Exploring Texture For Dynamic Collage - Class 4: 100 Days of Collage (Day 21 - Day 28)

1. Introduction: Texture is one of the foundational elements for making art. It can be smooth as silk, or coarse and rough. It's the element that makes you want to reach out and touch the artwork. Welcome to the studio. It's frail here, and I'm so glad you've joined me. I'm a mixed media artist and I've been painting and exhibiting for the past three decades. I've journeyed through most of the art styles and found that mixed media collage is my absolute favorite medium. In this class, we're on an epic journey of discovery. 100 days of collage. Welcome to class four exploring textures for dynamic collage. We'll be exploring textured surfaces in textured tapestry. Embarking on a journey of artistic expression with tactile harmony and incorporating fabric swatches with threads and textures. We'll discover ways to incorporate string symphony into our collage and craft texted focal points with acrylic skins. We'll even be using the humble kitchen paper textures to achieve beautiful works of art. Every project you undertake will reflect your own individual style and interpretation. My primary objective for this class is to nurture your creative growth in a relaxed, fun, and enjoyable environment. This class is suitable for anyone wanting to develop their mixed media techniques, perfect for beginners, because I will lead you step by step through each and every class, showing you the exact materials that I use and how you can create the same result. Or if you're a more advanced artist, then I'm sure you're going to enjoy the challenge of learning these new techniques and adding more skills to your artistic tool belt. I'm so excited to begin. I've got so much to share with you, so let's gather our materials and let's make art. 2. Material List: Right, so we're inter class four. Yay for us and you should definitely have a whole heap of acrylic paints. Yes, these are my favorite colors. I know you've seen me use them over and over again because I love them. We're definitely going to use a lot of acrylic paints. We're also going to use a lot of paste and gels. Because this class we're exploring texture and experimenting the different ways of making it, looking at it, playing with it, coloring it, and putting it in our collage. Now I use a lot of mat gel medium to stick my collage. That's what I prefer. Of course, you don't have to use this to stick your collage, I just like it. I'm also going to be playing with some light modeling, paste modeling, paste, coarse texture medium, and some gloss heavy gel. Now, I'm using all of these paton gels because I have them. But please don't go rushing out to buy a whole heap of them. You really don't need to. I'm going to show you some videos, some experiments that I'm going to do with some of these past and gels. You can decide if you like that idea or that particular method or not. You definitely don't have to. I'm also going to use some crackle paste that'll be fun. And I have some glass beads. What you need to do is go and pull out of all your drawers, cupboard spaces, wherever you have your art and craft materials. And pull them all out, it's going to be a fun class and very experimental Pull out from the back of the cupboard, whatever you've bought, especially if you haven't used it, because we're really going to have some fun trying some different ideas. Now you also want to pull out from class to your found objects box. Hopefully you put some things in a box because we're going to play with some material. I've got some cheesecloth and some other material. I also have a cheap dollar store shopping bag that I've chopped up because look at the fabulous texture and the mark and pattern that that would make just as good as any stencil. This is also a cheap shopping bag from the Dollar Store, one of those reusable types. I have some different paper from, so but the Dollar Store really is your best friend. I mean, look at the peg basket. It costs me like, I don't know, a couple of bucks. And I'm pretty sure that's going to make a great stencil. Can't wait to use it. Going to be so much fun. We can also use some lace and some different textured fabrics, and ribbons and threads. I have, one of my favorite textures is a drawer liner, and then I have these wonderful cardboard pieces. This one came as the end of a roll of paper that I bought. I know it was already cut like that, so I'm like, I'm keeping that makes a great stamp or you could actually put it in a collage. Then I have some other textured paper. The favorite bubble wrap of course, and this glorious meshing. Think my beautiful friend Teresa sent me this one that would be great for a stencil or you could put it in a collage as a textured element that work really well too. Then I've got some other papers here from taperology that I've used to create marks like stencils. They work very well. And of course, I do have a stack of stencils. Now, I've pulled in some paper plates. I'm going to mix some colors. And especially with the mediums, you definitely need some paper towels because we are going to make a mess. We're going to use some different kinds of paper, different thicknesses, different absorbency, and see how all these different materials react and respond. So first thing to do is rummage through your cupboards, your drawers, especially the back of those cupboards. Pull out all your bits and pieces. Have a look at what pasting gels you actually have. Grab your box of found objects. Let's get to exploring, experimenting, and making some great art. Now in this class, I'm going to do some of my collages in my art journal. But I'm also going to do some on some small canvases. Because like with the crackle paste, you can't put that into the art journal because it'll twist up your pages. I'm going to do an experiment and show you on some different pieces of paper how that responds. It's going to be fun, it's going to be very explorative. I just can't wait, because texture is one of my absolute favorite characteristics when it comes to creating art. I think color is probably number one importance, but texture is right up there. I love exploring and experimenting with it. I love using it and trying different responses. I'm going to pull out some papers first and do some little experiments. Then we'll see how we can use all of these different fabrics and textures in contrasting ways to make our beautiful collages. Now of course, I will be giving you a full list of all of the art supplies and the materials that I use for each and every one of the lessons. But please do not feel obligated or pressured to rush out and buy anything that I'm using, especially if it's expensive, like the glass beads and you don't think you're really going to want to use it, don't rush out and buy it. You can just watch what I'm doing with the products and then you'll know what there is that's available. I can't wait to get started. It's going to be so much fun. 3. Pastes & Gels: Let's start with having a look at our paste and gels. I like using a light molding paste, especially in my art journal because it is what it says. It's a lot lighter. Because it's a lot lighter. It feels like whipped cream, feels fabulous. It's not going to weigh down your page so much. If you're going to use it in an art journal, let's use this for some texture, that'll be fun. Now if you're using it on canvas, then you don't have to worry so much about it being too heavy. It's beautiful, light and fluffy, like the consistency of cream. It works really well with stencils. I'm just going to use it by itself. But you can mix any of these pastes with acrylic paint. You do have to keep in mind that when you mix the paste with acrylic paint, it will make your color slightly lighter, not too much, but just keep that in mind. Scraping it on through my fabulous textured mesh. Light molding past works really well, creates great texture fabulous for your art journal. Let's flip this page over. Use the other end. Let's try some of the coarse texture medium. Now when I put this one on the palette, it's a lot thicker and a lot grittier. It feels like it's got sand in it, or maybe it just looks like it could be cement. It's not too gritty, it's not too bad. But you can see how it's a completely different texture than the light molding. Paste definitely feels like sand in it. You could if you wanted to make your own paste using different elements like putting sand in, but I'd just like to squeeze it out of the tube so you can also hear the grittiness of the texture paste. Sounds great, doesn't it? Now these are the liquid text basics brand. I just find this brand to be a little bit more economical than the Golden brand. I think because it says basic acrylic, it's just going to be a little more easier on your pocket. You can also mix this lovely gritty texture with acrylic paint as well. It doesn't have to be plain like this, but I just want to show you the difference in them. That's fabulous. Takes great texture. You can see the difference in the color, that's a lot whiter and brighter, that's more sandy. But they are fabulous for creating different techniques. The next one is just standard modeling paste, that's quite heavy and thick compared to the light modeling paste. If you can see the way I'm squeezing it out, it's a lot thicker than the light one. It's a lot heavier in the tube, It's a lot denser in the material. Much, much thicker, much, much heavier. It does create very three dimensional textures. As you can see, you could build up quite sculptural forms with the modeling paste. I mean, that's what it's created for, right? But if I was going to use it, I would be using it on canvas, not in my art journal, because it's just too heavy, I think, for the pages, But it's fabulous on canvas. Or if you're wanting to create three dimensional effects in your artwork, you can see how much thicker that is. It's very dense and very heavy. Especially compared to the light molding paste, right? That's the modeling paste standard. A lot thicker and denser than the light molding paste. Let's have a look at the gel heavy gloss. See how much faster that came out of the tube because it's not so dense as the modeling paste. Now if you're mixing color with a gel, it won't lighten it because it doesn't have the marble dust in it, it's going to dry. This heavy gel will dry nice and clear. This is a perfect medium if you want to create a beautiful, shiny, smooth textual layer on your artwork. It mixes really well with acrylic paint. I might actually mix them with paint, and then we'll have a look at that as well. But when it dries, you'll see the huge difference between the gel and the modeling paste. It looks white now, but it will dry, perfectly clear. It does hold its form, it creates incredible prints. It's fantastic. Works well with stencils and it mixes well with acrylic paint. If I put a little bit of the liquid text deep violet into my little blob there of the gel medium, you'll see that it doesn't change the color. It looks a little bit more white because it's wet. But like I said, it will dry perfectly clear. Let's put that on here then. I think I'll go back and add some purple into the light molding paste. And just show you the difference of how they dry. Right? That's the heavy gel gloss. I think I'll use this other side to put on some of the light molding paste and mix it with the acrylic paint. See how the modeling paste will make it a little lighter in color. That's because of the marble dust that's in it. But I do really like the light modeling paste the best when it comes to this kind of medium. Because it's so smooth, it's so easy to mix with color and it's so light, it's just a lot easier to work with unless you're really wanting to do big thick, heavy, three dimensional artworks or layers, then you got to go heavy when you need to do that. But for what we're doing, especially in our art journal pursuits, I'm thinking the light modeling paste really is the better one, right? So we'll let those dry and see if there's much difference in the color. Beautiful, love it, Deep violet. What's not to love? There we go. Let's see how they dry, right? I'm going to explore these medium some more. I'm going to add them with some acrylic paint. Put them onto paper. Spread them out so I can really enjoy the difference between the coarse texture sandiness, the light molding paste, and the beautiful glossy, heavy gel. Going to paint a few different papers in some different colors that I'm going to use in my clutch. I wonder how much difference it'll make if I add metallics to these mediums. Will it knock out the metallic shine? It's a very good question. I think I'm going to explore that some more and see how the paper is dry. Now, the modeling paste is a lot stiffer than the other ones. It's a lot thicker, a lot heavier. But it also means that you can do a lot more sculptural marks on it. You could carve into it like this, you could put stencils on it, you can use the catalyst tool. Really, it's quite endless because it is so thick and see how it holds the peaks, it holds the marks that you put into it. It is really beautiful. If that's what you're wanting in your artwork, then it's the medium for you. I just don't use it a lot in my art journal because of the weight I find. The light molding paste is just that easier on the pages. But this beautiful texture medium is fabulous for putting marks in with anything. A little bit of bubble wrap, one of my textured papers too easy, lemon squeezes, it holds the shapes incredibly. It makes beautiful peaks and textures and it really is rather glorious. Look at that fabulous texture marks. Now, I could then go over the top with some acrylic or some ink or some spray or really anything. And I probably will, once it's dry, those fabulous textures will stay there on the paper. I'll probably add something on top. Just haven't decided what. 4. Mixing with Powered Pigments: Recently I bought some of these Lindy Gang Magical shakers. And they work really well with water. Absolutely. Fabulous. They're amazing colors. I like the little shakers, they're really easy, come straight out. It's like putting pepper on your dinner. You can put the water down and then put the shaker on. Or put the shaker on and then put the water down. What I like about them is they have such a mix of pigment, the colors are really beautiful. But I'm thinking, besides the fact of playing on this piece of paper, I'm going to mix some of the magical shake with the gel and see how that works. Maybe I'll try it through a stencil. Which color do I like? I'm pretty much just testing the colors to see which ones I want to mix with the heavy gel. That one's impressionist ink, like that one. This one is Monet or Da, pretty funny. I really love the way they've got so many different pigments in the mix. This one is that's beautiful too. Water lilies? Lavender? Yes, of course it is. That's exactly what it looks like. Then what's this one? We have a head in the clods, They're beautiful colors. I'm going to mix maybe the ink one. I really like that one because it has so many. I'm going to mix that with the heavy gel and see how well that works. Of course, if you add more water, they spread more. They really are very beautiful. If you can use them for like watercolor painting, the shakers are really good. That was a really great idea. Put them in little shakers and they're really fun. All right? I'll put this aside to dry and then I'm going to mix that one with some gloss gel and see what that does once I stop splashing the water. Of course. Right. Gloss heavy gel decided I'm going to use the two colors because they just look so good. Put this on my disposable palette and then mix some of the shakers in and see how they perform. That one's the impressionist ink, I just think it's fascinating with all the different little pigment colors in it. What does it paint like? This heavy gel gloss really is very versatile, you can use it with so many different products. It's really smooth, mixes in really the powdered pigment mixes in really well. Look at that, that's just beautiful. That will dry quite glossy because it is the heavy gel gloss. You can get the heavy gel in a mat if you don't like the glossy finish, but I really do like glossy finish. Let's have a look at the other color. It'll be really interesting to see what they look like when they dry, if you can still see that mix of the different pigment color in them. Now if you mixed it with the past, because the paste has the marble dust in it, it would give a different look. This is very transparent because it's the gel gels don't have the marble dust that would look different again. Should we try it? Yes. Why not? Let's give it a try. With the light molding paste. See how the color is so much lighter when it's with the molding paste. That's because of the marble dust. I'm not sure what happened to that one. Maybe there was some water on my palette. Anyway, that is what it looks like with the light molding paste. You can still see those pigments of color through the gel there. Well, I put out some more of the molding paste to mix with that color and it seriously doesn't like it look, it's turned to fluid. That is the weirdest reaction I have ever seen. I've never seen a reaction like that. That was just with the light molding paste and this shake pigment. Wow, look at that. It's just turned all watery. No idea why, but they didn't like the light molding paste. See, that's why you've got to experiment. That's so weird, the gels holding fine and you can see the beautiful colored pigments in it. But no, did not like the light molding paste at all. Right. I'll just finish putting this on this particular piece of paper, spread it across like that. It'll be interesting to see how it dries and how the pigment holds up. This color worked. All right, with the molding paste. See that's perfectly fine. Don't know what happened to the other one. Must be something in it that clashed. Wonder what would happen if we put some of the pigment on the top. Now, shall we try it if we put some of the shaker on there and sprayed it with the water? Oh, look, that's pretty cool. I love being a mad scientist. Let's see how that dries. Yes, of course. I had to put on some more, giving it a spray with some water just so the pigment moves around. And that's going to make a great texture. Look at that, right. What else are we going to do with these leftovers or use up the leftovers with this steal? See how that looks? This one's got the shaker color in with the heavy gel gloss. 