Create Your Fineliner Pattern Library

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] You've probably never thought about creating your own pattern library or how to consistently develop your own unique patterns that you can use in your artwork, and yet pattern had so many applications in art. If you've ever been stuck staring at a blank page, not knowing where to start, the pattern creation provides you with patterns that you can use in so many different art pieces, including Surface Pattern Design. If this sounds like an asset that you can use in your art work and a creative way to move past the fear of the blank page, then you are in the right place. For this class you don't need any experience. You can get started just using a pen and paper. I'll show you how easy it is to create your own unique patterns every time you work through this exercise. Hello, my name is Mitchelle. I'm an artist who works in mixed media and textiles. I exhibit and sell paintings, prints, and sculptural textile pieces. I create using many different mediums and I really enjoy incorporating patterns into my artwork. During my art journey, I developed a technique for creating my own unique patterns. After a while, I began to collect pages in a hand made journal. I call this journal My Pattern Library. This library has become my go-to reference for inspiration in my art work. In this class, I'll show you how to record your patterns as journal pages, which will become your own pattern library after a pattern creating session, really inspired to find ways to use my new patterns. This exercise helps to kick-start my creative process and I'm sure it will for you too. Once you learn the process, you'll be able to continue developing your own unique patterns, adding to your own pattern library overtime, giving you a great resource for future projects. In this class, we'll be working through design inspiration, patterns in nature, ways the patterns are incorporated in us. We'll do some line practice and explore the use of line weight in patterns. We move on to the technique I use for developing patterns. Our project for this class is to create a modern painting artwork incorporating patterns from your library. I'll also give you some ideas for future pattern artwork projects. If you stick with me until the end, I have a bonus project, where I'll show you how to create the no-so side journal, which is perfect for housing your growing pattern library. These process made such a huge difference to my work. Even more importantly, it gave me a creative way to move past artist block. I'm really excited to be sharing this method with you, and I can't wait to see you in the first lesson. 2. Class Project: [MUSIC] For the class project, I'm going to show you how to achieve two simple stress-free paintings that are great for showcasing the patterns that you'll create during the class. This one is one of my favorites. I call it a blob painting, where you just put down circular shapes of paint and you can join them together, run them together, keep them separate and you just come up with a design as you go that fits the size of paper that you're working on and is pleasing to your eye. This is a watercolor one and this is how it looks before you add your patterns. This is a watercolor one with some patterns added in a random type of manner. You don't need to stick to the shapes. You can add your patterns out onto the negative space. This one I did with acrylic paints so it's possible to achieve the blending of paints with acrylics for this style of painting and I will show you how to achieve that during the class. This one is a watercolor one and I have put some snowflake designs on there in gold, black, and white marker pen but I haven't actually followed the shapes of the circles. I've just randomly placed them over the top. As you can see, it's easy to choose a style that you might like for your patterns. The other painting I'm going to show you is called a geo painting. This is an example of what a geo painting looks like before you apply your patterns. Geo paintings are achieved by sectioning off parts of your page with narrow tape. Then you apply the paint over the top. When your painting is dry, you remove the tape, and this is what you're left with. These little boxes and shapes are really great for adding in little bits of pattern. This is one that I have decorated with patterns. I've used colored markers. I've used black marker, white, and gold. Some of the boxes or shapes I have filled in with patterns and some I have left space so you can see the painting underneath. You can put as much patterning on or as little as you like. It's such a fun painting and such a good way to showcase some of your designs. This is another one that I have done recently with colored markers. I think I used a jelly roll up here, jelly roll marker and I then went over the top with a gold paint marker and added some hexagonal shapes just to bring a different element to the painting. You're going to have some fun. You might like to do both paintings so you might just go for one style. I would encourage you all to upload photos of your projects under the Project and Resources tab in the class. The sense of community that's created through sharing art is really helpful in motivating and inspiring you to keep on creating. All you need to do is go to the Project and Resources tab in the class and then click on Create Project. From there you'll be prompted to upload your photos. I really can't wait to see your wonderful designs. Next, we're going to talk about supplies for the class. [MUSIC] 3. Class Supplies: [MUSIC] For the first part of the class where we're exploring, creating our own individual patterns, you're going to need some paper. You can get started with just ordinary [NOISE] photocopy paper and just a pen, like a gel pen. Another choice of paper might be drawing paper or sketchbook. Cartridge is fine. I'm just showing you my preferred brand for using these days. These paper is by Hewlett Packard and it's 100 years seems it's copy paper, but it's a little bit stiffer. But when I started out, I used ordinary copy paper. You're also going to need a ruler and a pencil. You're going to need an eraser of some description and I've just got [NOISE] a variety here. I'm going to show you my favorite pens but you don't need to have these. You can simply have a gel pen or I biro will work fine. These are Pigma Micron pens and I have them in a variety of sizes because I get different line whites with them, 005, 01, 05 and a 08. If you have a metallic pen of some description, then that may be useful to you as we progress through the course. This one's a Gelly roll. Gelly roll work smoothly over the top of paint. Also, [NOISE] you could substitute a paint marker for highlights. When we get further into the course, you might like to use a white pen. I have a few different ones. Gelly roll again is a really good one. Or these uni-ball ones, which are Sydney, is a broad tip and a fine tip. You could get away with just a paint marker, a white paint marker or you can just use some white paint if you wanted them on some highlights. For our project, you're going to need some paint. I'll be using watercolor mainly, but I will demonstrate some acrylics. You could use watercolor, gouache, acrylic paint, or acrylic paint markers. Whatever you have that you would like to create your background with, you're going to need some brushes, just a selection of brushes that you might have at home suitable for the medium that you're using. A pellet of some description, some paper towel for spills, a pencil, eraser, and some wash tape. One is the paintings we will be doing is a GO painting where you tape all sections of your paper. If you don't have tape and you can get by with a ruler and a pencil. You're going to need your pen or your markers that you use for creating patterns. You might like to introduce some colored fine tip markers. You're going to need some paper suitable for whichever type of paint you're going to be using. Look for a paper that is not too hard on your felt tip pens or your pen. I always test out on a little scrap of paper. This is a rough textured watercolor paper and it is a little bit hard on the pen so I can get a good line, but over time I'll wear the tips of my pen. So I recommend you try your pens out on a piece of paper and choose your paper accordingly. You can use cold press, fine grain, I use that a lot, or hot pressed watercolor paper, either of those work quite well. You might like to use some mixed media paper. This is a heavier weight paper for creating mixed media half on it. We'll hold off to some water medium and is a good choice because it's smooth for drawing your patterns over the top of your painting. The supplies you're going to need to make the journal are pretty basic. A cutting mat, some kind of glue, burn folded, something to score your papers with when you're making the concertina is very helpful. A paper trimmer, a pair of scissors, or a craft blade for cutting, a pencil and eraser, and a ruler for measuring and marking out. You're also going to need some card