Found Objects in Collage - Class 2 - 100 Days of Collage (Day 8 - 14)

1. Introduction W2: Welcome to the studio. It's frail here. I'm a mixed media artist and I've been painting and exhibiting for over 30 years. I'm deeply passionate about giving you an experience of creating art that really impacts your entire life. Creating art has a way of healing your soul, inspiring your mind, and encouraging your sense of self worth. When you create something from the core of who you are as a person, and you can look at that creative expression and say, hey, that's okay. Then you're affirming to yourself, hey, I'm okay. And it deeply impacts all the other aspects of your life. Creating art is more about putting paint on paper. It's about discovering who you are, how you perceive the world, and how you want the world to perceive you. It's allowing yourself to really express the way you think and feel. And affirming to yourself that that's okay. I'm really excited about this art class because it is the most comprehensive mixed media art class that I've ever created. Celebrate your creative self, mixed media art class. 100 days of college. It's just so much fun. This creative art class is all about giving you the opportunity to find your creative voice, to make mistakes, to make a mess, to really create from the core of who you are, and to know what it means to really create art. I have incorporated teaching the skills of mixed media techniques with the intimacy and personal approach of an art journal class. The purpose of the art journal is so you have the freedom to experiment, to play, to mess up, and to truly develop your creativity. There's no pressure in an art journal. You can't get it wrong, you don't have to exhibit, you don't even have to show anybody. Because the heart of this class is to allow you to truly create, to allow you the real you to come out and play. Welcome to week two. And on this incredible adventure, we're going to be exploring found objects in collage. Over the course of this class, we're going to embark on an adventure of seven projects. One for each of the lessons we'll cover how to add found objects in collage keys to success. Collage poetry including blackout poetry, portrait collage, and of course we can't forget about the jelly printing. I love jelly printing. We'll be jelly printing with found objects. So much fun, so much to explore. And we'll be finishing the class by creating a collection of miniature collage. I absolutely loved this lesson. I think it was my absolute favorite of all the class. They turned out absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to show you. In each of the lessons and every project you undertake, you have the opportunity to reflect your own individual style. I'm going to show you how I approach, the prompt, all the theme and the art materials that I use. But then you're encouraged to create in your own way. You can follow what I'm doing or be inspired or completely do something different. It's totally up to you and you just might surprise yourself with the incredible creativity that you find. You'll find my teaching style to be informative, but conversational because I'm right here with you in the studio. As we create together, this series consists of 14 classes, and it's bound to be a life changing experience as we journey through 100 days of college. Even in the consistency and the application of the art skills, you can't help. But growing your art will develop and change as you move along from class to class and the classes compound. So with each class that we learn, we continue into the next class and you just keep developing. I've even created a treasure map for you just in case you get lost. Along the way, you can see where we've been, where we're heading, and where we are. Now. I know it was just a lot of fun. I had to make it. This class is suitable for anyone wanting to develop that creativity in a fun and friendly environment. I'll be teaching you all of the mixed media techniques that I've explored over the 30 years of my experience. And I'll be leading you step by step through each lesson, each project along the way. This class is perfect for beginners, because I will be right here with you in the studio cheering you on. I'll show you how to achieve each technique. Giving you the materials that I'm using, you can create the exact results. Or if you're more advanced, then you're going to be inspired and enjoying the challenge of learning new skills that you can add to your artistic tool belt. You just might be inspired by something you haven't tried before and it could be the catalyst to open up a whole new realm of possibilities for your creative development. I'm so excited to begin because it's a whole lot of fun. You're going to learn fabulous mixed media techniques and we get to hang out and create amazing art. So let's gather our materials and head off on this mighty fine adventure. 