5. Making Stunning Collage Papers: Okay, so everything has dried beautifully. I've left all of my papers overnight to dry now. It makes it really easy for you to see the differences in the past and gel. This one's the light modeling paste, which I really love, push through that fabulous meshing. And this one is the coarse texture medium. You can see a difference in the color. You can also feel a difference that's very gritty, very hard, very sandy. That one's a lot smoother and a lot lighter, but they are really good for different aspects and creating different textures. This one is the modeling paste, the standard modeling paste. It is heavy, very hard. It does create fabulous textures, of course. And you can create three dimensional elements in your artwork using the modeling paste. This is the gloss, heavy gel, as you can see. It's very shiny. It's also very thick and holds the texture really, really well. It dries absolutely clear on the black card stock, it looks like alligator skin or crocodile skin. This is using that same piece of meshing texture that I used to scrape the paste through. Now if you don't want it super glossy like this, you can get a matt, heavy gel as well. I like the shiny. I think the shiny looks great. Now putting the color in the paste and gels, I wanted to show you the difference. The light modeling paste has marble dust in the paste. So that's going to lighten your color. You can see on there how much lighter it is compared to the gloss, heavy gel. That's also going to give you a more shiny finish because it is gloss. The pastes are going to always dry, matt, flat, and chalky because of that marble dust. Both of them are fabulous. I love using both of these texture gels. They create a different mark and a different look depending on really what it is you want to create. Then the question was, if you put metallic paint in with the past and gels, will it affect the brilliant metallic shine? And the answer is yes. The magenta here has the course texture medium. You can hear it, you can see it, you can feel it. Then this is the bronze with the light modeling paste. And as you can see, it's really lost all of that metallic shine. It's a really nice color, but it definitely doesn't look like a metallic bronze. If you're using the paste with the metallic colors, you need to remember, you're not going to have that fabulous metallic shine. It's a nice color. This one here is the heavy gel gloss with the bronze. And as you can see, it holds the beautiful metallic shine really well. This has got the texture paste in it. It feels fabulous. And look how good the marks have been created with the catalyst tool. Yes, I know it looks fabulous. I'm really loving this. I really love the difference between the shiny glossy texture and the gritty coarse medium. They're fabulous putting them together. And I like the way the gel medium still brings through that beautiful bronze shine right on that note of using the bronze with the heavy gel, I mixed it up and put some through a stencil on this particular silver piece of paper. It looks fabulous. It's very glossy, it's very thick. It holds the stencil shape well, and it doesn't deteriorate any of that beautiful metallic bronze color. Then I wanted to show you that the stencil butter looks exactly like that coming straight out of the pot, Beautiful metallic raised edges holding the stencil really well if you want to create a stencil butter look but you don't want to buy it or you don't want to use the particular colors that they have. You can mix the heavy gel gloss with any of your metallics to create that real stencil butter look and feel the rays, edges, and the thickness and quality of the print. It's really good to know this and to experiment because you just might want to add some beautiful texture elements to any of your collages or mixed media work. And now you're going to know to use the heavy gel, not any of the paste, or you'll lose that beautiful metallic shine and you can create your own Stentil butter. Then of course, I had to experiment some more and pull out some of the beautiful Lindy's gang powdered pigments. Now this is the piece that I put the pigments on, sprayed it with water, and let it run like water color. They've come up beautiful. They're quite strong in color and pigment, a little dusty from the pigment on there, but it doesn't seem to fall off. So I think we're doing okay. It's a much more beautiful flowing effect when you do that with the water. But of course, we wanted to add it with the gel medium. This one here is the one I was playing with, adding the gel medium to the powdered pigments. They come up really well. What's quite interesting is some of the paper is mat flat and some of it's shiny. So where it's shiny would be the gel. And then I put a more powdered pigment on and sprayed it with water. And that's what's making these rougher textured areas where it's gone more flat. Quite fascinating, really fun. It's really good to have an experiment and see what these products do. If you have some powdered pigments, pull them out, mix them with some of your gels, and see what they do. See how they respond and react. Because it's a lot of fun. And remember we're creating colons paper. Okay. So pushing the powdered pigments a little further, I mixed this particular shaker with the light molding paste. And it was the weirdest experience. I think I've ever seen it completely liquefied. I've never seen such a chemical reaction like that before. But of course we can't waste anything. Then I mixed it with the coarse texture paste. And now you can see, and you can hear how it's got that sandy surface to it and the color is really pretty. I think it's really nice and I actually really like the texture. If something doesn't go right or it doesn't work out how you want, don't get upset and stressed out, just try something else. I've never seen any product have a reaction like that before, but I sure as heck wasn't going to waste it. It's all so expensive. Everything. All the art supplies cost so much money. You have to find a way to use it even when it doesn't work out the way you want. Mixing it with the coarse texture paper created this beautiful textured paper. And I think the color is pretty and I'll probably use it in my collar. Right? So this particular piece here, clearly I've mixed the bronze with the heavy gel gloss and the magenta as well, and I've put it on a piece of paper over a mask. Now, it was originally white. Once when I pulled the mask off, you can see the white areas of the paper. But once that dried, I turned the paper over and I sprayed it with the Zincs because I wanted to have another color coming through. As I created this one on the rice paper, the Japanese sketch rice paper, I knew that the ink would soak through the paper from the back and come through onto the front. Now I've got this beautiful licorice color where the mask shape is instead of white paper. If you want white paper, you just leave it. Otherwise, if you're using the rice paper, spray the back and the color comes through. It's a lot of fun. It works really well. You can see how shiny glossy that is from the heavy gloss gel. It really does live up to its name. It's a fabulous medium. I just love it. Look at that color. It doesn't take away from any of the metallic shine, which is important to me because I really like the bling. This piece of paper here was where I turned the mask over and just put it down, rubbed it on the back, and used up the paint from on the mask. That's pretty cool piece of paper too. I could also spray that or pat that or do something to that if I want to. Otherwise I'm just going to rip it up for collage right now. These pieces of paper here are the ones that I used up, all the leftovers because we can't have anything dry on our palette. What a waste that would be. You should be able to tell now which is which. Which one is this? I'll give you a hint. It's shiny and glossy. Then which one is this one? It's flat and textured. You should definitely be able to tell now clearly that's the heavy gel gloss. It looks rather beautiful through my dashers stencil. And this one with some leftovers. It has the molding paste in that one. This one's got a mix of bows and then there's a little bit of bronze. You can see there that must have had some gel leftover in it because it's a little shiny. This one's a combination of all of them. It's pretty nice. It makes for beautiful paper and I'm really happy with all my experiments. I love how they dried up. I love how they're looking. It's going to be fabulous collage. Oh, I forgot to show you this one. This one was the molding paste that I mixed with the blue violet. Put it on the paper, pushed in some bubble wrap and some textured paper to make these glorious marks. Then when it was completely dry, I added some of the iridescent white pearl ink. And look at it now. It is absolutely beautiful. You can see the glorious textures in it from the bubble wrap and the textured paper. The iridescent, pearlescent ink just picks up all those textures and makes that beautiful, shine, beautiful piece of paper. It's going to work well. This is just the standard modeling paste, and it's very thick, it's very hard, and it makes great texture. Right now, I just have to decide which of these beautiful pieces of paper I might want to use for the next lesson, which is the fabulous texture tapestry. 6. Textured Tapestry: Day 22, Textured Tapestry. Now I'm going to show you a whole range of different pastes and gels. The difference between them, what you can use them with, what they feel like, how they dry. Now remember, you don't have to use all of these products. Don't rush out and buy them all. I just really want to show you so that you know what's on the market in case you're wanting to create something with a little mixed media exploration. This is a great opportunity to dig out of the cupboard and the backs of the drawers, those pastes and gels and mediums that you haven't used, even though you bought them and you were going to at the time. Now's a good chance to pull them out and have a play and see what they actually do. There's such a huge range from really smooth to really gritty and crunchy and it's a whole lot of fun and I just can't wait to show you. Right. Got my beautiful little art journal. Now, hard decisions will have to be made. Can't fit all of these glorious papers in my art journal. So I'm going to have to decide and narrow it down. I'd really like to contrast some of the beautiful, smooth and shiny surfaces with some of the more gritty sandy surfaces, because I think that's what I really enjoyed showing you about the difference between the paste and gels. And I really enjoyed all of those experiments. I think I use some of this paper here with the gritty sand. And some of this to start with, with this beautiful shiny surface. Though I might have to sneak in a little of this one because that's beautiful. Do we want just perhaps a little pop of the blue violet maybe? Baby, Definitely some of these shapes have to go in. Oh man, Maybe some of the stencil butter because it is a glamorous color or this one. With these shapes, we could put some of the beautiful copper in there. Yes, it's going to be tricky. And then I think I might like to put some of my glorious white coso paper because I think that would be really fresh in the composition, or even some of this one. I absolutely love this one with the tiny little poka dots. That's what I'm thinking, that's where I'm headed, I guess we're just going to see how it's going to work out. I find where I start is not necessarily where I finish. Things always tend to change along the way. As I change my mind, once I start actually creating something, I know I want some of this because I love this beautiful sandy texture and I really want that to contrast with this beautiful shiny one. If we start with that idea, then I think we could move on from there. I think I might need to cut this one because yes, it's still a little damp. I only just spray it. We'll give this one a bit of a snip instead of trying to tear it. I think it worked out really well with the Liquiich on the back. That's where we're starting. We're starting with this piece here on there like that, and this piece probably on there. Now where are we going to head from there? I would really like to add some of this one maybe along the bottom. If it all becomes a bit too much of the same color, I can go back to my scrap bag, put it, put in a few other pieces, or even pull outs and other jelly prints. But we'll just start with these and see where it leads us with my texture tapestry. I really do like the idea of mixing up the beautiful, shiny, heavy gel prints with the fabulous, gritty, textured, sandy ones. Look at that, That's a glorious color right there. That's what I'm thinking. Putting shapes of the patterns and textures and prints on my page, rearranging them quite geometric almost so I can really enjoy the fabulous textures. And then I think I will definitely add some of the white paper just to break it up. Let's have a little bit of the blue. Oh, what a glorious color. It is such a fabulous texture, Such beautiful marks. You need to add some of this one. Why don't we put it right across the top of the pink there, like that, Maybe baby. And it's all maybe until I stick it down, then it's quite possibly, it might change. What about some of the fabulous stencil butter? Yes, we need some stencil butter. Let's add some of these shapes in. On the side right here, just under those two colors, I think would look quite beautiful. Look at that. Something like that. What do you think? What do you think? What are we going to put up the top here? Which one will we choose next? What about one of these ones with these fabulous marks? Yes. I really like this one. Maybe we'll use this section. This one has the copper and the other mix. And I say it's a mix because it was such a mix of color, I was using up whatever was left on my palette. It does have a little mix of a lot of colors from those fabulous pounded pigments of Linda's gang. That was really fun. So what about something like that? And like that on that side, these beautiful shiny ones on this side, it looks like a texted tapestry to me. Yeah. Now I've just got to glue it all down. Right. So I've got all of the background pieces down and I'm deciding on this one and I'm thinking maybe I won't take it all the way to the edge because it cuts off the composition and it's not that exciting. Whereas I think if I take it to here and then put something else on this side, or do something else with it, that'll be a more dynamic shape. I also left a gap here, so I could add something. I'm thinking these ones would go really nicely because it pulls that shape from over that side of the page and it just repeats it. This one is the mix of the leftovers, some of them are Matt flat from the modeling paste and some of them are shiny from the gel which is pretty funny. And I love the way that this texture tapestry is all about showcasing the different shiny gels with the fabulous gritty and textual past. Well, that's what it is for me. Anyway, it doesn't have to be the same for you. Remember, you don't have to do yours. You don't have to use the same colors, or the same textures, or gels, or paste. I just wanted to show you what's available, what's on the market, and how different they are. I'm thinking that's going to go there. Then we need something here. I'm going to have to pull my scrap bag out for that. I definitely want to add some of that beautiful coso paper as well. Little highlights can make all the difference to finishing off the beautiful collar. What about one of the fabulous circle shapes? I haven't used these for ages and I've got a few of my scrap bags, so let's pull that out. A black one, or do we want the white? I'll think about that. But I do like the dynamic of the black on that beautiful, dusty, pink color. It brings over that dark pattern over there, connects it with that side. I'm liking that. I like making connections in my collages with the two different sides of the pages. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to add perhaps a little bit of the beautiful tiny polka dots, which I really do absolutely adore and I know you can see through them to the texture below. That's always an added bonus. I do like having a few multiple layers in my collages. I just think it makes it more interesting, especially when we're celebrating texture. We can get away with a whole heap, that could be a consideration, a little bit of that paper. What am I going to add here? You have to think about that. Do I want to add any texted paper onto this side? I pulled out one of the white beehive circles. Which one do we like the best? Do we like the black one or do we like the white one? A man. Now, it's tricky. I'll let the white one sit there while think about it. Now, I had another thought that maybe I could continue this beautiful shape to the edge there like that. I like that idea because then it's repeating that shape. And repeating shapes in your collage is really good for your composition. Think I might just cut a piece a little bit further along and have a look at this idea. Repetition in your composition of your college creates a good rhythm in the colors and the textures. I'm liking that I think I might do that. I might repeat that shape there. I'll trim it up a little bit. All I've got to decide on is if I'm finished with this page or do I want to add something else. Right, So those ones are down. But I'm still stuck on this question of the beehive circle. Oh man, black or white king. I keep changing my mind. I love the connection to the white paper there, but I'm a little concerned that it's going to dissolve, being the white, and not have much impact. Whereas if I put the black one, it's a lot more dramatic. It stands on its own, connects with that side. All right, I'm doing it. I'm not going to change my mind again once I stick it on. That's that we've made up your mind. It's going to be the black one. I just have to have that little bit of drama. I could have pulled out a whole heap of other jelly prints and papers, but why would you do that? Sometimes the more you have, the harder you make it for yourself. If you stay within the confines of the papers you've just made or a particular color palette you've been working in, then it's a lot easier to put your collage together. Sometimes having too much is actually more of a hindrance because you can't decide and you chop and change and then you want to add too many elements to the page. I'm sticking to the papers that we just made in the pace and gels lesson. Besides adding the beautiful little coso papers, which of course we always have to have. Now I'm very tempted to add just another little shape in there on that side. And I'd really love to use some of this beautiful paper. I might even cut it, maybe something like this. And yes, I'm liking that. I'll glue those down. We'll let it all dry, and then we'll decide if I can actually leave it alone. You know, I just had to add one more piece to the beautiful collage and I'm very happy with it. I love the colors, I love the textures, and I love the contrast of the smooth, heavy gel bloss with the really tactile, gritty, sandy texture of the coarse texture medium. So much fun. The papers are beautiful and I can't wait to see what you do with your collage. 