stock to create the hinge sleeves in the cover boards, scrap booking card stock will work. You need a scrap piece of cardboard. It needs to be 1/3/8 of an inch or 3.5 cm wide. Some colored paper, you need to allow a piece of paper that's 11.7" by 11.7" or 29.7 cm by 29.7 cm and you need two cover boards that are 12.5 inch by 8.5 inch or 32 cm by 24 cm. Then you're going to need some strips of colored paper. You need two strips of paper for every two papers. Those strips need to be one-and-a-half inches times 11, 13/16 of an inch or 4 cm by 30 cm. You're going to need some card viewer accordion hinge. The sizing for that strip is 36" by 6" or 92 cm by 15.3 cm. I joined three strips together so that I got my length. Then you're going to need some decorative paper to cover your book boards. You'll also need some extra paper to cover the hinge sleeves. The amount of paper that you need is, two pieces for the book covers, 14.5" times 10.5" or 35 cm times 29 cm and you're going to need two pieces, 12.5" times 8.5" or 32 cm by 24 cm. If you're making a full-size journal like I am, then you need 20 sheets of paper. Or alternatively, if you're not going to use the colored strips to bind your journal width but I simply wanting to make a journal with folded pages in, you could use larger sheets of paper and you could fold the papers in half and create the slit in the back, which you could then hinge through without needing to join with paper strips. To finish the inside of the journal covers, you're going to need some colored paper. You'll need two sheets that measure 11.3 quarter inches times eight and quarter inches or 29.5 cm by 21 cm. [MUSIC] 4. Nature Inspiration: This session is about finding inspiration from nature, and there are a lot of different ways to do that. One of my personal favorites is to go for a walk. I'm lucky enough to live where I can either go for a walk beside the ocean, looking tidal rock pools, look at erosion in cliff faces at the beach, look at the patterns in the sand, and I also like to observe the patterns in wave formations. When I walk on the beach, I often find little bits of interest, such as shells that I collect. I find interest in the shapes of them. This one not only has a lovely curve to it, it has tiny little holes in it, and it has striations in it as well and from the other side, it has textured ripples. The inspiration in nature is looking at things in different ways and asking yourself, how could you reinterpret that in a pattern design? When I go walking, I look for these things. I take many photographs. More shells with interesting spikes on them, little spirals, textures, patterns. Lots of them. Lots of things to see when you walk by the ocean. If you don't have an ocean near you, the Pinterest or Google Photos search will bring you some beautiful photos to look at that you can examine things. This sea urchin came from a holiday I had in Bali and it has the finest little patterns in it, zigzags. It has little rise bubbles. My daughter collects fossils and these ammonites, and not only are they interesting where they've been cut and polished on the inside for the patterns they have, but also on the outside where you can see the swirl and the shape that they were before they became encased in sand. The other place that I am fortunate enough to walk is in eucalyptus rainforest which surrounds my home, and I look for interesting leaf shapes. These are eucalyptus gum leaves, but they've been eaten away by different insects. In my own garden, I have different plants with interesting seed pods. When I'm walking either in the bush, in the rain forest, along the coastal area of the beach, or in my own garden, I'm on the lookout for these types of things. It has these interesting little pods that open up and they look like little mouths. Feathers that I see when I'm out walking. They get this downy fluff down the bottom, which can also be interpreted in a pattern formation, but I also like to look at the patterns that are on the individual feathers and also the shapes that the feather is coming. This one has a bit of a rippled edge to it. Now, this is not actually something I picked up out of the garden. It was given to me and it's been carved out of a piece of tree from overseas. I believe it was from the Philippines. But I'm very interested in these underneath part which I have drawn many times in different kinds of patterns because the striations that come out, the lines coming out from the center just fascinate me. More seed pods from the forest. These are two different types of eucalyptus gum nuts. They are interesting on the back side of them as well as on the front. One is from a stringy bark and one is from a blue gum. The blue gum has the four cutout in the top of it, and the stringy bark has the three cutout. They almost remind me of little Jingle Bells. Another interesting seed pod with lots of raised areas on it but I also found the top of it quite interesting. A great big pine that I've picked up during my walks. I love this circular spiky triangular type pattern on the base of it. I'm not so interested in the other side of it. I think this side is far more interesting. These are just dried legumes. A legume is a seed and so I thought I would add them with inspiration from nature. With these type of things, you can place them around into patterns or you can just spread them out. Let them fall however they like. I have a little paper cup I shoot them out of. Then you can just draw however they align. Then add more to it to make a bigger pattern. Dried seed pods from my garden. These are the seeds that come out and I like to play with these too because you can scatter them like that, but you can also arrange them in little groupie patterns. Three and three and you can just move them around to create patterns of interest and then draw them. Different seed pod from a Hakea tree which is split open. I love looking at twigs. Different shape twigs can be used to create patterns as well. This is more of the Hakea tree with more seed pods on there. If you have any indoor plants, you can have a look at the shapes that they grow in. I like this one because it looks like tiny little round cushions, but it has some shape and form to it. The textures and patterns on leaves, not only the shapes of the leaves. This is another plant from my collection of indoor plants, and I've drawn it many times and created different patterns. For example, this piece here where it has the little prongs coming off the end could be quite interesting, arranged in a pattern. I have an assortment here from my own garden. They're just different things that I think could work really well for interpreting into pattern design. Inspiration from nature it's everywhere. You just need to look with fresh eyes. If you don't have a garden and you're not lucky like me to be near the ocean and the bush where you can go walking and looking for the unusual, then hop onto Pinterest. I have curated a board for this class which I have a lot of my own photographs on, but also a huge collection from Pinterest itself, which will give you a lot of inspiration for creating patterns from nature. [MUSIC] 5. Everyday Inspiration: You can even find inspiration in the everyday items around your home. I quickly went around and picked up a few things so that I could give you some examples of what I mean. This little vase is a little bud vase from different angles. It's quite interesting. It's just looking at it and thinking, what do I say here? It has a sort shape carved into the bottom. With these marks down the side, it gives an interesting pattern from underneath. On this side, it has a diamond shape carved into it. The top has a little bit of a flute to it and side on, it is an interesting shape too. I imagine that you could draw that in many different orientations on a page and repeat it and have a pattern. This is a copper taste scoop that my daughter made many years ago when she was at secondary school. I have always liked the shape of the handle. I also liked the curve that it presents in profile. This shape has actually found its way into some of my patterns before. A little box that I just picked up in the lounge. I don't even know where it came from. Someone's given it to me at some stage, but it has leaf design on it and squiggles, which sometimes something like that will get you thinking and asking yourself, what could I do with the shapes on here and how could I make them into my arm pattern? This is the lid of an antique ginger jar, and it has a flower designing it. But I'm really taken with the shape of it too. That could be used to inform our pattern. I just have to show you. It's a little lion on the top, but it doesn't look very much like a lion. It looks a bit squashed. These are out of my utensil drawer. This is a tea infuser and I find it interesting because side on, it has this part here that could be drawn. It also has the loop shape. You could draw the whole thing. It also has a texture pattern. I also like it from this angle because it looks like a little mouth opening up. That's found its way into some of my pattern designs before. This