I'll get right on that.  See you later.