7. Tactile Harmony: Day 23, Tactile Harmony. How do we create tactile harmony? Well, we use a whole range of fabulous textures combining different layers and creating collage that's beautiful to look at and fun to touch. Now in this lesson, I'm going to give you a demonstration of crackle paste. I love crackle paste. It creates such an incredible texture, it's easy to use. You can mix it with colors. You can paint right over the top. But this time I am going to use a little canvas, because as you'll see from my demonstration, the crackle paste really will crack up the pages in your art journal. So I can't wait to show you this one. It turned out absolutely beautiful, right? So I've got some fabulous crackle paste, and I just want to show you how wonderful this medium is. I've got a selection of papers going from the thickest to the thinnest. Some printers, paper card stock, the Japanese rice paper, I'm always jelly printing with copy paper and wet strength tissue. And I'm going to put some of the crackle paste on each of these papers and let's see what it does and how it responds. Now, the thicker you put the crackle paste on, the bigger the cracks are going to be. If you put it on quite thin, then the areas will be quite thin cracks. Right? I know that sounds very logical, but I'm just going to explain it anyway. I'm going to put some on each of these papers, some are a little thicker and some in some thinner areas. And then we'll have a look and see what the response is, then you'll know whether or not you like this particular medium. It is pretty fun. There's a lot of things you can do with crackle paste. It is a great texture, fabulous for you mixed media projects. Let's just have a little plate, right? So we'll leave all these pieces to dry and then we'll come back and have a look and see what our fabulous crackle paste has done. So here's my experiments after just one day. You see what I mean by, I don't think crackle paste is great for the art journal, because by design, the crackle paste constricts to crack and cause that fabulous texture. And it's going to warp or buckle your papers and pages that are in your art journal. But look how cool the texture is. The texture is absolutely fabulous. It makes such great marks. So this is the Japanese rice paper that I've been using a lot for jelly printing, and it has actually coped quite well. I love the way it all curled up. It's absolutely fabulous to watch. It's so fascinating, and that's the crackle paste texture that we love. Now we can paint that with acrylic or inks, or water colors or pastels or pencils or poscopens or anything. It's absolutely fabulous. This one is the copy paper that's got great cracks and marks as well. Look how fabulous that texture is. It's like a sunburned ground. It's all dry and cracked up. Fabulous texture. Just love it. This one is the cardstock. It curled up quite a lot. I thought it would have held a bit better. This is my printer's paper. This was the thickest of the papers. I mustn't have put very much on there because it's not very thick. It doesn't have a lot of big cracks. In fact, it doesn't have a lot of cracks at all. That's probably because it really does need a rigid surface, a hard surface, to be able to create these fabulous marks and textures. Have a look at the wet strength tissue actually handled the crackle paste a lot better than I thought it would. Now you could glue some of this into your art journal, that would make fabulous texture. But if you do that, you really do need to seal it. Otherwise the crackle paste could actually flake and crack and fall off your page. Anyway, that's actually not a bad texture. This sweat strength tissue has held up a lot better than I thought it would, But yeah, these papers curled like I had imagined they would. That was just really fun exercise. I want to use the crackle paste. I want to create some of this fabulous texture. For this lesson, I'm definitely going to step outside of my art journal and create my collage on this fabulous little canvas. Now this is ten inch or 25 centimeter square. And I'm going to use this one just for this lesson because I really want to plaster it with crackle paste. The first thing I'm going to do is glue this jelly print on. Now, this jelly print I created yesterday, and I have showed you this technique in the previous class. I started with an image transfer on the plate. I then added some paint and sprayed it so that it creates that fabulous texture. I then sprayed it with some, I then continued to put on more layers of the beautiful, transparent paint. Spray them with water so they would create the fabulous texture. Now remember, you must wait in between each layer for it to dry completely before you put the next layer on. Then I put the bronze on, put the paper down, left it for a few hours, and pulled up the print. It's looking rather beautiful. I love it. My idea is to glue it on this canvas. I'm going to wrap the sides with some colored tissue, and yes, I've showed you how to do that in the previous lesson. Then I'm going to put some of that glorious crackle paste on this particular image. I think it would work well because these are looking like rustic old doors. There's a lock there, a keyhole up there. I'm not sure. I'm going to have to probably go to the edge of the keyhole like that, maybe to the edge of the lock there. And then I'll put some crackle paste around it and on it and create more of that beautiful texture. Well, that's the plan anyway, right? So I'm going to start by wrapping my sides in the beautiful colored tissue because I really love the sides to be painted that matches the beautiful painting on the front. I think it's really important. It looks more professional, it looks more finished, I just like it. I often start with doing the sides first in a color that's going to complement the artwork that's going to be on the front of the canvas. I love using the colored tissue because it's so soft, it's so easy to use. It's easy to wrap around the canvas. You can create it in any color you want. It works really well. It's a win win. It's a great way to start because you get yourself moving, you get yourself motivated. And you can think about what you're going to put on the front of your canvas while you're creating the color around the side. Now the edges, you just fold them like a present over that. Nice and neat, easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, right? So I have all of the sides covered with the beautiful bronze colored tissue, which I love making so much. It's one of my absolutely favorite collage papers. Now I'm going to glue this on with the medium in the middle right there. And then I'm going to wait for it to dry before I add the crackle paste. I just think that might be a better plan. Glue that on, wait for it to dry, then we'll add some crackle paste. Right? I'm thinking the paper is now dry enough. Looking fabulous on my canvas. Let's put on the crackle paste. Now, the thicker we use the crackle paste, the bigger and deeper the cracks, the thinner causes more textural, thin cracky bits. Let's just put some on and see how it, I'm going to put some thicker areas and then I'm going to have some thin areas as well. Hopefully my paper was dry enough. It's a really nice consistency. The crackle paste. Although it does have a strange smell, I don't know what is actually in it to cause it to crack. But it is a bit of fun and it does create fabulous texture. And that's what we're all, we're all about, creating fabulous texture. This is a bit of fun. Once it's dry, I'm going to paint it and we'll see what else we can do with the marks that it creates. Right? That's quite thick and there's quite thick, that should create nice, big cracks. Then we might just put some thin cracky bits here. Then I'll probably use some of the earthy tones that's in the print and blend more into the painting. Something like that. Maybe a little bit up here as well. Right? Right. So I'll let that dry and then we'll see how well that crack pot works. It will take a day, maybe even two, to dry properly, depending on the weather and how thick you've put the paste on. It's a whole lot of fun. 8. Finishing Project 23: Look how fabulous my beautiful crackle paste has dried up. Yes, it has done everything it was supposed to do. Beautiful textured cracks. Big ones, little ones. Now it has been two days. I've left the crackle paste for two days to dry completely. As you can see, it's absorbed the color from my painted colored tissue that I had put on underneath that was wrapped around from the side. The paste has sucked up the inks and sprays and colors from on that tissue and absorbed it into the textured areas there. Which really doesn't matter because I'm going to paint it, but I find it quite fascinating. You do have to wait until the crackle paste is completely dry before you see all the beautiful textures of the marks that it creates. It does say on the jar that it can take up to three days. There you go. Depending on the temperature and where you live, you might have to wait three days. I've waited two days and I'm pretty sure this is dry enough. Now, the crackle paste can be a little flaky. You do have to be gentle when we're now going to paint it, that you don't actually knock it off the canvas. We will seal it once we're happy with everything so that it doesn't flake off in the future because we can't go to all this work, create something amazing, and then have it flake off on the. That would not be good. Now, I have some Van **** Brown hue, little bit of water to loosen up the paint, and I'm going to just give it a beautiful coat of Van **** Brown straight onto the crackle paste. Now I intend to paint over this brown with lighter shades and eventually absolutely bronze on the top to pick up or scumble over the top. The beautiful texture marks that it creates a good layer of vandyke brown on the crackle paste first. And like I said, just be a little bit gentle that it's not flaky, especially the bigger pieces because they might come off under your brush. You do have to be a little gentle, making sure you cover all of your crackle paste and getting into the deep cabins that you've made with the glorious texture. Right now, we have to leave this layer to dry and then we'll come back and put on some lighter colors and some beautiful bronze. And decide how we want to blend it into our glorious background texture. Right, My Van **** Brown is all nice and dry. Have a look at the fabulous cracks. I love this texture. I've put a few different colors on my palette because I'm just not sure what I'm going to want. I want to add some of the transparent red on oxide, which is this color here. Some of the burnt sienna looking colors. But it's a transparent color. I'm going to use this one which is a red gold. And I'm not sure which color is going to work better for what I want. I've just put a few here on my palette to have a little play and see which color is going to work better for how I want it to look. You do have to do that. You do have to have a little experiment. Try a few ideas and it doesn't work. Come back when it's dry and try another color. I'm not sure what I want, I'm not sure exactly how I want it to look. I'm just going to play with these colors that I've put on, maybe some bronze or maybe some copper. I've got some unbleached titanium as well, and we'll just see which one's going to really work better for the look I want to achieve. I'm thinking that a mix of the colors would look really good. I like the unbleached titanium coming on there in just a painterly expression like this, that looks really cool. It's just going to be a matter of having a bit of a play and seeing how I want it to look. Well, the black cracks didn't really work out how I thought they might, but I'm really enjoying the color. I love this paint that's going on. I love the way it's really blending in with the background image transfer and the texture of it's making me happy. I'm going to continue putting these beautiful colors on my lovely texture paste here, Then when this layer is dry, I think I'll just scumble some bronze or some copper over the top to give it a bit of a metallic shine. Because we know I absolutely love the bling. Can't not have it. So I'll keep at it with these colors that I'm using, I think they work really well. Then we'll add some of the beautiful metallic shine. That layer of paint is dry and I'm really happy with the color. I think it's blending in well. And I'm just putting a little bit of bronze, just slightly touching it on the top of the texture, just where those beautiful cracks and lines are, just so it picks up a little bit of shine, especially when the lights hit it. Not too much, because I really love the way the colors have created such a movement. And the textures looking really beautiful, right? Just a little bit of the bronze, just to create a bit of the metallic shine. When you scumble or touch the top of the texture with a dry brush, it accentuates the beautiful contours and the lines of the textures. Right, that's enough. I'm not going to add anymore, but I do want to add something else. I'm feeling like I want to have something, maybe a found object or some paper or just something going to go and have a rummage through my box. I'm loving the beautiful quality of the texture because it's so three dimensional. This is tactile harmony. I think I can get away with putting some found objects on there and some textured paper. Now I've pulled out my absolutely fabulous, partly without it, amazing scrap bag. I've got a piece of textured paper that might work. I also have some of the keys from class one without keys of success, lesson, beautiful little trinkets that I purchased on Amazon. I love them. They're great. Now remember I keep saying put everything in a box because the classes compound. And we use items and textures and techniques in the next class or the next class, or any of the classes down the track. If you put all your bits and pieces into a box, you'll know where to find them. That's my plan. Anyway, I'm going to use one of those because I think it works well with the doors and the lock and the keyhole. And it's a bit of fun. That's probably too big. Let's start by tearing the textured paper down. This paper is colored because I used it to take a print in. Yes, another class. The abstract landscape glass. I was taking fabulous prints with the glorious textured paper. I'm thinking maybe something like that, a little bit more off the top. It's just a matter of working out the shape. Put it down here, I'm thinking. Then one of these keys. Which one? That's a little small, that's a little, can't see it. What about the big one? Should we go with the big one? If we're going to do it, we may as well just really do. I could put it there, the key on it like that. I'm liking that idea. The texture looks great. You can still see the door handle. You get an idea of what it is. And I think that would finish the beautiful composition and the mixed media painting really well, because you can see quite clearly the keyhole. I think that putting the key on it is just a bit of fun and there's the lock under there, so I might even move it up a little so it sits there. Yeah, I think that'll work. I'll glue that down. And then I'll give you a close up because you have to see how glorious my crackle paste looks. Now if you decide to do a mixed media artwork on canvas like this one with the magical crackle paste, I think before we move on, I'll just show you how to varnish or seal your painting. Now, this crackle paste has had quite a few layers of paint. There's probably little chance that it would flake off, little to none. It's not going to flake off, it's pretty solid. Acrylic paint is like glue. But I do like to varnish my paintings, especially when they're on canvas because it just seals them. It'll seal the image transfer. And it just makes me happy knowing that everything has been sealed properly. Now I'm using a satin varnish, you can use gloss, and you can use Mac. I prefer a brush on, and I particularly like this brand, which you don't have to use the brand at all. You can use whatever it is that you like to use wherever you are, brush it on. Pretty simple. Really not hard. Sometimes I like to use a gloss varnish. Pretty short year, I never use a matt varnish even though I use match gel medium when I'm creating it. When it comes to varnishing, I used to use gloss a lot, but these days I tend to use more satin because I have more papers involved in my colleges. You just have to choose what you want to do for yourself and your artwork and what's going to make you happy. Now I just do one coat like this over it, then I know everything has been sealed, it's not going to flake off. Also, it helps with the UV rays against fading for your image transfer. It just completes the project beautifully. Ya looking gorgeous. Just love it. The colors are wonderful. Now I also just like to add just a little bit down the sides. It also catches anything if it dripped over when I was putting it on the front. And then my beautiful artwork is complete. All I would need to do is tape and string in the back and then I can hang it on the wall. You be absolutely beautiful, right? So I'll let that dry, give you a close up, and then we're onto the next class. 