one, I'm not exactly sure what it is. It's a handmade utensil, but I like the whole shape of it and I have used that before. It also has a textured pattern on the handle. This is an old folk that a friend of ours turned into a pickle fork. But again, it has curls. It has an interesting profile. This is just a few buttons I grabbed out of the button jar and a buckle. Sometimes when I'm lacking inspiration, I will just grab a few buttons and throw them out. I look for ones that have something different about them. Then I'll draw them, then I'll redraw them and re-draw them and before you know it, you've got a pattern. Lastly, I raided the pantry and it's a shame we don't have [inaudible] because I've got some little cloves here which I often use to get me started. These ones without the head have these little four-shaped star to it. The ones with the little round head, add another element and with the little stems and you can arrange them into designs or you can scatter them and draw them. These are star anise and they smell amazing. No two of them are ever the same as you can see here. This one is a bit stunted on this side. This one's got a couple of stunted pieces. This is the perfect one. This perfect star shape. Again, they can be grouped on their own. They can be scattered. They can be interspersed with other shapes like the clouds. While you're drawing these into a pattern, you can enjoy the lovely aromas. I hope that's inspired you to take a walk around your own home and have a look for unusual items that might spark the pattern creating process. Don't forget to look in your pantry and also in your utensils and cutlery drawer. 6. Warm Up Exercises: [MUSIC] We're diving into warm-up exercises before we get started with pattern creation. Warm up exercises allows you to loosen up your fingers and your hands and to get comfortable making marks with your pen just to practice some shapes before you actually start working on design. I have a piece of paper here which I have written exercise names on, so that you know what we're doing. The first thing I always do though, is test out my pen sizes just here. I've done two different gel pens, a Uni PIN 0.3, which is a super fine line, a Pigma 005, Pigma 01, Pigma 05, and Pigma 08. The heaviest pen I've got is a Fude and it's a 1.5, very rarely use that pen. I just thought I would draw them out on here so you got an idea of the different pen nibs. We're going to start with horizontal lines. I'll run through the exercises with a 05. [MUSIC] I'm just moving my paper to a position of comfort, and it's just simply as it says, just drawing horizontal lines across the page, getting comfortable with the handling of the pin. Seeing how straight you can keep your lines. If you anchor your hand against the page, it's much easier to keep your lines straight. Of course, hand-drawn lines are always going to be, a little bit wonky, and you just keep going until you're ready to move on to the next exercise. The next exercise is vertical lines. Again, I'm moving my paper so that it's at a better angle for drawing. Next one is circles with lines, what I'm talking about there is little circles, and then we're just going to link them up as we go down and create a line. The aim of the game is to try and keep your circles neat, link them together, and when you get to the end of that line, you create another line next to it and link them along the side. Next we're going to do broken hatch and a hatch is like a cross hatch, it is just lines going one way and lines going over the top in the opposite direction. Broken hatch means little tiny ones, rather than a great big area of cross hatching. Moving on now to dashes, which is exactly how it sounds, just small and large dashes, just different sizes. Next we're going to do dots. Dots can also be called stippling. Generally, best if you hold your pin perpendicular to the page and just press down, you get nice little dots that way. You can put them very close together or further apart. They can create shapes. Next we're going to do some diagonal lines. It's just straight across on the diagonal, similar to doing the vertical and the horizontals, find the spacing that works for you. Now if I turn my page slightly, I can come back the other way. Next one is called lazy S, so it's like the letter S except it's a very stretched, relaxed shape. Try not to get too much of a curve on the top. You can go the other way, it's a little bit different to writing an S. Next, we're going to do U shapes, which is exactly what you would think. Just curved U's. [MUSIC] Next we're going to do upside down, U's. Same shape, just turning it up the other way like it would be if it was part of a rainbow. Next we're going to do zigzag. Then flip it the other way and go above it. Then you can go back in and add in some chevron shapes. Now we're going to do some loopy lines. Next we're going to do some brick shapes, which are what they say. They are just rectangles, stacked on each other. Next, we're going to do some waves. This time we're going to do larger circles [MUSIC] and we're going to to do some swirls. [MUSIC] Next, we're going to just do some middle crosses. We're just going to do some scattered dash. Lastly, I'm just going to do your everyday cross-hatch, which is your horizontal lines with vertical lines over the top. Next we're going to jump into how to create your own unique patterns [MUSIC]. 7. Pattern Creation Part 1: [MUSIC] Before we hop into pattern creation, I'm just going to have a quick word about setting up your pages if you're going to go ahead and create the bonus journal. You can, of course, go ahead and just use a pre-made sketchbook, so you could use one with a spiral binding, you could use a little thin one like this, or you might use a bigger hardcover one like this. You need to consider whether you'll be doing a portrait-style journal or a landscape-style journal. To set up your pages in either journal, you need to leave a half-inch border to attach our art pages into our journal. Both journals are exactly the same. This one is the same as well. This is the method that I use for creating my own unique patterns. This exercise can be applied again and again and again. You can come up with different patterns each time. It's a simple process and it's worked out on a piece of paper that I like to roll into a grid. I've ruled out my page and I've got four boxes across by four boxes high. The idea behind this is that you start with simple shapes. Across the top here, I'll choose four different shapes to get me started and then you simply work down, you feel the squares, and then you go down to the next line and you look at what you've done in the box above and you see, how can I change that? What can I do that's different? You work through each time, changing it slightly from the iteration before, and each time I aim to make my patterns a little bit more sophisticated than the time before. Not all patterns are created equal and by that, I mean that some of these will turn out to be dags and some will turn out to be patterns that you can use and apply in your artwork. To get started, I'm just going to work with a 01 paint, and in the first box, I'm going to start with circles. Some are going to becoming slightly off-page. Now I'm going to go back and I am going to put some lines through my circles. I'm going to vary the direction. What I want you to do is to come up with your ideas about what patterns you're going to start with in the four top boxes. Rule up your page and start drawing in your patterns. Then you can continue to work through your pattern iterations alongside me. Pull my next one. I spied a really unusual leaf shape this morning when I was in the garden so I am going to do this shape and it just looks like a heart shape. I'm going to do random shapes like that. Now, I'm going to put some wavy lines on this. The leaves I saw had a variegation in them. In my next one, I'm going to do some pointy spires shapes that are wider at the base like this, and that is basically the shape of the leaf on this plant here. Be be much easier if I use a 08 for that. Now for this next one, I think I will do a scallop shape. Now I'm going to go back in and I am going to make an acre of that shape inside. The plain shapes are filled with possibilities and this process is all about asking yourself, what if? What if I was to take my circles and take away the circles but make the lines still in a circle shape? How would that look? What if I was to take my leaf shapes here and just using the squiggles out of them, rearrange them in a different way, or take the leaf shapes and make them uniform like this? The whole idea of this process is to challenge yourself to come up with a different way of using what you've already used until you get to the bottom of the page. Now for this one, I am intrigued by the lines. But this time I think I will repeat the circles, maybe slightly bigger, then I think I will draw a spiral inside, concentric lines perhaps. The beauty of these exercises is that you can let yourself play. You're not creating masterpieces. It doesn't matter if your lines are a