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.

Egg Timer

It was so windy today that I wasn't able to let my chickens out of their coop. I guess that's why I was thinking of eggs when I started today's art journal page.

For this page I used Golden acrylic paints, stencils, rubber stamps, Stazon ink, Gelatos, charcoal pencil. I copied the map from a book, the eggs from a Clinique ad, and for the large symbols in the upper right corner, I just typed on my computer then enlarged it on the copier.

I also started working on a collage today.  I'm really into doing transfers with gel medium.  It is the greatest thing. Even though the ink from the photocopy transfers onto the canvas, you are still able to see the paint through the transfer. I like the way it looks so aged.

Painting with a Flower continued.

I posted a couple days ago, about using my wilted, azalea blossoms as paint/ink.

Here's my finished piece of art. All I needed was a few flowers, water color paper, and a Pigma Micron 05 pen. Now I just need to find a cute frame.

No Paint? Grab a Flower!

I have been so happy with my azalea bush.  My husband transplanted an azalea bush from a friend's yard, about 7 or 8 years ago.  It usually has a couple little blooms in February each year.  But this year it's in full bloom.  I should say that it WAS in full bloom.

A couple nights ago, the temperature went down to 28 degrees.  The next morning all of the blooms were shrunken and limp.  It was really disappointing.  I decided to pull off all of the dead blossoms when I noticed that my fingers were turning pink from the flowers and I couldn't rub it off.

The light bulb went off in my head and I went running for some water color paper.  I placed a few limp blossoms on the paper and sort of pushed them around with a sponge brush.  The flowers leaked a beautiful pinkish/purple liquid onto the paper.  It looked just like ink.  I kept squishing it around and I think the paper will make a pretty background for a collage, water color, or some other type of mixed media.

I'll post the finished project when I decide how I'm going to use this homemade, flower-ink, background.

Poor, limp azaleas!

Squish the flowers around.

Not bad, no paint, just flower "ink"!

3 Vintage Milk Glass Lamps

The Acquisition

It was a beautiful morning for yard sales. The sun was shining.  The birds were singing. And then...at a nice yard/estate sale, I spotted 4 cute, little, milk glass lamps.  After turning and flipping and tapping them for a couple minutes, I asked the price.   Two dollars a piece!   "Great", I said, as I was thinking of all of the adorable possibilities for them.  As I was looking around for a box to hold them, a very stern woman walked up to the table and helped herself to one of my lamps.   With a smile, I told her that I was buying all 4 of them. "You won't mind if you just get three" she snapped and turned to the yard sale owner to ask the price. The lady holding the yard sale looked confused because she knew that I was getting them . She said $2, nervously and the snippy woman bellowed "$2.00" to her husband.   As he handed her the bills I could tell that he was a man who's spirit had been broken long ago.   I was so shocked by her aggressiveness that I was at a loss for words. Then to top the whole thing off, she decided that she didn't want the one in her hand, so she grabbed one of the ones that I was putting in the box, saying "you don't care which one I get."

Now, inside I was furious.   I was mad at the woman because she was so rude and mad at myself because I allowed her to do it.  I thought of my long time friend from high school.  She would have said NO and slapped her with the lamp cord if she had continued to persue it.

I know that in the big scheme of things, little white lamps are not that important, but WHAT'S WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

The Dissassemblage

Prior to last week, I had no idea how a lamp was put together, but I took another lamp apart the other day and now I'm hooked!   I took each of the little, milk glass lamps apart, carefully keeping the lamp parts separate. My plan is to sand, prime and paint all of the metal parts, put them back together, and make a cute shade.   I'm not really sure what colors I'm going to go with.   Should I paint the parts gold or should I do something different like blue or yellow?  We'll see.   I'll put pictures up when they're finished.

The Lamps - as you can see I already took the middle one apart.

Al three lamps disassembled.

A lamp is really just a stack of things on a rod with a socket at the top.

Here's the video on rewiring lamps.

Visual Journal Pages

Here are my two latest visual journal pages.

On the first one, I did a little gel transfer action.  First, I painted my background with some acrylic paints.  I used some stencils that I picked up at Michaels.  I made the stencil for the "rays" myself, by drawing it on some cardstock and cutting it out with a craft knife.  The palm tree started out as a picture in a book.  I made a copy, enlarging it a little bit.

Then I, liberally, brushed matte gel medium on the front of the copy and on the journal page in the area where I was going to place the transfer.  I laid the palm tree copy, face down, on the journal page, using a credit card to flatten out the palm tree and remove any air bubbles.  You want to make sure that the picture is touching the paper everywhere.  If there is an air bubble, the ink won't transfer in that area.  I waited a few hours for everything to completely dry.  I suppose that I could have hit it with a hair dryer or heat tool, but I wasn't in a hurry.  After it was dry, I spritzed water on it from a spray bottle and started rubbing the paper off.  You have to keep spritzing and rubbing until it's completely removed.  Voila!!  I added some rubber stamping and washi tape and here it is.

On the next one, I did some Zentangling. If you are not familiar with Zentangle, here's a link.

I started out by writing the words to the Rolling Stones song  "She's like a Rainbow".  Then I started zentangling.  I painted some of the areas with paintbrush markers.  I used a Pigma Micron 05 Archival Ink pen to do the zentangles.

                                                                      





Thanks for reading!

I love my Art Supplies!

I've already admitted to being a procrastinator.  Well, I'm also an art supply hoarder.

Today is my anniversary.  Yes, we got married on Valentine's day 23 years ago so that it would be easy to remember our anniversary.  So much for that idea.

I walked downstairs this morning to find 2 cards on the kitchen counter from my husband - one anniversary, one Valentine's Day.  After the first couple years of marriage we just stopped making a big deal out of holidays.  We don't buy each other Christmas presents or birthday presents.  It's not because we are cheap or don't care about each other.  Presents just are not important to us.  This is one of the things that makes our marriage work - we are pretty laid back people.  But this morning I walk down and see those CARDS.  On one hand, I was very happy and touched.  On the other hand, "CRAP! I didn't get him a card!"  I better run into town and pick up a card.

Wait a minute!!!!!  I'm a crafter (I'm an artist in my own mind).  Why would I ever buy a card.  So here is my 5 minute card.  The great thing is that my husband doesn't know that there's such a thing as washi tape or little plastic letters that come with glitter already on them.  He will think that I spent at least 20 minutes on it!  I would have pulled out the ink sprays, embossing powder, and stencils but I was afraid he would show up before I finished.

And, I can tell this story because he never reads my blog.

I wonder if he will notice that I didn't put the first "r" in "anniversary"