9. Threads & Textures: Day 24 threads and textures. Now we're getting into using the beautiful texture of fabrics and threads. And embroidery. And stitching, Well, maybe not me, because I actually don't sew. But what I really did enjoy with his lesson was pulling out the sewing pattern paper and using it for jelly printing. It creates the most fabulous lines and graphic marks. And when you're creating prints on top of them with beautiful, transparent colors, they just turn out so fabulous. So pull out all your pieces of fabric, or lace or anything really material, create some texture jelly prints and put some collage together using these fabulous textures. Maybe you've got some beautiful patterns and you could contrast this with perhaps the roughness of some burlap or some silky smooth satin. That'll be fun. I can't wait to see what you're going to do with this inspiration. Right, Heading into the threads and texture lesson, I think I want to start by creating some jelly prints with some material or fabric because that's our theme. Now these three pieces here came from the dollar store. That was a packet of reusable shopping bags. Look how fun that is. This one and then this one. And I already cut this one to pieces because I was just so excited about using it on the gel plate. I'll probably chop up this one, let's use that for some texture and then I'm going to print onto this one and see what that does. Make. Got some papers. I've also got some stencils, and I've chopped up some fabulous dressmaking pattern because I'm going to print on this as well. It's in our theme of fabric and I think it'll be a whole lot of fun. How about we start with that one? Let's see the texture that this fabulous piece will create. I've got some fun bright colors for the plate, and we'll see what fabulous prints we can create with these glorious textures. Now to create the mark on the plate, we're going to need to push that fabric down. So I'm going to use a piece of the rice paper to do that. It's all about the experimentation. Oh, that's really nice. I'm going to put that straight away onto a piece of the fabulous dressmaking pattern. It really is just like printing on tissue paper straight on the plate with the fabric straight off onto the dressmaking pattern. That's a great start. A whole lot of fun look at the beautiful texture, right? So I cut this bag into pieces and I'm going to try this one next. Now, there's so many ways to use fabric from the dollar store and from anywhere, really on your gel plate because they do create great prints. You don't need to spend lots of money on stencils. There's so many textures around your house that will also create fabulous marks on the gel plate. Right? Let's put this one down, don't they look so nice and clean until I cover them in paint, but it is pretty fun. It was like a couple of dollar for three different bags, reusable shopping bags, and all I could see was the fabulous texture that it would make on the gel plate. Yes, I didn't use my paper that time. Oh, well, that's going to lead such a great textual mark. I think this time we might wait and pull this print when it's dry. It's really not going to take very long. A couple of minutes. It'll be dry and then I'm going to pull it with another color. I'm thinking, how about iridescent copper? And I think we'll pull it onto wet strength tissue. Oh yes, that looks beautiful. Look at the fabulous pattern from the simple mesh shopping bag. Love it, just love it. This time we might start with the copper. What about we tried printing with the third shopping bag and see how that goes. You might use this stencil and create some shapes. Here's the piece of the shopping bag, now it's very thin. I don't think it's picking up the paint, but you don't know until you try. You have to at least try these things. It's not covering my hand, so I guess it's not coming through. Not too bad. There it is quite a nice, beautiful, subtle print. Actually, it looks better than I thought it was going to. It could be really nice over something as like a transparent layer over the top. That would be nice if you were really serious about wanting to actually jelly print on fabric. You could put some fabric medium into your paints and then it would stick better on the fabric. You could also then heat seal it and it would stay and remain. And you could print onto all sorts of things, even T shirts or bags or any kind of fabric. Really, the possibilities are endless depending on what you want to achieve and what you want to experiment with. But that's a nice transparent layer. Not too bad. Not too bad. So I think I'll pull the ghost print onto something else. Now what about if we build up some layers on the plate, creating different shapes? Have a little bit of fun, throw the paint around and see where we end up. I'm going to put this square mask on one of my fabulous pieces of the dressmaking pattern and create some layers on the beautiful papers. Don't the lines look great with the square shaped mask? I'm really loving the square stencil with the dressmaking pattern. It's just making me happy. It looks great. I love the design. I'm going to keep printing some more and I'm going to do some second layers over them because I think it's really fun the way I've got this graphic line and the pattern of the stencil, I think that's working really well. That's just fun. I've already got one on this piece and I'm going to pick up the gold ghost print and put it on top. I think that looks just beautiful. Sometimes you just have to start creating, get moving to see what you're in the mood for and what you want to make today. Right now, this dressmaking pattern with the squares is actually really inspiring me the most out of all my little experiments. Yes, look how good that looks with the bronze on top of the previous print of the same stencil. Love the black lines coming through. That's just working so well. I'm going to try this shopping bag again with paint that's a little thicker. This is a full body. The last one was a fluid paint and I'm thinking that maybe it might print better. If the paints a little thicker. We'll give it a try. Have another go see what it looks like. These stencils and masks are working really well. I'm really loving the patterns on them and I'm going to build up some layers on the papers and just create a whole lot of fun prints with a fabulous dressmaking pattern. Let's have a look at how well this one printed. Oh, it's still a little pale, but it's definitely stronger. It definitely has a better print on it. You can see it much more clearly this time. Yes, I do think thicker paint is going to work better if you're printing onto fabric. A full body paint, not a fluid paint. And definitely get the fabric medium if you really want it to stay. But that's really fun. I like that. Have a look at all my magnificent prints, and don't they look fabulous? I know I kept printing and printing and printing, and I absolutely love the way you can see the glorious pattern on it, the dressmaking pattern, and the graphic line that comes through, especially with transparent paint. I think that looks fabulous. I love it. I know I have so many. I don't know how I'm going to choose which ones I'm going to use for the collars today. This one you can see the fabric texture, where I printed with the Dollar store shopping bag. I think this worked really well. This one worked great too. They make fabulous background texture, especially for these glorious jelly prints on the dressmaking pattern, they worked really well. You could also use cheese, cloth, or any other particular fabric. And talking about fabric, they printed really well on the fabric. This was the other piece of the $2 shopping bags. I put a couple of layers on the print and they were just beautiful. I'm thinking that I'd like to come back and revisit printing onto fabric because I think it would be an interesting technique to try, especially if you put some fabric medium into the paint, Right? So what am I going to use for my college? There's so many of these prints that I really like, it's going to be hard to decide. I'm definitely using something with the dressmaking pattern coming through because I really like these lines. I think they look fabulous, especially with this particular stencil. I'm going to have to narrow it down. Going to have to decide somehow which ones am I going to use. 10. Finishing Project 24: This is the other print that I took from the shopping bag and you can see underneath those fabulous textured marks that this particular material made. I'm keeping these for future use with my jelly printing because I really like the effect that they had and the texture they made. And it was so easy, we like easing. Make sure you keep an eye out in the dollar stores for reusable shopping bags. They're great textures for your gel plate. They make such fabulous, cheap and easy tools. What am I going to start with? Definitely one of the ones with the dressmaking pattern. I rather like this one because you can see so much of it. It would fit nicely like that on my page. Maybe baby, I'm thinking maybe I want some of the fabric printed piece. Just so I can remember that I really liked this idea and I could come back to it at another time. One of the great reasons for creating this series in your art journal is that you can look back, you can look back at the ideas, and the techniques, and the lessons. And you can be reminded of different things that you've liked, like different techniques, or different colors or textures, or the way we've created something. So for me, I'm going to use one of these pieces or those. Oh man, I still haven't decided which one. Then I'm going to put a piece of the printed shopping bag on the side because I want to remember that. I'm going to come back at another time and experiment with some jelly printing onto fabric. That's going to go on that side. One side of the side, which of the prints I like the best. Then on this side, I really like to use some more material type texture. Although I do like this one, this is really nice, it's got that fabulous background from the shopping bag. Then I might use some of the beautiful Coso paper. I have this magnificent piece, have a look at this, the glorious handmade paper. It's one of the fibrous papers. It's material, it's actually made of bark. It's incredible. It's textures. I think it's magnificent. Look at the lines and patterns on it that would work really well. I'm thinking I'm going to cut a piece for this side of the page, although I just don't know which section I liked the best. That's going to be my problem today is actually deciding, but I'm thinking maybe I'll put one of the gel prints down from the material print and some of this beautiful, gorgeous paper that looks like fabric. Now if you don't have any of this magnificent paper from Coso, you could probably get the similar look and texture from cheesecloth. This is a piece of cheesecloth and I was playing with this in class two, in our Found Objects class. I find that if you pull at it like this and tear it up a little, it does create those runs in the material, it becomes like this. Quite textural with the beautiful lines and threads and fibrous looking material. Cheese cloth is really cheap to get your hands on. You'll just have to spend a bit of time pulling at it like this and creating ladders in the material to create the same effect as this beautiful coso, paper cheap option. Pretty easy. You could probably sit down while you're watching the tally and pull at some cheesecloth and create that beautiful fibrous look. So I'm going to decide which pieces I'm going to stick on and then create the collages in my art journal. Right, that's looking good. I've got those two layers down. I chopped a piece off this beautiful paper. I know it's almost sacrilegious to chop up, but I did it so I'm going to put these two on this side and then I just have to find some kind of focal point or to add onto these layers. I'm thinking maybe a piece of ribbon or something down the middle there could finish this page very nicely. I just love the beautiful detail in the texture on this jelly print from my fabulous shopping bag. Reusable shopping bag from the dollar store. Now don't forget if you are wanting to get some of the glorious. So paper that there is a discount code. Make sure you use it because you will save yourself 10% It's always worth putting in the discount code, saving a bit of money. Then we can buy some more, right? I'm going to put this on like that and then I'll need some focal point. I'm thinking or something in the middle there. I might have to revisit my box from the previous classes and see what else I might have as leftovers. That's a good idea. I'm absolutely loving the texture of this beautiful bar paper material. Look at it, It's absolutely fabulous. It's got such an incredible weave to it. I'm enjoying my beautiful patterned paper over this side. Now I'm going to go with this ribbon. It's like a threaded string and it's really nice. I like it. I think it came from out of my Taperology box. I think it would suit really well to put it down the middle like that because I like the contrast of the beautiful textured material. I love that you can still see my dressmaking pattern underneath my fabric there reminds me that I want to come back and revisit that again and do some jelly printing onto material. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put this right here. I think it looks beautiful. I love the texture and it's going to work well with my other elements. Now, this side, of course, is going to have to dry and I'm not sure if I'm going to add anything because, oh man, the paper itself is such an artwork. Maybe I'll just scumble some paint over the top, so highlight with some gold or some bronze just to highlight the beautiful fabric. Not sure. I'll wait for it to dry and then I'll decide. Right. My fabric is almost dry. Not quiet, but touch dry. I gave it a little trim up. Isn't it looking fabulous? Now I had a rummage through my box, but I really couldn't find anything for a focal point that was making me happy. I don't want to detract from the beautiful pattern of this fabric. I think it's glorious. Then I went through my cupboard and seeing as this lesson is all about pulling out the mediums and pastes and gels from your cupboard that are lurking in the back that you haven't actually used. I've pulled out some gold Mica flakes. I've never actually used them. And they have been sitting in my cupboard for quite some time. Yes, I'm speaking to myself with this glass as I'm making it going. Yes, I'm a culprit. I'm having something I've never used sitting in the cupboard. I'm not sure what it's going to look like, but I'm figuring it'll probably be beautiful. I'm just going to go with it. I'm going to put it on here and I think I'm going to use this stencil, because this particular stencil has got the same shape and line as this fabric. And I think that should work well. This could be a bit of a gamble, but I am one to take risks. It's only an art journal. We can always paint over it if we don't like it. Now I have got no idea what this will look like when it's dry. It says gold mica flake. It sounds good, doesn't it? I honestly have never actually used it, even though it was sitting in my cupboard. Right. I don't know how much to put on. I'm going to put that bit on there. I'm thinking that's going to work. Well now let's put another section on. Maybe down here. I like the idea that it looks almost like waves. I think it really mimics the fabric very well. I guess we won't know until it dries If we actually like to the idea, right? That's that the gold micro flake is now on the page. Let's do the big reveal. Lift the stencil and hope for the best. Now we just have to wait for it to dry to see what it's really going to look like. Micro flakes have dried and don't they look just beautiful, especially if you catch them in the light? Very gold, very glittery, very beautiful. They look really nice on my paper there, which I did, pull out the bronze shimmer spray and had a little spritzer on my paper because I just wanted to take the stark whiteness of it so it match better with the warm tones of my page. It's so easy. I love using these Zincs. They're definitely my favorite spray inks. Now coming back to the gold micro flake, to be honest, I think you could probably achieve exactly the same result, this look and texture using the gloss heavy gel that we've used in the previous lessons and glitter. Seriously. If you mix those two elements together, I'm pretty sure that would give you exactly the same kind of texture, the beautiful metallic, glittery look of the gold micro flakes. And it would save you a heck of a lot of money because I'm pretty sure this would have been expensive as it's a golden product. Of course, I can't remember because it's been in my cupboard for quite a while. It would have to have been over a year. It was sitting in there no idea what it cost me, but it wouldn't be cheap. If you want to create this beautiful, glittery texture, which is really nice and thick and lovely, then I suggest you put up with the gloss heavy gel. It would work just as well. It would look just as beautiful. And there's another experiment for you to try. I'm loving my glorious material collage pages. It was really fun doing this lesson. I've enjoyed it so much. What do you think of my beautiful collages? Can't wait to get started on the next one. 11. String Symphony: Day 25 string symphony. I absolutely love using string on the jelly plate. It creates the most incredible lines and textures. And I really think the ghost prints are my favorite. I really love the different textures that it makes. Using the different types of threads, from the simple ones to the really furry fabric types of threads. It creates different marks on the jelly plate. They look fabulous, and I really enjoy. We're also going to be experimenting with string gel. This is a fabulous texture medium, although it is expensive, so don't rush out and buy it. Have a look what I'm doing and decide for yourself if you like this technique. It can be very experimental, it is a whole lot of fun, and it does create amazing texture. So I can't wait to see what experiments you come up with using the string on the jelly plate and in your colas string symphony. How very exciting I love doing string prints on the jelly plate. It creates incredible textures. It makes amazing marks, and they're really easy tools to get ahold of. I have some beautiful wall that I'm going to use some string, some cord that I use to string my canvases some more, very thin, tight, and