little wonky. It's all about working out new patterns to use in your art. There's no pressure here. It's meant to be a little bit of fun. Now this time with these heart-shaped leaves, I think I might arrange them in small clusters. With this one, I think what I'm going to do is do them as random shapes. Now for this one, I'm thinking that I might put the scallops in again. I might try some lines on the diagonal. Then I think I will come back the other way in the next line. I'm going to turn my page upside down to make this a bit easier for myself. [MUSIC] 8. Pattern Creation Part 2: [MUSIC] Now back to circles again, I'm wondering what would happen if I created a pattern of concentric circles joined together and probably vary the number of lines inside them to give some visual interest. This time I'm wondering what would happen, if I started with one cluster in the same time and then made it bigger and bigger. What would happen if I join these together, head to tail in rows? What would happen, if I colored in the negative space around these patterns? Whilst working on this pattern, I had several other ideas. I decided that I would divide this pattern up into different ones. I've got my coloring of my negative space, then I've left some with no coloring in at all to have a look at that lattice-type pattern. Then I decided to switch over to coloring in the teardrop shape and leaving negative space around the dot. While I was doing that, I suddenly thought about putting little twist shapes. I've tried out four patterns in one little box there, that's just what happens sometimes. Now this one I've been thinking it looks something like little trees. I might actually take those shapes and break them up and turn them into little trees. Now that I've got my little shapes on sticks that look like trees, I am going to put in tiny lines in U-shapes. Now back to the circles again. Now I'm going to add smaller circles into this design and then I'm going to join some of these smaller circles to some of the bigger circles with lines and now I'm going to put some lines, through the circles, similar to what I did in the first one. Back to my heart-shaped beak, what would happen if I made them a garland? I think I'm going to make some stripes on them because I made a little bit of a mess there. It's all about exploring what you can do with the shapes and how you can interpret textures that you may have seen on different kinds of items or out in nature, plants spotting on, then I might do, take away the lines on these ones. I very much like the idea of these becoming random again, and now I'm wondering what it would look like if I made a circle around the tip. Now I'm wondering what it would look like if I added back in that circle shape again, what would happen if I put another circle inside that circle? As I said, not all patterns are created equal. Some of them you like and some of them you won't and some you can take on to the next page and play with them some more to see what else you can create. Now after doing these little trees over here I will maybe make them into feather shapes to make them a little bit longer and a flat bottom on them. They almost look like windows at the moment. That is one exercise complete. You take them through, from simple shapes through to more complex designs, testing out ideas as you go. Now you can head off and start your own process of testing out your simple shapes and taking them through to create new unique patterns. Apart from showing you the different pen widths in the warm-up exercises, we haven't really discussed the use of line weight in art. I just thought I'd show you some examples of the use of different width pens and the value that it can bring to your drawings. In this example, this composition that I created, I used several different-sized pens and it has given more interest to the composition. You can see where I've used thicker lines, finer lines and the balance is much nicer in the composition than if I had just drawn the whole thing with one pen. This is an example where I haven't quite finished, and you can see just here in this section where I began to go back in with a darker pen and you can see the difference between the lighter and the darker section. It's an example of where you get some more visual interest by adding a little bit more white and this example shows the same thing where I've used heavier line weights in places and lighter line weights. I've used a darker pen around the edge of the circles. It actually gives it a little bit more value, which creates a bit more visual interest. Same in this one. I've got very fine lines and I've got heavier lines in different areas and probably this one is the most dramatic to show what I'm talking about. This design was created with one sized pen and I went back in later with a heavier 08 pen to add in some contrast, which lifted the design. 9. Acrylic Paint Demonstration Markers: [MUSIC] I'm going to do a quick demonstration of using acrylic paint markers. I have some paint markers. I'm using watercolor paper, but it's a reasonably smooth one. I've got some water, a couple of paint brushes, a scrap piece of paper for testing out on, and some paper towel for blotting with. The first thing I'm going to do is start with putting down some blob shapes. [MUSIC] I'm going to mix on the paper. Just using a little bit of water to help the paint blend together a little. I'm going to wet the paper here. I've still got a bit of paint on my brush, which works to my favor. I can introduce another color here. [MUSIC] I'm going to put in a brighter pink now. [MUSIC] When you're mixing like this on the paper with a couple of different paints on over the top of the other when they're wet, you need to clean off your marker between each use. Otherwise, you could contaminate it with different paint. Again, just adding a little bit more water. Effectively, what I get is a stain of paint on the paper. You have to be careful not to rub too much because the paper can actually rub up and peel. [MUSIC] Just choosing a different marker now. This one's a little bright pink. These big ones have a lot of painting. When you touch them into the water, they really flow. [MUSIC] I'm going to put some of this lucky purple color in. You can see the difference. These ones are not quite as juicy so they don't flow as much. Encourage the paint to move a little bit more. Just a word about paint markers, just be careful when you're using them that you don't go too dark because you'll need to then use white or a light color over the top to create your patterns. [MUSIC] Just adding a little bit more water in here. [MUSIC] I'm going to bring some of this pink. [MUSIC] You get the idea that you can flow the paints around the page like that. Another way of using the acrylics is to create some sort shapes, square-type things. I might use some water here and spread it out. You can make these rectangles and squares and stack them together, which gives you a background for creating patterns on. This is using more solid colors [MUSIC] rather than blending them. [MUSIC] Now, I'm going to flow a bit because I wet the paint to move it out a little. It's all right. It all adds interest underneath. [MUSIC] The idea is to create interest with the shapes, so don't have them too uniform. [MUSIC] Now, I've just shown you doing a small sample. You would do them much bigger, if you are doing a full-size painting. This is just to give you an idea of what you can achieve. [MUSIC] 10. Acrylic Paint Demonstration: [MUSIC] Now I've got some acrylic paint I've just squeezed out of the tubes here and I'm just going to play with that and show you some similar things. Again, with the blob paintings, which are a lot of fun, bringing a little bit of white and mixing it on the page. Then just blending a little bit out into your food color. You soften it a little and you can add just a touch more blue over the top. You can make the page wet with water still using what's on your brush and you can introduce another color into that something like go with a little bit of this blue color here and see how that goes mixed in here, with a damp brush, I'm just mixing it out a little so you get those pretty tones. On this paper, it works better if I make the paper damp first because it's watercolor paper and it's pretty thirsty so by adding a little bit of water first, it makes it easier for me to manipulate the paint. Just going to pull it out with my brush a bit, add some water. That's one way of fighting out a color a bit. In another blob down here, it's a little bit stained with paint, but it's okay. A little bit of green in this one. Now, that's interesting that green is pushing the water away. You can actually suck up the water if it's interfering with what you're doing, so you just squeeze out your brush a little bit and put it back into lift that water out and just reshaping my shape and then you could also add some of this blue in here just mix it in a bit. Add some white to that. Of course, you can do the block paintings. You can keep them to one color per block if that's what you like. It's though I've got a very wet brush and things are flowing a bit. You can allow them to flow a little bit into each other if you want to and you can also add in other colors as well like we did up here. Add a little bit of that green here. You can mix it out a bit if you want to, or you can leave it more like a two-tone strip. You just put the shapes together in an abstract format to create a base for your pattern design over the top. This was just a little snapshot to show you what you can do with acrylics. The rest of my demonstrations will all be in watercolor. 11. Watercolour Blob Painting: [MUSIC] I'm just going to wet my paper in a circle shape. I don't draw anything on [NOISE] to start with and I'm going to use a little bit of this color that's Daniel Smith, cascade green. Quite like this color because it separates into a blue and green, it's a magical color. While that's still wet, I'm going to use a bit of cobalt teal and just start a blob next to it and hopefully I'll get a little bit of merging a color there. To that I might drop a little bit off [NOISE] buffed titanium. Let's drop a little bit of that in and then I'm just going to put some more water down to encourage the paint to come out a bit. Now we might use a bit of this one which is indigo. Let it do its thing in the water going back into my cascade green and I'm going to add one over here. It's good thing to vary the sizes of the blobs to add interests to. Drop a bit of this color which is kyanite genuine, it has a little bit of shimmer in it. I'm just going to let that water settle there a little bit and come over to here. I think we'll use a bit of this lovely cobalt teal here. I could add a couple of colors into this one so I can do that [NOISE] and maybe just a tiny bit of this one. Use very strong color. I think this one's my dark blue. These are all Daniel Smith colors by the way. I quite like Daniel Smith's selection of colors. This color is very similar to the indigo on the paper. I'm going to put some cascade green in it and I'll want a fairly thick amount of paint to mixing that. I feel like I need a bit more cascade green down here so I'm using what's on my brush. Now, I might put a bit of buff titanium in here. I just put a little bit of that one in here. I'm just going to add a little bit into that one I like that. But I would like some this one down here which is the kyanite genuine. As you can see sometimes I let them run together and sometimes I don't it [NOISE] just depends how I feel. I think a little bit cascade green in that one. I feel like I need to put something over here and I might use some of buff titanium. Going to add some of the folk site genuine into it because it's only in one place on my painting so far and to create a bit of a balanced so I'm going to add some more in. I'm going to put it up here. These are by no means perfect circles and they're not meant to be. They are just best for us to do our patterns on. I'm going to call that done and ready for some decorating when it's dry. [MUSIC] 12. Paint Preparation Geo Painting: [MUSIC] This is what a page ready for a geo painting looks like when the tape has been applied. I like to create a border on mine. I used the wider washi tape for the border and narrower tape for dividing or making borders on the inside. If you're having trouble getting your washi tape off the role without tearing it, the best technique is to just pry it up a little bit and pull it back gently, slowly on itself like that. It usually then comes without tearing. When I'm ready to do one of these paintings to get it ready, I usually apply my border first. You don't have to have a border if you don't choose to. But if you do, it's better to put the border down first and then I roll off from my tape, the size or the length of the piece of tape that I think I'm going to use. I usually start with a section either across the page or down the page. Once I have my length of tape measured out, I apply a couple of times to my clothing to pick up some fluff that stops it from sticking so much to the paper, makes it easier to remove the tape after you've painted without removing the surface of the paper. That's all I do, I just choose places and roll off a bit of tape and stick it down and you end up with these random designs. You can go ahead and prepare your page ready for your geo painting. If you're going to be using a ruler and a pencil, your page might look something like this. I did this one with a pencil and I used a Quilter's Quarter, which is a little bit of a cheat way. I found the Quilter's Quarter when I was looking for a ruler and realized that it create exact same size by ruling off the lines either size and using the quarter inch as the major. It can be done with a ruler though I've done it before when I haven't had any tape of available to me. Once you have your penciled in design on your page, then go over it very lightly with your eraser and lift some of the graphite so that it doesn't show through your paint. Go ahead and get your pages ready. When you're ready, we'll move on together and paint our geo painting. [MUSIC] 13. Watercolour Geo Painting: [MUSIC] This is the fun part where we get to do our Geo painting. The first thing I do is just double-check that my tapes are all okay before I start. I usually start in the top-left, [NOISE] it can pretty wet your paper if you like and drop color in, or you can just go in and paint. I like to put [NOISE] a couple of colors in most of the shapes just to add a little more interest to it. It gives me the opportunity to then carry those colors over into the next shape. [MUSIC] When this is dry, I'll show you the best method for removing the tape for minimal damage to the paper underneath. 14. Tape Removal Geo Painting: [MUSIC] My painting is touched dry. I can feel that it's not cold anywhere and I'm going to remove the tape. This can sometimes be a little bit tricky. My best advice is to go slowly with it and pick a corner and start pulling the tape back very carefully, right back onto itself like you did to get it off the role. Just work up a corner and then very carefully pull it straight back on itself, go slow. If it starts to bring up the paper from underneath it, stop there and go from the other end, sometimes that helps stop the paper from tearing underneath. Another trick is to give the type of blast with a hairdryer before you remove it and that activates the tacky part of the glue and makes it easier to pick it up. This little piece of tape here is starting to pick up the paper from underneath. So what I'm going to do is just leave it there and go from the other end to see if I can minimize the damage. Just drag it back on itself very slowly, it's a little bit of paper kicked up there, sometimes I just repair that with a little bit of glue from an acid free a glue stick. [MUSIC] 15. Adding Patterns Blob Painting: [MUSIC] I'm making a start on adding patterns to my blob painting. I chose the blob painting first because it's a good one to get warmed up with. It's quite a simple design and easy to do. I have a choice of some colored fine tip markers and my black markers. I do have some white markers available to me as well as a gold one. I've also got my pattern journal with me for inspiration. [MUSIC] 16. Adding Patterns Geo Painting: Now I'm going to add patterns to my geo painting. I have the same range of pins available to me as I head for the blob painting. I also have my pattern journal next to me for inspiration. [MUSIC] 17. Future Patterned Art Ideas: [MUSIC] I expect the question you have for me is, what do we do with all of these patterns now we know how to create them? I've shown you the quick and easy blob paintings, but there's a host of things you can do with your patterns. You can make grids and showcase individual patterns. They look fantastic when they are framed. You can create new and interesting abstract art using your patterns. You can use your patterns in landscapes and seascapes, Some of these are really good fun for relaxing. One thing I like to do is reinterpret my patterns into stitching. I do traditional embroidery and free machine embroidery. Also, I like to combine watercolor and stitching on paper. You can also use patterns to create pinprick designs. This particular pattern was created using those clothes that I showed you in the everyday inspiration video. That one came from a leaf pattern. Adding patterns into frames, bring your patterns alive by adding color to them. Combine different elements together to create a new pattern design. Change it up with colored markers join them all together in a type of collage pattern. Have you considered painting your art as a wall mural? You could also use sites like SnapFish. You can have your art made into gifts for family and friends. I created a beautiful coffee table book this year. Where I uploaded photos of my art to SnapFish and had it printed out as a book. You could join websites like Spoonflower, Society6, or Red Bubble. There is a lot of different ones and on these sites, they are called print on-demand. You can upload photos of your artwork and people can buy them on different types of items, anything from clothing through your household items, even furniture, Spoonflower, you can get fabric and wallpaper. The only limit to what you can do with your art is your imagination. I encourage you to go out and explore different ways of using your art. Up next is the bonus journal project. 