then I have some fabulous fury, beautiful threads from my taperology box. They are glorious. They're going to make amazing marks because they have such beautiful textures to them. And look, they come apart like this. That's going to be interesting. I also have the cords that I cut off the $2 bags that I was using yesterday to take the prints. I'm going to cut the rest of this fabric away and use this cord because it's so nice and thick. What I'm looking for is a difference in the textures from very thin, like these ones of the string. This wool is going to be more absorbent, that's going to make a different mark in a texture to these really fury multi threaded wool, almost textured threads from taperology. The cord is going to be thicker again, all of them will make different marks, they'll take different prints. It's going to be a whole lot of fun and I just can't wait, right? So I've pulled out my big 12, 14 inch gel print because I have a lot of threads to try. Now, go and have a rummage around gel plate and find some threads and some string. Pull out your gel plate and let's create a whole heap of prints. What I really love about using string on the gel plate is particularly the ghost print. I've put some Vandyke brown on and I'm putting some flo turquoise. The ghost prints turn out absolutely amazing. And we're going to print some layers upon layers and see what textures and marks we can create. Right bit of turquoise, bit of Vandyke Brown. Let's get going. Now, what I particularly love about this particular thread that I have, if you can call it that is all of the different textures within the same piece, look at them all. The light blue one there looks really quite feathery. It's just a matter of putting them on the plate, maybe separating them a little bit and seeing how they're going to print. Now, you do have to be a little bit quick. I don't have open paint or paint that stays dry for a long period of time. I do need to quick sticks, get moving and get it on the plate. Now the first print we take is basically just going to surround all of those textures and string lines. Take the paint off the plate that's surrounding all of those lines. And then what we get left with is the beautiful ghost print. That's the print that I particularly love. Now I'm using wet strength tissue today because I do want to make sure it's going to grab up, that pat around the string, it's very versatile. It's a tough tissue paper that's today exactly what I need the load down. There's the first print with all of those fabulous stringy textures. Doesn't that look great? It looks like an aerial view of a river system. I love that. Now if we pull all these off, you can see the beautiful ghost print. Isn't that amazing how it looks? I absolutely love it the best. I'm just going to give this a minute. Just to dry and then I'm going to pull that print with a light color. What I love about these textures is how fine you can really get the print that's from the beautiful feathery thread through that one. Then you can see the difference here with the wall, It's thicker and stronger and more of a definite line. Absolutely love it because the print is quite a thin layer. It really shouldn't take very long to dry. I'm going to pull it with a pastel Ultra Marine, which is basically the turquoise with a lot of white in it. We'll put this on and see how this beautiful texture responds. Pulls up with some wet strength tissue. Look how it pulls up all of those fabulous textures. I just love using string on the gel plate because there's endless possibilities. There's so much you can do. It's a really cheap tool. It's easy to find around your house, and there's so many ways that you can put it on the plate and pull such fabulous prints. I really could have kept printing. I absolutely loved it. I was having such a great time playing with these beautiful threads. Now you can see this is a first print, and the paint is all around the threads. And look at the incredible marks that they make. I know they work so well. Then this is the got that I pull with bronze and bit of unbleached titanium that looks absolutely stunning. I love it. You can see all of the glorious texture of the threads. They worked really well. I love the way they came apart. Then on this print, you can see the distinct sharp lines of the cord, and the string, and the wool. They make incredibly different textured marks. They're all fun to work with, they're all really fun to take prints of. I could have just kept printing and printing this ghost print I printed onto bronze and copper. It looks absolutely fabulous. I love both of the textures that the different threads, and strings and cords make. This was the last one I printed. You can see the first print. I wanted to put all of them on the plate because I was just having so much fun. I laid each cord and thread and string and wall out on the plate just in a strata composition straight across. So I could show you really clearly the difference. Look at that. It looks like a feathery mark and then that's the straight mark of the wall. That would be the, because it's a lot thicker then that's that beautiful textural threads that I'm pretty sure I've pulled out of my taperology box. And this is the ghost print pulled with the unbleached titanium, the bronze, and the copper. I think I'm loving this one the best. I'm definitely going to use it for my college, although this one's pretty nice as well. This is another ghost print. They really are. Fabulous. Motto prints. You can't repeat them, even if you tried, And that's what's so special about them. I think it's amazing, the incredible detail of the texture that you can see from the beautiful thread. I can't wait to see what it is that you're going to play with. Now if you don't like the white marks from the first print, you can spray them. I spray this paper with the gold mine straight onto the front. But if you don't like the overspray on your print, you can just turn your print over and spray the back. If it's an absorbent paper, the Japanese rice paper will soak straight through the paper, So does This fabulous wet strength tissue works really well for this paper. It means you don't get all the overspray, but you get the color in the white sections of the print. You could also use this print as a transparent piece on a collage, so you could put it onto something and maybe put some textured paper underneath like some writing, or text, or music notes that would look really cool. There are lots of ways that you can use the first print, especially onto tissue because of that transparent quality. I absolutely love using the different threads. I love the difference between the sharp lines of the cords and strings and the beautiful textural lines of the other more fabric threads. Have a little play, pull out what you've got. Try and find some different types of string for your string symphony and have a lot of fun. Right now I want to show you the string el medium, what it looks like, what it does, just so you know, in case you want some for any of your mixed media projects. 12. Fantastic String Gel Medium: Right. This is the string gel by liquid text and you can have a lot of fun with this medium. It's quite fascinating to use. I'm just going to use it with the back of a brush. It has the consistency of yes, string. It flows out in a continual line, which is absolutely fascinating. You can change and structure the texture if you go up higher or down lower, faster or slower with the way you dribble out that string gel will create different kinds of marks. You can get it really, really tiny, tiny, thin, or you can get quite thick depending on how fast and how close you are to the substrate you're using. Yes, I did say it is a lot of Fu, but it's not a cheap medium. And you don't want to rush out and buy it because, yes, it is quite expensive like all the mediums can be. I really did just want to show you what it is, what's on the market. Because if you were creating a beautiful artwork on canvas, then it would be a fabulous medium to use to create that beautiful textured string. Not so great for in the art journal because unless you're going to cover your page with, say, the baking paper that I like to use, it will stick because it is an acrylic medium and dry, but it will be quite sticky and tacky in your art journal. You probably don't want to use it in an art journal, but definitely on a canvas or wood panel, or paper or different substrate that you're creating your artwork with. Now, of course, you can mix acrylic paint with the string gel. I do suggest when you do mix acrylic paint to use fluid paint because then it's going to mix up very easy. It's not going to be or lumpy because that would detract from the beautiful stringy quality. You do want to wait just a little while after you've added your paint to the string gel so it has a chance to actually regain that chemical compound that makes it very string. I perhaps haven't left it long enough because I only just put the gold in and I'm impatient and I want to show you, so you do have to wait for it to regain its chemical compound that makes it stringy once you've added the acrylic paint. But it does come back. And it is just as effective as by itself if you want to add beautiful acrylic colors to it. The string gel does dry, perfectly clear, even though it looks milky white when you first put it on. It's quite fascinating, really. Yes, I did get rather carried away at one stage creating string gel circles as focal points on my collages. Well, how could I not they look so fantastic. Look how good they are. They're a fabulous focal point. All of that beautiful texture and shiny stringy lines. I just love it. 13. Finishing Project 25: Now I've narrowed down my choice for my collage with one or some of these papers. But look how small my art journal is. There's not much chance that I'm going to fit too many of these on there. So I'm going to have to decide which ones I like the best. I'm definitely using some of this one. I think I might put it on that side. Perhaps a section of it like that. I'm thinking I might even put some of the thread onto the page. Maybe it's in a bit of a tangled mess, but I'm pretty sure I could pull out perhaps some of these. These are the actual threads that I was printing with. Maybe I might think of putting a little piece on there. Just so I can remember that's what I was using because I really love these particular patterns. What am I going to put on the other side? Maybe I'll put a section of this one. I love this section here. Perhaps it could sit on top of a section of this beautiful one because it's such a nice color. Do we think that'll work? That might work with the pastal ultramarine. We could put that section there on top of it. There wouldn't be too much left on the page. So we could do something like that. This is really nice too. I love the bronze on that. And then I really do like the strong lines of the string and the wool that's on this pattern. See how much fun you can have creating the lines with the string. It's so easy and there's so much you can do. I absolutely love using string and threads and wool on the gel play. It's quite endless, the amount of possibility for your prints. Even a section of this would look nice, man. How am I going to decide? Well, I think I'll start by chopping this piece up, putting it on that side. I think I will put some of this on because I think that could look quite cool. And then by time I've done that, I may have decided which one I'm going to use for this side that fit. Looks good too. Look at that. Yeah, I like that this side has gone down nicely. I decided to put it on this side because I'm definitely going to go with some of this thread. This side just getting a bit of a roundness to it because it's so thick with the texture. Maybe we'll put some on that side. Now, I'm still indecisive as to which piece I want to put on this side because I love them all. They worked out just fabulous. Yes, I do love using the string on the gel plate. I'm thinking I'm going to go with this beautiful piece here and then add some of this one. I'm thinking I really like this section in here or I'm going to use this one man, that's pretty beautiful too. I do like the contrast with this one. I like the way the strong sharp lines which have been created from the thicker cord and the wall. And the string and the yarn. Maybe some of this one on this side. Yes. I'm liking the contrast. All right. I'm going to do that. Right. That page is down, looking beautiful. I just love these lines. They look so fabulous. Now this is what I was using to create this texture. It's only a little tangled figuring. I could put a little bit of it on the page that would remind me what I used and it would look great. I really enjoyed working with this. On the gel plate, it printed with such incredibly fabulous textured marks. I'm going to put a piece of that like that too easy. Lemon squeezy. Just got to put it all down with the mat medium and then let it all dry and I'll show you how fabulous it's going to look. What do you think of my collages? I'm really happy with my pages. I absolutely love jelly printing with the strings. It creates incredible abundance of textures and marks. And it's so simple, I can't wait to see what you're going to create. And I'm so excited to get started on the next lesson. 14. Crafting Textured Focal Points: Day 26, Crafting textured focal points. I absolutely love creating acrylic skins. I went through a season a long time ago where I just kept creating these acrylic skins printing on them, painting them, cutting them up, collaging with them, because it's so fun. And there's so many experimental ways you can use this particular texture, so I can't wait to show you. It's highly creative. There's so many things that we can do with the acrylic skins and it's really fun. I'm sure you're going to come up with more ideas of how to use these focal points in your college. And I can't wait to see what you're going to do. I'm so excited about doing our acrylic skin lesson today. I love making acrylic skins. Now the first thing you have to do is make sure you have some plastic, good quality plastic, so that you can put the acrylic medium on. We're going to be using the same texture paste and modeling paste and acrylic paste that we've already been using in other lessons in this class. If you did go out and buy some new tubes of these, you'll be able to use them again for this particular lesson. Yeah, I love using up the products that we have. It's so much fun now. I like to use L shaped pockets. I get them from the stationery warehouse. I know you're probably not in New Zealand, but any stationary supply shop should have these. They're plastic. This is an three size. What I like to do is split them here and open them up flat so I have a really good surface to work on. When I'm creating the skins, it folds out to that size, which is a great size as you can see. And then I'll split them down the middle here, so I have two pieces. Now the benefit of that is that when you make the skins, they really do take considerable time to dry. If you've got a few pieces of plastic like this, you can create your skins, pick it up, move it off your desk, and then keep creating some more on another piece. Now you don't have to use these, this is just what I'm using. You can of course, use any plastic so that you can peel the acrylic medium off it. Right now, of course, you can make any shape with the acrylic medium. It just really needs to be quite thick and solid. If your shapes are too delicate or fine, it's really hard to peel them off the plastic. I'm going to go with a couple of circle shapes to start with. Then we might get a little bit more adventurous. We'll see how we go, but this is a really quick and easy way to create some circle shapes. It's a nice size. Using this whole punch, I think it'll make a really nice little acrylic skin that we can use for a focal point of a collar. I've got some circle shapes there and I'm going to just put them onto my plastic and then we have to let them dry. I think I'll start with the glass beads. Now what I like about using a simple template like this is that it's really easy to put the acrylic medium on, straight on, like that, straight over the top, and we're going to have a perfect circle. Now I'm just going to leave that there. Try not to move it because I'm going to straightaway add one of the course texture mediums onto this one like that, Spread it out, same thing covering my circle template. And then one more before I move it. With the light modeling paste, you want to put enough on so that it's a nice thick layer of the acrylic medium so that it's easy to peel off once it's dry. If it's too thin, it's really difficult to peel off. And somewhat a tad frustrating, a nice thick layer of the acrylic medium by three circle templates. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Don't they look fabulous? Now if you've got a little bit of overflow there, you can just wipe that off straight away with a baby white. Then you've got nice, neat, oops, try not to touch the edge circles. That's a great way to start. Now, the glass beads will go completely clear. When it's dry, the texture paste goes a little darker and the light modeling paste stays the same. You must let it dry completely before you try to peel them off the plastic. Otherwise, they will snap or break or they will just come apart. We don't like that they have to be completely dry. You need to give them one full day and I usually like to give them two. Now, of course you don't have to do circles. You can do any shapes that takes your fancy. The whole puns was so easy, it's such a great place to start. But what about if I cut out some leaf shapes That's going to be a good solid shape that's going to peel off easy from the plastic. We might put a couple of these shapes on and fill them in with the different medium. You just have to keep them further enough apart that you can put the medium on without bumping into the next one. Cut out those shapes, bring back the plastic and let's put our leaves on here. Now, how about we try some of that gold micro flake that we used in one of the previous lessons? Let's see what that's going to look like as an acrylic skin. You don't know until you try Some of the mediums work better than others, but you definitely want to have a good solid thick amount so that it makes it a lot easier to peel it off the plastic. That might have been just a little too much. Perhaps we should take a little bit of. Okay, okay. What about glass bead leaf? I really do love the glass beads and we'll add one in the light molding paste. Right, so there we go. Our three beautiful leaf shapes, just as fabulous as the circle ones will leave them to dry, they should peel off pretty easily. Now, of course, you don't have to cut a shape to create the acrylic skins. We can just make a beautiful, nice big slab that we can peel off the plastic. Once it's dry, we can then cut it afterwards into any shape we want to or add any other element to it. I'm going to put some of the glass beads into almost rectangular shape on the side here. It needs to be a fair amount of thickness so that it's easy to peel off. You don't want it too thin or it just breaks away when you're trying to get it off the plastic. If you can, you want to try and leave a thick edge here on the side. You've got something to grab and lift when you want to peel it off. I just find it's so much easier if you do that. You want to fill in the shape so that there aren't any little thin straggly edges because then it just makes it a little bit harder to get it off the plastic. I'm liking that. Now when this is dry, I could then put something on it or print on it as it's the glass beads. I usually like to leave it nice and clear, but I could cut it into a different, any kind of shape. Once it's dried. I'm going to do that with some what's left of my light modeling paste. I'm going to squeeze it out and put a slab here on the side. I really love the light modeling place as an acrylic skin. It's just got a really nice texture and feel about it. It's beautiful and thin and creamy. When you peel it off the plastic, it's so incredibly satisfying. I'm going to put a nice little slab here on the side that's going to work well. Again, you want to make sure the side has a nice thick ridge on it so it's easier to pull up from the plastic. Now, whatever marks and textures you leave on the surface of the acrylic medium is what's going to still be there once it's dry. Really, That opens it up to a whole heap of inspiring ideas because you can add more texture to the surface. If I put some of the coarse texture medium on this side, this is the nice gritty sandy one, then you could add more texture to it. I have this piece of mesh or netting that I could possibly put on the texture medium, have a slight little rollover with my Breyer just to create that textured mark. Now you do have to be pretty gentle with it all, but look at that. That's created a beautiful texture that will stay in place and when you peel that acrylic skin off, you're going to have that glorious mark remaining. As you can imagine, it's absolutely endless the possibilities of what you could stamp into the acrylic skins or the marks that you can make on them. You're really only limited by your imagination and how willing you are to experiment. I love this idea because it really is quite endless. This beautiful piece of plastic is now full. I'm going to put that aside and we'll pull out some colored paint and make a few acrylic skins with some acrylic paint. 15. Making More Acrylic Skins: Now you can make acrylic skins just with acrylic paint by itself. Put it on the plastic and peel it off. But what I like to do is add the heavy gel gloss that we used in the previous lesson and mix it with the paint first because then it's a lot thicker. It just makes it a lot easier to get it back up off the plastic if it's that much thicker. Because as your acrylic paint dries, it's going to evaporate the water element that's within the paint. And it becomes a lot thinner on your surface If you just use the acrylic paint on the plastic, which you can do, it is a lot harder to peel off. But I like to add it with the heavy gel gloss, and then it makes it that much thicker and a lot easier to handle. I put in a bit of copper on that one, a bit of magenta on this one, and then I'm going to put some on my plastic. Now, it really is endless what you can do depending on the results that you want to achieve and what it is you want to create. So I'm just going to add some of these colors on here. I'm not going to fuss too much with how it looks. I'm just going to put a nice big slab of the mix of the two colors and then we'll see how that dries. It's going to dry, like you see it now in a mix of color. Then I could cut it up, I could cut shapes into it. I could do anything to it really, to add sections of this into my collage, I do like to try and get a good solid shape when I'm doing it like this again, so that the edges are nice and thick and are easier to pull up off the plastic. You can do this and add any texture onto the paint. You can put lines in it or texted elements or stamp in some shapes, it's all dependent on what it is you want to achieve. Right, I'm going to leave it just like that and see how that dries. Let's have a look at the string gel. The string gels are a little tricky when you're making acrylic skins because it's so fine and the lines are so thin. I have tried creating acrylic skins on the plastic, but I found it was virtually impossible to actually pull them back up off and it didn't end well. I wasn't patient enough to really pull each of these stringed elements up of the plastic and it all just went to custard pretty fast. I'm not going to show you that. What I like to do is put the string gel onto paper or something else. If you're wanting to create a little focal point for a collage, now I'm doing a circle because I just am so fascinated and love the way they look. That will dry, perfectly clear, and I can cut or rip that out and put that into a collage. Easy peasy. You can try putting the ring gel onto the plastic, but let me know how you go with getting it off because I've found it incredibly painful and very time consuming. I stick to doing it like this. I will make beautiful little roses for my collages with the string. Now of course you don't have to do circles and create roses like I'm doing. You again, can create any shape. You can just do lines. But I just love it like this. I think it looks fabulous. And I love using these elements in my collate. Right? I'll put this page to the side to dry. What are we working on next? Of course, there's so many ways you can experiment with this idea. I've pulled out the mediums and I'm adding some of Lindy's powdered pigments to them. This is the gritty texture paste. And this one here is the acrylic gloss. I wanted to have a little play and see how they will look. I've printed out some oval shapes, cut them with my Exacto knife and that's going to be my template. It really is endless what you can do and what you can create. You can add any of the paints to the paste and the gels. And like me, experiment with some of the powdered pigments, especially if you've got some in your drawer already. These are all the same mediums that we've used in previous lessons. You should still have them close at hand. That's going to look absolutely fabulous. I really love the gritty texture of this particular medium. I think it's going to make a fabulous focal point. Then we just have to think, what are we going to add to it? What will I put on it once it's strike. Maybe some of the trinkets from class two, maybe some of the keys or locks or some of the other elements that we've been playing with. Maybe even some texture fabric. It's really exciting and it's so endless the ideas that we can come up with. Let's have a look at my fabulous oval shapes in the textured paste, the acrylic gloss with the powdered pigments. That's going to work so well now. If you do smudge it a little, you can easily just get a cotton tip and clean it up, especially while it's still wet. You can fix any of the shapes, change them, tidy them up, clean them a bit. While it's still wet, it's really easy to wipe it off. If you're not happy with your shape, do a little clean up before it dries. That's better, right? I've left my fabulous acrylic skins two whole days to dry. I think I'm being very patient now. You can tell, especially with the glass beads, when they're dry because they will be completely clear if you're using glass beads and it's still milky or white looking, it's not going to be dry. Look how cool that looks. I'm so excited. You don't want to try and lift it off the plastic until it's completely dry, Because it will snap or break or become brittle. But when it's dry, you should be able to very easily lift it off the plastic. I absolutely love creating acrylic skins for collage elements because it's so endless what we can do. It's so much fun and you can get really experimental. Here's the gold micro flake that I did with the round template. I know it's so cute. Then there's these ones over here which I used the leaf template now because they are super dry. I know I keep harping on about it, but it's really important, it comes off really easy because it's on the fabulous plastic file folders. No problems at all getting the beautiful acrylic skins off the plastic. It's really quite endless what you can do. This is the texture medium. I really like this one as well because I like the beautiful rough texture of it. Smooth one side where it's on the plastic, beautiful and texture the other side. Now, what about these fabulous big slabs that we have here? Well, they should, that one came off easy. Just as easy if they're nice and solid and dry. Especially if you've put a ridge along the edge, They're a lot easier to pull off the glass beads. Super easy to pull off. Look how fabulous that is. Now I can cut this into any shape. I love the transparency of the glass beads. That's just wonderful. Doing a slab type size like this just means I can cut it into any shape that I want to cut it into, depending on how I want to use it for my collar. Now, these are the fabulous other ones that I put onto this piece. This one I put the textured mesh on top of. I was seeing what texture I could make. It's coming off just as easy, easy peasy. Look at that. Straight off the plastic, it's got that fabulous textured mark on it. So you can put any shape mark, or stamp, or print onto the beautiful acrylic skins. Again, I could cut this into any size that I wanted. All of these have worked really, really well and they're coming off very easily. Now, the paint sometimes is a little harder, but you, it's actually coming off perfect sometimes. Sometimes it gets a little stuck. If I haven't made it thick enough, that's where you'll come into any problems. If you don't make your acrylic skins thick enough, then they're not so easy to pull up. But that was really easy. There's nothing on here that has actually been a problem to get off the plastic, and that is just super fun. Then I started playing with the Lindy's Gang powdered pigment, put them into the texture paste, and created these with the oval template, cut the template out of cardstock, put the fabulous powdered pigment into the texture paste. And there we have it. It worked really well now. It's quite endless what we can do as far as putting paint in with the mixture or powdered pigment, or really anything. Of course, you can create any shape. Over here we have the paint. This is the copper and the magenta that I mixed with the heavy gloss gel. Beautiful and shiny. Looks wonderful. Love these oval shapes. Here I put in some texture. I made some marks while they were still wet. I just wanted to see how that would look. I think it works really well. You can put any marks and stamps on them. Now, the paint is a little thinner than the medium by itself, but it peels off just as easy. It's not really a problem. Look at my wonderful big slab of paint up here. It's actually quite satisfying peeling it off the plastic. Oh man, so easy. So that's the front side, but then the backside looks just as beautiful. It's more smooth because it was on the plastic, but look how fabulous that is. I can create any shape out of that. We have all of these elements now to add into our collage. They work really well. It's really easy. It's a lot of fun. You just have to have a little play. Be willing to experiment, be patient. I waited two days for all of these to dry, and don't forget to put them on the plastic. 16. Storing Your Acrylic Skins: Right. Now, before we move on to making collage with our beautiful acrylic skins, I want to talk to you about storage. I like to store all of mine between sheets of baking paper or something similar depending on where you are. Because this is acrylic medium and it's acrylic paint, it's basically just liquid plastic and it will all stick together. If you put all of these pieces, pile them on top of each other and throw them in a drawer, you will never be able to pull them apart because they are pretty much just all plastic and they will all stick together. I like to use baking paper in between the shapes just to stop that from happening, especially once you've gone to all the trouble to make the beautiful acrylic skins to wait patiently for them to dry. You don't want them all to stick together, which would make them entirely unusable. Also, the acrylic skin will stick on itself. If that folds over like this and sticks down firm, it is so difficult to get it apart, you'll end up in a crying mess and probably throw it in the bin. You do have to be a little careful how you're going to store your acrylic skins because they will stick together or they will stick to themselves. I put them in between baking paper like this. Then I'll put them onto a sheet, and then I'll put them away into a folder or a drawer, or a box, or somewhere that they can lay flat. You want to make sure you keep them flat so they don't, again, fold in on themselves, but they all do sit happily together. If you put them in between the baking paper, I would do something like this. Put them all together and put the baking paper in between. Then put them into a drawer or a box easy peasy or even a piece of cardboard on top of them to keep them are flat. You'll know where to find them where you want them and they'll sit happily there until you're ready to use them. I forgot to show you the string. El, Doesn't this look just fabulous? This is the clear string gel by itself. I love creating focal points in a circle shape on paper with the string gel. It doesn't like to come off if you do it by yourself on the plastic. I have tried, and I'm not patient enough to try and pull it off, but you can always try it. This one, I put the gold paint in, it looks beautiful. Of course, you can do any shape at all. I just tend to do the circle shapes because they make really good focal points for the collages. But this is my sample piece that I was trying and showing you the string El on. Now I could cut that into any shape. I could cut a strip out of it or make it a square or rectangle, or a circle. And I can use that for collage. Also, if you're testing out the string gel and trying the idea and putting it on paper, you can also paint it. That's what I did with this one. It was just the plain, clear string gel. And then I put a little scumble of my favorite bronze iridescent fine right over the top. It looks fabulous. Again, I could cut strips out of it or a circle shape, square shape, really any shape. But it would work really well for a focal point for collage, right? So many options, so much to work with. What are we going to do next? I'm pulling out my art journal, a few jelly prints, and let's put the lesson together with one or some of these fabulous acrylic focal points. 17. Finishing Project 26: I pulled out some of my found objects from the previous classes, some of the trinkets, and some of my fabulous acrylic skin focal points. But I'm finding it really hard to decide because I have so many options now. These would make fabulous miniature collages like we did in a previous lesson. I absolutely loved that class. It was so much fun. We could use these for the focal point. Put a bigger piece and a bigger piece, and all of a sudden you have a beautiful miniature collage ready to use as another element that is totally possible to do that. I've also pulled out one of my image transfers with the textured background, all of these beautiful papers and ideas we've touched on in other lessons, which is so fun. And I love the way this class can just keep building. I'm thinking of putting that door on there with this on the side, maybe with some of the beautiful coso paper just for a little bit of texture because I love texture. Maybe some of that I don't know, man, because seriously, there's not much space on my paper. Once I add those two bits, maybe not. Then what am I going to add? I really do like the textured gray pieces. They work really well. That colors okay too. I love this one. The copper is going to, of course, work really well. I could add one of my little trinkets to the piece. Maybe one of the keys that I still have here from my pack from Amazon that could work. That's definitely an option, one option of many that I could possibly think of to use them for. Or maybe some of this beautiful textured paper that might work really well on there as we. Oh man, so many decisions. I love this beautiful coso flexi mulberry paper, I think it's called. Or I could head in the direction of my fabulous power shells. They would work well too. I really wanted to use my glass bead. I know I'm having a hard time deciding, can you tell I could just make ten different options and then decide that is very possible and I've got some more jelly prints here that I might put on this side. Maybe some of these, all the gray would work really well if I did that. Yes, it would. Then what could we use for a focal point? What about some of these fun cogs that could look pretty cool? I like that idea. I'm just going to have to have a play around and finally decide on something because there really is just so many options, right? So I've got the background glued down very nicely, and my first thought was to use this beautiful piece like that on there. And putting this key on there, because that's going to work. That's a door. I like it, The colors work, but oh man, I've got so many options. There's so many other ways I could take this particular collage. Then I was thinking I wanted to use some of this because it's beautiful and I think the white would lighten things up. I tore this piece off, made it very fibrous, which I really like. If I put that there, that changes the dynamic, then there no longer working on that idea. But I do like the idea of putting