18. Bonus Journal Overview: Welcome to the bonus class where I'm going to show you how to create this Australian reverse hinge journal. It's a really simple journal you don't need to be able to solve at all. It's just cutting, folding, and gluing paper. This channel has two hard covers which are detachable, and inside I have made 10 folios, which gives me 20 pages. The journal hinge system is really simple. It's based on an accordion fold, and each accordion fold slips through a slit in your papers and it's held together by strips of paper that slot through the accordion. That gives you the ability to be able to add pages or remove pages or rearrange pages. The journal itself is easy to open. If you want to make a journal without removable covers, then you simply glue in the tabbing mechanism that holds these covers in place, which is just a piece of card at the end of the accordion fold that slips into a small sleeve or pocket in each cover. The journal is expandable by adding extra accordion fold hinged paper onto the tab section. You would simply fold your tab section in to make another accordion. blue the rest of the accordion on. Making another tab at the end, you will then join it back into your covers. This journal can be made without adding these paper strips. I like the paper strips because it gives me the option to add in pages that already have artwork on them. But you can simply make this journal if you wanted to by folding drawing pages from a large pad in half. Using paper that size would give you the same size journal as this. The other thing you can do with these journals is make them half-size. Now, this is just an example of about the size that you would end up with, but this journal has a different hinging mechanism. The way you would do that would be the same as with the larger sheets of paper, you just fold them in half. Now, this one is made with the standard size paper A4 folded in half. I have created folios of three pages of blank paper for writing on and an outer cover of patterned paper. You would fold them together to make a signature and then you would just make your split in the back of the fold, and then you would be able to slip it onto your accordion fold and slides of paper to hold it. There are quite a few different ways of making these journal and using it. [MUSIC] 19. Bonus Journal Construction Part 1: [MUSIC] To make your folios for your journal, you're going to need 20 strips of paper, 1 1/2” wide or four centimeters. The length of the strip needs to be the length of your paper. If you are making a journal that’s half the size or a landscape size, your strips of paper would be long enough to join this side. What you need to do is rule a line either side on 10 of your pieces of paper. These lines are 6mm or 1/4” in from the edge on both sides. To join my paper, I just glue it so that it sits there meeting the line on the paper. Then you would glue the next piece on this side. Set them aside to dry and then come back and glue the other piece over the top. Put them aside to dry. Your folded papers will look like this and this is called a folio. With your 10 folios, you need to fold them in half. The way I do this is just by meeting the edges of my paper on one corner, holding it down, pulling with my finger in here because once you've attached two strips of paper, it does become a little stiff along the join. I just bring it down and put that first crease in there. Once I've done that, I then come up to the other end and do the same thing. Join it up together. Make sure it's nicely together. Put your finger in there. Pull up making it a lot softer and a little easier to bend and put that first crease in there. Then roll it around your fingers in the middle, making sure that it's all lined up. I run my fingers down at first. Then you can use a handle of your scissors, a bone folder, old credit card, something that has a clean edge and just make that crease. Now your folios are all ready to be hinged. Just put them aside. We'll come back to those. [MUSIC] 20. Bonus Journal Construction Part 2: Next you need to make your hinging strip. If you are using scrapbook paper, you will need three half sheets for this. I joined my strips together by overlapping them and gluing them 6mm or a 1/4”. You will need to make a template. The template is for marking out the concertina or accordion folds. Now my template is made out of a scrap of cardboard and it just makes it easier so that you don't have to measure each segment with a ruler. The template I made is 1 3/8” or 3.5 cm. Working out your spacing for the tabs that fit into the cover is pretty simple. What I did was measure the whole of the page and I started from the center and worked my way out. But you don't need to do that if you're using the same measurements as I am. My allowance on this side is 3 5/8” which is about 9.2 cm. I ruled a straight line there. After that line was ruled, I then using my template, went along and marked along there then I moved it along, put it against that line and made the next mark until I had enough accordion folds to make my ten that I need to hinge my journals. To make an accordion fold, you need three lines. The middle one comes up to a peak and The two side ones sit the other way. Valley mountain, valley, mountain valley, all the way through to the end. That means that every third line is one hinge. At the end of this end, I've ended up with slightly more. I think I've ended up with 9.8 centimeters, 3 7/8”. I'm not worried about that little bit. Extra doesn't really matter. The important thing when you do this is to try and keep your lines perpendicular to the page. You want all of your accordion folds to line up nicely. Once you have all those lines on there and I should mention that these lines need to be ruled as faint as you can. Mine are a little bit darker on purpose so that you could see them. But if they're fainter, you won't have as much to erase after you've made your hinges. What you do is you come along and just score each line. Go ahead and measure in your space for the tab area and then with your template, mark out your accordion folds all the way across to the end. Make sure you've got a tab left at the other end for attaching your cover boards. Once you've put all your marks in, go back and score them. Then you can go along and lift any graphite and when we come back, we'll fold up the accordion [MUSIC] 21. Bonus Journal Construction Part 3: [MUSIC] Now you have all your scoring lines in. Make sure you have your tabs facing upwards, if you have a particular side of your paper that you want to see on the inside of your journal. One thing I should perhaps mention here is if you have plain paper, you can actually attach some colored paper over the cardstock. If you want a pattern on these tabs, but I decided I wanted these plain because I'm going to use a plain paper to slide through them to complete the hinges. With your paper facing the way you want to see on the inside of your journal. The first line that you scored gets folded over and using a bone folder just go over the creases. The next one goes up the other way. Fold it and use your bone folder there. The next one will go down, I scored mine on the back. I need to turn it. Couldn't quite see the crease. That one goes in here. Then as you are making these folds make sure that your strip is lining up. Otherwise, if you get off center a little bit, at the end, your hinging won’t sit nicely. It might be a little bit off and it will sit a little bit askew. That is one hinge that will fit through your papers inside in the center part here. Your tab of paper will slide through it to hold your page to the hinge. You just simply keep going that way, you want a valley, a mountain, a valley, a mountain, a valley, and you just continue in that way all the way across. Remembering to check that your card is lining up. Anytime that it's a little bit off straighten it and re put your crease back in. You begin to see the accordion taking shape. Go ahead and do that, remembering valley, mountain, valley to get you started and then just keep alternating a valley with a mountain, keeping your card stock or your cardboard together at the edges to make it a nice neat accordion hinge. If you've joined your card stock like I have, these ones here where the joins are, are a little bit tricky. You can fold it against a piece of card or edge of a ruler to get that fold where it needs to be, where the scoring is. Go both sides. Push up against your straight edge or your template whenever you're using to make sure you get that in. Then on the reverse side, line it up and get crease in with the bone folder, or the handle of the scissors, whatever you're using for that, just rub your join if you get them in the way, You might have to come back and add a little bit of glue in there after if it's come up like