the glass beads. I've always loved the glass beads. If I put the glass beads onto this, then the key is not going to work. But I could put one of these other trinkets like that and I really like that option as well. Which 01:00, A.M. I going to go with. Can you just help me out here? Can you just tell me which option you think looks best? Hey, I really like that on the side there too, mirrors that fibrous paper And I just wanted to put something dramatic with the black I'm that what do you think? Shall I go with that? Yes, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. All right. I'm going to blue all that down. Then I have to decide on this side. Oh man. I put the beautiful fibrous paper down. And the acrylic skin really only requires the mat gel medium that I'm normally using for my collage. Doesn't require anything extra special. But the little trinket does. I always like to put the little trinkets on the page with PVA glue because it is a little stronger. I'm going to put a little dollop of PVA glue onto that piece. Then that will be this page done. That glass bead, acrylic skin focal point will dry, perfectly clear, We'll be able to see that beautiful fibrous paper coming through underneath. I'm pretty happy with my final decision. It was rather agonizing, I must say it was rather agonizing. I think perhaps I might do a few of the miniature collages with these focal points just to see what I could possibly come up with. Because I do have quite a few jelly prints and trinkets and found objects that would work really well. Right. That all has to dry. That is going to be just beautiful. Loving my final decision. Onto the next page, I decided to spare you the agony of my indecision. And I've chosen the background papers. I must be feeling very dramatic today because I'm going with the dark and moody colors. This beautiful rice paper with a print in the bronze iridescent fine of my script stencil. Look at that. It's just beautiful. That does look a little moody. I know. I know that it does. That's just how I'm feeling today. Don't you find that you'll create the different pages as you go through and depending on how you're feeling, you choose different papers and textures and jelly prints and other elements. Some days they'll be brighter, but some days they'll be all deep and moody. I'm going to go with these beautiful elements. I'm loving the texture paste on these simple punched out circle template straight With the texture paste, It doesn't even have any paint in it. I'm just really liking the tactile quality and texture of it. I've got three, I'm going to put three right there. And then I'm going to decide what that little focal point in the middle is going to be. Do I want to leave it like that or do I want to add maybe some more textured paper under, you know, That's pretty good. I might put that on because it just lightens it a bit, maybe not so dark and moody. Okay. All right, then I'll put the white paper on, then we all won't be so dark and moody. The fabulous acrylic skin focal points are on. I love that texture medium. I like the way it dries. I like the feel of it. The color is nice and earthy. That works well with my other moody colors. It's a matter of pushing them into the area that you want, which is really easy while they're wet and full of the map medium that works really well. I'm loving it, that's that. Now what am I going with the focal point? I think I'm going to use some of my beautiful power shells. I love the colors. The shapes work really well. They will be a nice pop of color against the other textured elements. The only hard part is going to be deciding on which ones to use because I have so many man, another agonizing decision. I'll have a little fiddle with these, Decide which ones I want to put on and then all the pages need to dry. It's looking good. I love the textual elements and my acrylic skins work so well. Have a look at these. I created some more beautiful little miniature collages using my acrylic skins for focal points. Just because I wanted to have a little play with a few more textures. Now I've got them to use another day on a different project and I can put them into different collages, so exciting and they just look so good. What do you think of my collage pages? I think they've dried up, just beautiful. I'm really loving the textual elements. I love the fibrous papers, the jelly prints, and of course the beautiful acrylic skins. I'm loving these colors together today. It's just how I'm feeling. It must be just the deep, earthy tones. I can't wait to see what you create with this idea. It really is just a whole lot of fun. 18. Kitchen Paper Textures: Day 27 kitchen paper textures. So let's go into the kitchen, have a good rummage around and see what we can find to create for our collars. We're definitely using paper towels, some cling wrap, some aluminum foil. We're going to take some prints on the gel plate and we're going to use these textures in our collars. Such simple items, simple techniques, But they really create fabulous results. Can't wait to show you. Right? So today we're going to be using kitchen paper. I have some paper towel which is really nice and it's got a lovely texture on it, so we're going to be printing with that. I also have some cling wrap or Glad wrap, depending on where you are and what you call it. It's the plastic stuff we wrap around our food to keep refreshments in the fridge. Also, I have some aluminum foil or Al foil. So we're going to experiment with these three kitchen papers today. I'm going to start with the gel plate. As you know, I'm completely obsessed with jelly printing. And I find that the more I use the gel plate, the more obsessed I'm becoming. Of course, you don't have to do these techniques on a gel plate. You can just use the cling wrap or the al foil or anything else straight onto paper, or onto canvas, or onto any other mixed media surface. But seeing as, yes, I'm a little obsessed with jelly printing, I'm going to use the gel plate and pull some prints. Now, this whole class has been a big continuous lesson of experimenting to create textures for our college. It's not going to make any difference today, that's what we're going to be doing. Make sure you have a play, try different ideas, have a bit of experiment and see what you like. And you might find a technique that really inspires you with your creativity. I find what I love about this class is there's so many different options. There's so many ways to take the different lessons. You can head off in different directions with the same techniques and come up with completely different results. That really is a whole lot of fun, right? Cling, wrap down. What happens if we just push it on like that? To start with, I used some quin magenta because it was on my table. Then if we pull it off. Oh man, look at that. Look how cool that texture is. I'm just going to give it a couple of minutes to dry and then I think I'll run over it with something that's going to show off those beautiful textured lines. Right? So I'm going to pull it with some transparent red iron oxide. Those two colors work beautifully. And then I just want to see what the textures look like, what the marks are, and how different they're going to compare with the other kitchen papers. I'm just pulling it with some wet strength tissue, having a little experiment, little play, and see what we create. Right. Let's see how our textures look with such a simple tool. Pretty cheap, pretty simple, and the marks look great. Have a look at that, beautiful textured marks, because I use transparent paint when you hold it up like this. You can even see there, how different does the al foil look on the plate? What about the fabulous aluminum foil? Let's get some of that out now. There is a slight pattern on there that could print. Maybe, maybe, but I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think it was going to print enough to really make me happy and create much of a texture. So we'll scrunch up and then carefully unfold it without tearing it too much, and we'll put it on the gel plate and see what kind of texture this makes, just like that. Don't worry. If you tear it, it'll be all right. Oh, that's going to make a really nice texture. I'm pretty sure about that. Right, there's our texture make up. Let's go with some Van **** Brown. I think I need more contrast this time. I think I'll go with some Van **** Brown and then pull it with some tightened B. That kind of contrast will be able to show off the texture much more. Right? Just put it straight on the plate. It creates like a texture plate on the plate creating texture with all of those marks and grooves. You know, you could paint that and put it in your collage quite easily. Happily, I might even do that. Oh yeah, Look at those marks. That's fabulous, right? Well, let that dry and then I'm going to pull it with the Titan buff. Now, remember, you do have to wait for the first layer to dry before you put the second layer on. I think there's great potential for these types of textures, especially with the layering techniques that we've been doing through the class. I think it could create quite interesting textures for our prints with such simple techniques. That's what I love. Simple techniques with good results. Yeah, right, let's have a look and see what the alphoil does. Could have possibly left it on a bit longer because there is quite a bit of a ghost print there. But not to worry, we'll just add that texture to the next print. Look how nice it is. I think I actually like the al foil more than the cling wrap. I know you can see it a lot clearer because of the colors I chose. But have a look at the difference in the lines that's got more lines in it from the cling wrap. The cling wrap creates more lines. The al foil creates more shorter, sturdier textured marks. It's quite fascinating and so simple to create such good results. Of course, you can just scrudch this up, put paint on the gel plate and dab it like that. You can also do the same with the alfoil. You don't have to lay it out flat, but I really do like the textures that these two prints created. What about the paper tail? I don't think it's going to be as dramatic as these textures are, but it's got a pretty nice pattern, so I think we should at least give it a try. Now, my plate does still have some tighten buff on it. Not to worry, it shouldn't affect the texture too much. This is the fun of experimenting, trying different ideas, see what happens, then yes, you can get a little addictive and you can go a little crazy. But it's a pretty simple addiction. See the pattern on that, on the paper towel? I might go this way with it like that and we'll put another one along here. I just wanted to see if it would leave an imprint. If we give it a slight rub over like that, is it going to leave any kind of imprint? Oh man, Might be a little too subtle. Bit too subtle for me. I'm thinking, well, maybe it was the paint, perhaps I could have chosen a different paint color. Then the bronze, you can see it slightly on the plate there. So I used the tighten back though. I don't think it's going to be as textured as I like. It might create a nice sale mark. Yeah, I don't know, man, it does create a subtle mark. Then I'm also pulling up the paint that was already on there. I can see it in some areas. I do think a different paint color might yield a better result. Maybe if you used a full body instead of fluid. All these things really matter when you're experimenting. Different pat different colors. It might change the outcome, but it is a lot of fun. You do need to go a little, have a little experiment, create a heap of prints, and let's make some coach. But before we do that, I'm going to show you how great it looks, just putting the acrylic paint and the cling wrap on paper. Right? I've got a piece of printing paper, it's a little thick, a bit like a card stock. I'm going to put some of these colors on here and then put some of the cling wrap on and show you how fabulous it does look for creating the texture. Now depending on what paint you use, how thick it is, it's going to make a difference to how it looks. But it is a bit of fun and we are just having a little experiment, so don't get too stressed out about it putting some of these colors on that I was just using to take the prints. In a nice painterly application, I think I'll just add a little of the full body paint because I think the fluid might not produce the results that I really want to see. Because I want to get that beautiful textured mark that the cling wrap can get. I'm thinking that for this particular experiment, we definitely need to put the full body paint on the paper, right? Nice painter marked. Now I'm going to give it a little bit of a spray with water just so it moves some of that paint around and creates those textured lines of the cling wrap. Perhaps a little of the bronze shimmer spray that'll get things moving. I know I do love to throw everything at it rougher like a mad scientist. So now that we've got a little bit of movement on the paint, let's man roll is just about empty. Let's put the cling wrap on. I'll have to leave this for quite some time until it dries, It will dry in the texture of all of these fabulous lines and marks. Why I put the water on and the spray on is because it makes more movement with the paint. It, it look even better because the fluid will go into all of these grooves and crevices. It will dry like this and it will look interesting, but you do have to wait for it to dry while it's drying. I'm going to have a frenzy on the gel plate and create some more papers with those glorious marks that the al foil and the cling wrap make a. 19. So many Possibilities!: Of course, I had an absolutely fabulous time printing. I pulled out one of my brand new dance move stencils. I love these new designs. I've just released them with goggles. There's so much fun. I put the shapes on the gel plate first. Of course, you do have to wait for all of these layers to dry. I then put on some fabulous transparent iron oxide, put on the cling wrap, crunched it up into that fabulous texture. I absolutely love it. It's so easy and it works so well. Pulled that off, waited for it to dry, and then pulled the print and look how glorious it looks. I absolutely love it. You can see very definitely the shapes and marks of the cling wrap. This is the texture that that particular element creates, and I love it. It's a fabulous line. This one worked. Glorious, of course. Then I had to do another one, same process. I put my beautiful little dance smooth stencils straight onto the gel plate. Put on some quin violet, one of my favorite colors. And then put the fabulous al foil scratched up texture sheet on after that. It looks glorious. I really love the textured marks that it makes. Look how good it looks. It looks fabulous. This one, I think I pulled in with the iridescent copper because it looks wonderful. I love it. The textured marks really do work very well and it's so incredibly simple. Then I pulled out my bigger gel plate and one of my dance moves masks. I absolutely love these shapes. They're so organic and so much fun. Put the paint on the plate and use the fabulous alpoil y for the texture. Putting it on, laying it down on the plate and pulling it up, leaving that fabulous texture. Then I put my mask on, rolled over some more paint, and pulled the print. It looked absolutely fabulous. But of course, now I'm in a printing frenzy. And I started to pull out the original papers that I was playing with to add more layers. I really love adding multiple layers with the jelly prints because I just think they get better and better now that I have my big plate out and I've got my mask in my hand. I did get a little carried away and pulled out the original prints that are already taken with the cling ramp and with the alpoil, and created more shapes on top using the masks and the bigger plate. I love how they look. I love how they turned out. You can still see the original textures and the marks coming through the mask shapes that I've left on the print. They look fabulous. I did all of the first prints that I took creating this second layer with these beautiful techniques. I even ended up going over the blue one with some bronze just to add a few more marks to it. I'm really loving the multiple layer. I love the textures and I love that I can see the original patterns underneath. I got a little excited then with the actual out foil. I mean, look at it. So I painted it. I painted this one with the Van **** Brown. That was the one I used, first of all, that had a little tear, and then I painted this one. I've got gold here and I've got the bronze. And I'm thinking with the collage, I could tear or cut or make shapes out of the painted al foil and put it into the collage really, really easy. And then I looked at the ones that I printed with and what a fabulous pattern that is. Yes, I could use that, but I do really like this one the most. This is the last print of the day. I used the al foil on the plate and the color of it and the texture looks fabulous. I just want to use this in my collage. I don't see any reason why we can't. And then I wanted to try another print with the paper towel because I think it was the paint that the first one didn't work out so good, so I used my beautiful favorite red violet and look how fabulous this print turned out. Now that's much better. That's how it's supposed to print. Have a look at the paper towel. We could use that in collage, easy peasy collage element. Using paper towel, you can also separate the papers to make it a bit thinner if you want to, but have a look at the print. Turned out beautiful red violet and then I pulled it with the copper. Look at the incredible texture that you can see by just laying the paper towel onto the gel plate. I mean, really you can't get any easier than that kitchen paper towel so cheap. And you can use it for collage paper as well. Bonus, get to print with it, get to stick it in your collage. And it turned out absolutely beautiful. That's how it's supposed to look. Now depending on what pattern your paper tail has, you might have stripes or squares or lines. You can get paper tail in so many different patterns. Rush off to the kitchen and have a look and see what pattern your paper tail has on it. Love to know. Can't wait to see it, hope you do it. It really is a lot of fun. I think that's a fabulous print and it was so easy. Now I have to show you