mine did. That's okay [MUSIC] Then, we have the concertina hinge made, ready to go. You need to make sure that it lines up reasonably well where the joins in the cardboard are, can be a little bit out of shape, but that's okay. We've got all our hinges there ready to receive our papers. We have a flap either side for tucking into our covers, which will come up and hold our papers in. The next step will be cutting the slits in the folios or pages ready to receive the hinge [MUSIC] 22. Bonus Journal Construction Part 4: [MUSIC] To work out where to put the slits in your pages to poke your hinge tabs through, I measured the center of my paper. I measured the center of my hinge there and I lined the two up and made a mark. To make your slit, you're going to either have to use scissors or a craft knife. Craft knife, I think would be the easiest for these. What I'm going to do is put my first slit in and just check that the hinge fits before I go on to mark the rest. Then I want to get it in the center. So I'm just making sure that that’s where the center fold is. With my craft knife, I'm just going to make that slit starting at my first pencil mark up here. Now let's just test that out before we go any further. The idea being that this will sit inside here like that. Then when we get to the tab part, the tab will feed through there and hold your hinge in place. Now, we need to go along and make the hinge slits in all of our papers. So now we have one we can use as a template. Because these are thick, I'm only going to do one at a time. So what I'm going to do is line them up [NOISE] till they fit together pretty well. [NOISE] Then I'm going to use a sewing needle, but you could use a push pin, anything to mark through either end. That's given a mark to cut to. I'm going to do that with every one of these papers. If you're not using a thick hinge like this, you'll be able to do a stack of papers in one go. Now you know how to make your slits. Go ahead, mark them out, and cut them in all of your papers, and then we'll go on to the next step. 23. Bonus Journal Constrruction Part 5: [MUSIC] With all of the slits made in the hinge part of our papers, it's now time to audition a hinge so that we can work out the width we need to make our strips. I'm just going to slide this one into a hinge and take a measurement. Now that I've got a hinge in here, I need to take a measurement from this edge to this edge to work out how wide to make the paper strips that will hold the hinge in place. My measurement now has shrunk down from 3.5 centimeters to about 3.3, maybe 3.2 centimeters, which is one 1/4 “. When you cut your strips, it's a good idea to make them just a fraction under your measurement. I'm going to make my strip. I'm going to try it at about 3.2 cm We'll say 1 1/4 “. I'm going to cut one strip. The length of my paper times 3.2 centimeters or 1 1/4 “, and trial it first before I cut the rest of the papers just in case it's not quite right. Let's see what happens with this. It needs to be slightly smaller than that, so I'm just going to take a very small amount off. I've cut a strip at 1 1/8 “ and that is 2.8 centimeters because you want to be able to feed your strip in nicely. If you're making your journal at a slightly different measurement to this one, just take your measurement and take a little bit off it, so that your strips fit in nicely. That's how the hinge holds the pages in place. Go ahead now and cut your strips to fit inside your hinge. Once your hinge has been put through your paper so that you check your measurement and just cut it. Just always go smaller so that you can slide it through with ease. Once you've cut your strips of paper and hinged your first folio, cut the rest of your strips, add your papers and you're hinging strips in. Now you have your papers all hinged and ready to go. One thing I can tell you is that you can actually make little arrowheads on these papers if you want to, and the other option would be to maybe use a decorative craft punch to make some decoration on the end. I'm going to leave mine just plain square. I think it sits together pretty well. For the next step, have your cardboards ready for your covers and your cover paper. 24. Bonus Journal Covers Part 1: [MUSIC] To work out the size of the cover boards, you need to know the size of your paper and then you need to add, at least, an 1/8” or 3.5 millimeters on three sides of the journal. You don't need to add any extra on the side that will be hinged. Cutting your cardboard covers is not too difficult, you just gently score several times down. Following the edge of your ruler, just go slowly, keep it up against the edge of the ruler and eventually you'll get through the cardboard. Now you have your covers, we need to put in some markings for our sleeve tab before we start covering the cover boards. What we need to do is find the center of the sleeve piece and make a mark either end. Then we make a mark either end on the cover boards at the center as well. We line those marks up and then we mark the four corners where your sleeve board measurement is. Then rule a line between the outer marks. Then we need to figure out how much space we need to allow for our hinge tab to slide into the sleeve. So from your center mark on your board, measure out the size of your sleeve. For mine, which is 6” I measured 3” either side, which gives me these little marks, here where the arrows are. I know I need, at least, that amount of space to slide my hinge tab in. However, we're going to be covering these boards, which will take up a little bit of space. We're going to be putting some paper on this, which will also take up a little bit of space. We need a little bit of wriggle room to allow the sleevee to go in and out with ease, but not too much room that the tab will slide out on its own. If you're using a thicker paper, you will need to leave a little bit more wriggle room to get your hinge tab in and out. If you're using a thinner paper, you need to leave less wriggle room because the paper is not taking up so much space. Once you have these marks here, you need to work out how much wriggle room you're going to leave. Now, I've got a couple of marks on here because I always leave an 1/8” for thin paper, so an 1/8” either side. If I'm using a really thick bulky paper, I'll leave a 1/4” either side. The reason we're doing all these measurements is because this paper here and this card gets glued down, and we need to know how far in to come with our glue. From your outside edge marking, you are going to mark a line of where you're going to put the glue to. I have ruled that line there for a journal that has a thin covering. For a journal with a really bulky covering, you need to allow a bit more and I'ld suggest maybe a 1/4” either side. Once you've done that, you can then make a mark on your sleeve so that you know where the glue has to go on the sleeve as well. With a pencil rule those lines in. The final thing you have to do is turn your sleeve over, line it up with your ruled lines on the outside edge, and add in these marks from your glue lines. These little marks will help you lining up your sleeve when we glue it down. Once you've done all that for both boards then we'll go ahead and cover the boards [MUSIC] and attach our sleeves. 25. Bonus Journal Covers Part 2: To work out your paper for covering your board, Find a straight edge on your paper. I align mine up with my cutting mat so I use the straight edges to line it up and then I measure around two inches and I place my board down. I measure the 2” from the other side of the paper and then I draw around the edge, the corner of my board. Then I go up and measure the same on the other corner on the same side to make sure that this measurement and this measurement are the same. Again, I make those little marks on the corners just around the edge of the board and then I go over and do it over on this edge, so I measure 2” along the edge. Once you've got it all the way to the edge, I make my line on this side all the way up to the edge, all the way down ruling a line along there. Make sure you've marked your corners so that when you remove your board to add the glue, you know where to line your board up again. Then I take a small clear ruler. If you don't have a small clear ruler, you can actually do this anyway, but I line up my line with the corner, try and keep it at a 45-degree angle if you can. What you're aiming for is to allow a little extra here that you're not going to cut off and then you're going to mark a triangle across the edges and then this triangle will get cut off. Do that on all of the corners. You want that little bit of overhang so that when you actually come to fold up your papers, you've got a little bit that will tuck in the inside and cover the corner of your board. Cut your paper off. Cut your corners off in preparation for covering your board. Once have your paper cut out, you use it as a template to cut the other sheet for the other cover. Go ahead and do that, and then we'll move on to the next step together. Now you should have your two papers ready, your two boards ready to cover. Just one thing that you need to be careful of, if you have a one-way design, which I have, then you need to make sure you have a back and a front. This is going to be my backboard because I want this bird to face this way, so that means that my hinge side is this side, and then I need to make sure that my front cover is going the opposite way, which it is. The hinge side for my front cover needs to be on that side, and when you lay them down, you'll have a hinge side and a hinge side next to each other. Just mark it so that you don't make any mistakes. If your design has to go top to bottom, then just mark the top, and the top. That will help you not to mess up. Yes, that is the voice of experience speaking. I have made more than one journal with two boards hinged exactly the same, and with a one-way design, you end up with one board the correct way, and one board upside down. Of course, it goes without saying that the upside-down board goes on the back of the journal. For this step, I like to use a glue stick. Particularly when I'm using this type of wrapping paper, it doesn't like PVA glue very much. What I like to do is cover the cardboard with the glue first and then put some on the paper. You might have paper that stands up better to PVA glue. If I was using a scrapbook paper to cover this, rather than a wrapping paper, I would use PVA glue. It's all about using the right tools for the job I suppose. Move the board out of the way for a moment and go for the paper, again getting right up to the edges. If there's any lumps in your glue, try and get rid of them. Now, just positioning the board, go for your corner marks, and then try and get your top marks in the right place as well. That looks pretty good. When you're happy, just smoosh it down, give it a rub. Bone folder or the back of the scissors on the cardboard side to start with. If there's any glue squeezing out, mop it up with a bit of towel or tissue or something. That's another reason why I like glue stick, you don't tend to get too much smooshing out. Now, turning it over, I need to be a little bit more gentle on this side and trying to work from the middle to get out any bubbles. [MUSIC] 26. Bonus Journal Covers Part 3: [MUSIC] Once you've got all your paper attached and you're happy with it, we have to address the sleeve for the hinge. The first thing we need to do is fold the hinge side in and attach that because when we slip our hinge tab in, it's going to go in here between that decorative paper and the decorative paper strip that will be covering the sleeve here. We'll glue it in place. Just in a little bit from the edge. We're going to put a piece of decorative paper on here so that from the outside of the journal you can't see the sleeve. The first thing I'm going to do is attach this hinge side to my journal. I like to put some glue in that space against the cardboard. [MUSIC] Now we've glued the hinge side down. We have to put some paper on this. I'm going to use this paper and I'm going to use the pinky side because it will blend in here. I want my pinky side to be sitting along this edge because I want to align those lines up here so I know where I'm gluing and I want it to be reasonably close to the width of this because our cover paper on the inside needs to cover this so that it looks neat. I've got about a 2” overhang here, so I'm going to measure two inches on this paper for where I want my fold to be. I'm just going to mark on along there. I want some of this paper to be on the inside of the sleeve to help with the hinge tab sliding in and out. I'm just going to mark it there like that, and then I'm just going to fold it up here so I know where to cut. [MUSIC] Now I'm going to attach this piece of paper to this board. I want to remember that I want it to face the lines so I can match them up here. On the reverse side of that, I am going to put down some glue because the paper is going to go on this side as well as along the edge. [MUSIC] Make sure I've got that going the right way and I have. I'm just going to bring it up to the line that I ruled on my paper, there. Now, I'm just going to smoosh it down a bit and finding a bone folder and giving it a little bit of a rub over. Really don't want any bubbles in this because I want it nice and smooth so that the hinge tab can go inside easily and it can also be removed easily if I want to take my covers off. Move at it gentle, smooth over with my bone folder. I want it to be just inside there. [MUSIC] Make a line down there and the same on this side. Now I want to apply glue either side of this line here and then I want to put a small amount of glue just on the board here as well to help with adherence. [MUSIC] I’ll just put a little bit of PVA, just for a extra bit of insurance on here. [MUSIC] Now, while the glue is still tacky. Let's position it where we want it. I'm lining up my lines here and just keeping it just a teensy tiny bit in from the edge and now with the bone folder, I want to make good contact with the glue. Then I'll also give it a rub with my old soft cloth just to help and then from the other side as well. [MUSIC] If you can see here, there is the tiniest little edge just along here where I've positioned it just back a tiny bit. The next bit to do is fold the rest of these up. It doesn't really matter what order you do this in. I'm going to do the long side first. Now the same thing as the other side. You want good contact along that edge. Go on and attach the other pieces. Make sure you get a bit of glue on this little edge here because we fold that in for this next tab. Now to do this one, push up your edge like you have previously. But in here, you just work the edge in, with the bone folder or a finger or a fingernail. Just tuck it in and then fold up your tab. Make sure you’ve got good contact here and roll the paper over and smooth out any bubbles you might have as we go. Just going to use my cloth to give it a bit of a rub up. Checked my corners. Now we're on to the last tab. [MUSIC] Allow that to dry and then we'll come back and put a cover piece over here to neaten all the edges up. Now you've made one. Go ahead and do the other board. Now, the other thing is while it's drying, it's good to put some weight on it, some heavy books or something on it to keep it nice and flat. 27. Finishing The Journal: [MUSIC] We're up to the last part of putting this journal together and what we need to do is cover up this part of the cover boards on the inside so that they look nice and neat. What you need to do is cut your paper to size and leave a little margin around the edge so that it looks cohesive. I was lucky enough to have paper that fits so my paper matches my paper size and is A4, and I decided I would just use these couple of colored sheets. I'll glue those down and you go ahead and do the same with yours. If your paper doesn't fit nicely like mine does, just take a measurement leaving a small margin around the edges and cut your paper to size and then stick your two inside papers over your covers [MUSIC] After the glue has dried on those papers, you can go on to the final step which is putting the whole book together. I'll show you how simple it is. You just find the slit of the sleeve you made and slip your cardboard sleeve inside there. It's as simple as that and then on the back, doing the same thing. Slip your cardboard in, push your cupboard down, and here you have your journal altogether with protective hardcovers on it. Hinges that can be removed. You can add onto your journal by detaching the covers and creating a new concertina tab and then slipping it back into the cover after you've made it. This journal will expand comfortably another set of hinges like that. That's the expandable journal. I hope you've enjoyed following along with me and I hope you make your own. It's perfect for housing your pattern library when it's constructed this way with the strips because you can work on your sheets of paper and then join them in after or you can create your journal first and use it for your pattern designs. Thank you so much for sticking around to the end of this class. [MUSIC] 28. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Thank you for joining me. I hope you had a fun time creating patterns and painting, and I hope you learned something new to add to your art toolkit. If you're looking for a new art adventure, take a look at my class Embroidery and Watercolor on Paper. Stitching adds a special element to artwork, and it's also fun and relaxing which is a win for everyone. I would love to see your beautiful artwork, patterns, paintings, and let's not forget the bonus journal. Please don't forget to upload photos of your artwork to the project gallery. It's really easy. Visit the Project and Resources tab and click on Create Project. Then you'll be prompted to upload your photos. It just takes a couple of minutes. If you enjoyed the class, it would really mean a lot to me if you'd leave me a review. If you want to see more of my classes in future, then follow me here on Skillshare. Thank again for joining me and happy creating until I see you next time in the classroom.