the last print of the day. Have a look at this. Tell me what did I use? I was having a think about if I had used all of the items from my material list. And I remember I hadn't yet used the peg basket, so I had to pull it out. I put the al foil on the straight part and pushed it in to get the texture of it, which made like a texture plate on the gel plate, it looked absolutely fabulous. I loved it. I did it with the Van **** Brown, looked gorgeous. Let it dry, and then I put on the paint and pushed in the sides of the peg basket, creating these incredible, awesome circle marks. Doesn't it look good? I'm so excited about it. I think it's the best print of the day it came out fabulous. And all it is is a cheap dollar stall peg basket used on the gel plate. Don't forget I added my fabulous. All this is how I got this on here. There's the Brown Van **** Brown from the first print when it was nice and straight and beautiful and flat. And then I scrunched it up, put the cerilium blue deep on the plate, and added this onto it. It turned out better than I expected, and I really love this piece. I'm definitely going to use some of this in my collage. It turned out fabulous. Look at the print. It's so unique and so different. I love this one. I think this one's my favorite one of the day. I think it turned out way better than I expected and using such unconventional tools and techniques, it really is so much fun. Now, I've got all of these beautiful collage papers. I better pull out the art journal and make some choices about which ones I'm going to use. Oh, hang on, I forgot to show you this. This is being sitting here, I think it's been now two days, it's been sitting with the cling wrap on it, creating this fabulous texture. Now, the only problem with putting this on paper is that it can tear. The longer you leave it, the better it is because it's less likely to tear. If it's dry, it'll come off easier like jelly printing, right? It is still wet, but I'm busting to have a look and I want to show you how fabulous the cling wrap looks if you just put the paint down. Look, that's so funny. That's where the end of my role is and it's left around circle print. That's just funny. Put the paint down. You can put on some ink or some spray, add some water to move the paint around, because then the paint gets into all of those crevices and textures and it creates all the beautiful marks. It's absolutely glorious. That's not too bad. It isn't stuck to my cutting board, so that's good. There it is. Look at that. Absolutely beautiful. You can see the elements of paint and all of those texture marks from the fabulous cling wrap. How easy is that? That's what I particularly love about these techniques. Using the kitchen paper textures is that it's easy, it's affordable. These tools are literally in your kitchen. You can put the cling wrap onto anything you can put it on. Well, this is just a piece of paper, you can put it onto a canvas or a canvas board or a cradle board or anything. Put the paint down. Maybe have a little spray with some inks or some sprays or some water to get that movement going on. So it creates all of those beautiful textures and crevices. Leave it to dry, and then there you are, you have an incredibly beautiful textured abstract painting all ready to go. Okay, I'm pulling out the art journal. Let's get a collage happening. Which ones am I going to use? I'm definitely using that one, so what am I going to put with it? 20. Finishing Project 27: I've pulled out my fabulous art journal. Look how nice and fat it's getting with this fabulous class. I'm just loving it. I've got all of these glorious prints. I've just got to decide which ones I'm going to put on. And I've pulled out my scrap bag as well. I might add some of the textured white paper or maybe some black. If I'm feeling dramatic, I think I definitely want to use this one because I just think it's so fascinating, the pattern that the peg basket made. I like the colors. I like the overlay of the layers. I think I'm going to use this one on here and then perhaps put something in the center. Maybe even I might cut out some of this. This is a circle from the whole punch I took yesterday when we were doing the acrylic skins. I might even cut out a circle from here in that size shape. Put it on there just to give it a little pop. Or I could even add some of this to the page, because that color is really nice too. I have to think about that. I really like the texture of this one. Hi, no, you know how it's going to go. I'm going to chop and change my mind until I finally decide this is a nice print. Look at that, that's a really nice section. Maybe I'll put that there. And then one of these fabulous new little characters on there that could work. Because both those shapes, the background mask and the stencil work so well together, I am very tempted to do that either in that color or that color. That works really well too. I'm rather liking the orange on there, man. Yes, I think the orange and there may be some of the white textured paper or something out of my scrap bag and the black. Okay, that's where we're headed. I think that's looking great. Such a good start. I'm definitely going to try the idea of the circle. I don't really know if it's going to work, but you don't know until you try. I'll cut it out using this template. This section here. I like it because it's got both the color on it and the texture that I like. Oh man, it was so fun using the alpoil and how cheap is that picture. We go, let's have a look at that and see what we think about this idea. I'm thinking like that because what I like about using the art journal is that it's got all of the ideas and techniques in one place. I can flip through this next year and look at that and go, oh yes, that was that fabulous peg basket and I used al foil to create the texture. And it will remind me how much I enjoyed the process, the technique, and I'll probably return to it another day because I just think it's a fabulous, easy way of creating such great texture. There's two reasons why I want to put that circle on. First of all, it looks fabulous. The colors works really well, and it's a great way to put a focal point on the page. But also it reminds me that I loved using the Alpoil. I'm going to put that right here. P lemon squeeze. The page is done and I'm really happy with it. I absolutely love it. Look at that, my little al foil centered a focal point. Yeah, it's going to look beautiful. Now for this side, I'm definitely going to go with this idea because I just love this print that is also the al foil texture. See. It's definitely my favorite, although this one is the cling wrap texture. But I'm thinking it's the colors that are working for me. And I'll probably just tear out this shape here. I really love this stencil shape and I'm going to use it for the focal point. That's going to work. Well, tear it there. Tear it down that way, somehow I'm going to put it on the page with this as the background. That's going to work, that's glued down and it's looking beautiful. I really love those textured markings. Now I'm going to think I'll go with this one because this one is a bit too big, it's taking up half my page. I really love my textured background. I'm going to put this one on and I might just add maybe a little bit of white textured paper out of my scrap bag because I think that will just soften it nicely around the edges. That could work. Got to love the scrap bags. Maybe baby something like that. Just to add a little bit of softness to it, on the edge there, perhaps like that. I think that's really all it needs. It definitely doesn't need much, but I'll glue that down. The pages will be, I love these prints. I loved making these textures and it was so simple and so cheap. Yeah, so they're both down looking beautiful. And what I like is that this one's got the obvious cling wrap marks on it. So I have representation of both the cling wrap and the al foil. It's looking beautiful. A little pop of white, I think just lifts the page and now I'll just let it dry, give you a close up, and I'm pretty happy with these beautiful collages. Okay, I know I said I was finished. One last idea. What about if I cut a circle out of this one? Because this is the paper towel print. And then I'll have a representation of all three textures. I like that idea. I think I'll use the same template which was my, I think it's a two inch hole punch. I was using it to create the fabulous acrylic skins. Put it on there, let's draw around that, cut out that circle, and then I have all of the kitchen paper textures on my paves. Yeah, it's a little wobbly, but it's Okay. It'll be All right. Let's have a look. I think that I might put it right there which is mirroring the shape over there. It's kitchen towel pattern, which makes me very happy to put it on there. And the color is working well, you know, we can't lose with that. 21. Texture Party Collaboration: What I love about the final lesson of all of the classes is that we get to choose from whatever the textures and techniques that we've really loved the most. And put our collage together from the papers that we printed through the week and the things that we've made. And I just love that I've got some great leftover bits, lots of jelly prints that I was doing yesterday, which I loved. I've also got some of these miniature collages that I was doing with the acrylic skins. And I've got a whole pile of acrylic skin somewhere as well. So I'm definitely going to be pulling together some of these pieces, maybe some of the foil from the lessons this week. And I'm pretty excited about that because I've just loved so many. In fact, I love this class texture. Might not have mentioned it before, but it's one of my favorite things about making is creating beautiful textures. Now what am I going to start with? Because I do have a whole heap, but I'm loving these ones. They're still on my table. From yesterday's collage. I think I might start with this, maybe that, and I really love this piece. I know I went on and on about it yesterday, but I really do perhaps a little something for the bottom here from Yes, my trusty scrap bag. Some black or some white, or some brown. Let's see, what have we got that would work? The colors work. But I do think, yeah, white would work too, but maybe some black. Either black or brown. And what about my focal point? How about I use one of my glorious miniatures that would work. Not the purple that wouldn't clash with the turquoise. This one would work as well. Yeah, baby, this one would work really well. I'll put this one on and then if I'm going to put this one on, I'm thinking, take away the brown. Let's use the black. Get real dramatic. Put a little piece of black at the bottom which mirrors this section here. We might trim off more of the turquoise so it only comes on that much of the page. All right. I'm liking that. That's a great plan. What a good start. That's what I love about the. We've got so much to work with now. What am I going to put on this side? I do really love the purple. I've got some more of these purple acrylic skins somewhere in my pile that I made. That looks pretty nice. What can I put with it? I do really love this print. This print was made with the threads. Loved that lesson. That was so much fun. Printing this with the beautiful thread fibers, that would be a good background color and it matches that side of the page. You know how much I love matching. Matching. Right. If that goes on there, what will we use for our centered piece? That's a really nice print. Do I want to use one of the miniatures? Could I could. Yeah, I could get some more paper out of my scrap bag. Perhaps have a little rummage around. Oh, there's so many options in here. Maybe some of this beautiful fibrous paper that would work, that goes quite transparent. So you just see the beautiful fiber or do I want some of this and be really dramatic? Yes, that's quite possible. You know, I like to be dramatic. When, which one should we use? Well, let's rip them out to start with. Then we can decide any of them will work. Let's start with this one. I did this yesterday and then changed my mind. You never quite know, but that one is a pretty nice, beautiful color. I could add some fibrous to it, trim it down a little, but we still need the acrylic skin. I definitely want the purple acrylic skin. I'm losing it with the colors. Then we have to go back to the scrap bag and pull out one of those fabulous beehive circles. Look they're floating all over the place. When that could work like that, because the white makes it pop. I'm liking that. Do we want to add one of these little pieces? I could go and find one of those or it would sit really nicely. Yeah, I really like that. But I don't want the black and I don't want that, so I just want the acrylic skin. Lucky, I created a few extra. You've always got to create a few extra. I'm going to find a little gold piece like that to put there. Or else I might even pull out one of my power shell pieces that would work too. Oh man, that's just beautiful. I'm inspired by that. I'm going to find one of those little round gold things, right? I pulled out two options. I have the beautiful bright gold, which I loved about this piece. Put that over there. That could work. Or we could go with a more muted bronze color that works too. Or you could go with one of the power shells. Which one? Which were not sure? Can't decide, but it'll be one of these three things. I'll put them to the side. I'll decide when we get a little bit closer, after I've stuck some of these glorious papers down. I love having so many beautiful pieces. Make sure you're keeping them all together in a box where you can find them when you need them. I made a whole heap of these acrylic skins and I'm so happy that I did, right. I'm going to stick all this down and then we'll see where we're at. I really like how this is looking and I love that I already had all these pieces made. It just makes it so easy, so quick, and so much fun. Look at that, that's just beautiful. First page, it's already done with all of the glorious textures and colors and prints that we made through this class. And I'm loving it. I think it's just beautiful. Now, for the other side, I'm definitely going to start with this piece. Probably this side of it. Cut, cut it there. Don't cut it too short. Oh man, I do that so often. Just beautiful. I love all these textured marks from printing with that fabulous fibrous thread. Look at that. That looks just beautiful. Now, what am I going to put on next? Oh, I was going to put some of that textured fibrous paper. And one of these, perhaps that needs a little trim. You don't want it to cover all of the page entirely. That's looking rather beautiful. I definitely want some of this paper because I know how much it goes transparent and you only really see the fibrous textures of it. And that's going to look really good over that background, so we're going to put some of that there. And definitely the purple with the white beehive. It sticks out a little on there. Yeah, looking great. Looking great. I use the mat medium to glue the acrylic skins down, but I do like to use a PVA for my little trinkets. Am I going to use the bright gold or the dull bronze? Which one do you think? That one which matches the colors? Or this one which says, hello, I'm going with the bright one. Because that was what inspired me. I loved those two colors together. It made me happy looking at it. That's what we're going to use. I was tempted with using the more subdued bronze one, but at the end of the day, I just love me a little bit of bling that's going on right there that will dry perfectly clear. I do like to put more blue on than I need to make sure it really sticks. It will dry perfectly clear, and it will look fabulous, right? Well, these pages are beautiful. They just need to dry. How easy was that once you have your beautiful piles of prints and papers and miniature collages and acrylic skins and all the wonderful textures we've been making. In this class, you'll be able to put so many beautiful artworks together. If you're using an art journal like this, then it's a treasure trove of ideas. I can look at this one and know how much I loved that al foil texture. I love the acrylic skins, this one with the fibrous thread. I really enjoyed making those papers too. They're also my favorites. All of these are my favorites. My new favorite stencils. Oh man, I look at these pages and they just all look like my favorite textures and techniques. And that makes me happy. I've absolutely loved this class. It's been fabulous for textures. The techniques have been a whole lot of fun, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have. So I'll let these dry, I'll give you a, and I'm really excited to see what it is that you're going to create with all of these textures. 22. Let's Celebrate: Thank you for joining me on this epic adventure. I've truly loved this class. I absolutely love texture. I know it's been pretty huge. Very epic. A lot to take in and absorbed. I've learned a lot along the way. I really hope you've enjoyed the class as much as I have. I would love to see what you've created. So don't forget to show me a peek of your collages. And you remember you can always join my Facebook group and pile up all the photos there because it's absolutely fascinating how you've responded to the prompts, how you've created your collage, and then I get to see all of your brilliant ideas. Don't forget to check the class notes for all the information art supply list. But remember, you don't have to use all of the arts and paints and mediums that I use. But the list is there so you can find out if you want to, exactly the materials I was using. And remember the discount codes. If you're going to purchase any of my recommendations, there's lots of discount code. So have a look in your class notes. You also have my e mail. So if anything goes wrong or you need some help, just reach out and e mail me. Well, I hope you're keeping all of your prints and papers for the next class because the class is compound and we're going to use them again and again as a lessons continue. Class five is beyond reality. Crafting real and imagined worlds. I know it's going to be out of this world, so keep your prints and papers and textures from this class because we're going to be using them in the next class. And I can't wait to see you then to infinity and beyond. See you next time in the studio.