2. Wk2 Getting Started: Week two, Celebrate your creative self. 100 days of college. How very exciting. So how did you go with week one? What was your favorite prompt? Have you shown me any photos? I would like to see as we go along, how you're doing with these creative prompts and with the process of the art class. Now, I hope you watch the Getting Started video on week one, because I'm not going to go through it all again. But I really want you to understand my mission and my passion for this art class, what it's all about, the heart of what I really want to see achieved during our time together. So if you skipped over, you need to stop right now and go back and watch it because it's really important. Now, the other thing is, did you watch the material list? Because I'm going to add it into week two as we're using all of those same art materials. Again, the acrylic paints, the drawing mediums, the jelly printing. All those art supplies will be included in this week's lessons. Plus there's more. So did you do what I suggested and got a box together to put in some of your papers? I really hope you did. Because this week we're going to be exploring found objects. And I would highly recommend you getting a box together to put your little bits and pieces in that you find along the way. Because each week and each class with all our lessons is going to be building one upon another. So if you've got all your art supplies together in boxes or somewhere where you can find them, It just means in the next class or the class after that, you're going to want to find some bits and pieces that you are working with in this class. I know it is a lot of fun. So if you stay a little bit organized, it's going to be much better and a much more enjoyable process. It's really frustrating when you can't find what you want, when you want it Now, what do I mean by found objects? Well, really it can be anything. You'll find a lot of inspiration from around your house. And when we watched the history of Lars and saw the incredible artworks that the artists have created before, you know that you can't get it wrong. And you can put one thing on your collage, ten things on your collage, or make the whole collage a found object. There isn't any wrong to it. What you do need to consider however, is how thick and big and heavy the object is that you're going to put on your art journal page. Because do you want your book to close? That's the question you have to consider. If you want your book to close and you're working in an art journal, you will have to consider the weight and the thickness of the object that you're sticking on your page. If you're working on loose watercolor papers or board, or canvas, or other substrate, then you're not restricted by what you actually put on your artwork. You might want to consider working on a canvas for this class, or separate papers or card stock. I'm going to stick to my art journal because I want all of this whole collection, all hundred of these beautiful artworks, to be in one place. That's just what I want personally. So you have to decide what it is you want to achieve from this art class. Would you like to have standalone artworks? If you'd like to have stand alone artworks, then you can probably work with bigger, fat, chunkier, heavier pieces of your found objects. I'm, however, sticking to things that are going to work in my art journal. So what I've got here is a collection of shelves. This is actually power shell, it's a very New Zealand thing, power shell. I absolutely love the colors and they're very thin and light and easy to stick on the page. These pieces of shell actually come from this. This is the power. It's actually a sea snail, It's big and black and mule like to eat it. I don't like to eat it, but my sister really does. She loves power fritters. I just like the beautiful shells. I like the color. And I have a heap of them. So I'm going to put some of these into my artworks this week because they'll be easy. I also have some feathers. I love using feathers. I've got a business card that I really like from somewhere else, perhaps a postcard. You can have another look on that list of paper from the first week, that really long diversity of paper episode where we had so many beautiful varieties. Because some of those you can include into this week's class as well. I've got some ribbon and some beautiful yarn in glorious colors. I've got some textured fibrous material. Beautiful love it, it feels amazing. Some embroidery pieces. You might even have some pressed flowers or some little bits and bobs. I've got some badges here and some of these which I don't know what they are, but I'm pretty sure I could stick them in. They're just like little wooden pieces. I don't know where I got them from. You need to have a treasure hunt around your house or dig through all of those hoards of your crafting stash and find some fabulous little treasures to put in this week's collages. I've also got an old piece of jewelry, which I could easily take that apart and use that for profound objects or some stamps, or some cheesecloth. I love using cheesecloth. We can de this, It works really, really well. This is actually a cotton reusable bag from the Dollar Store. Look at that. What a fabulous texture that is this piece as well. It came in a pack really cheap and really easy to use the different fabric in our artworks. What about some buttons? You've got to have some of those laying around. It's going to be a whole lot of fun. We're going to get very tactile with this week's lessons and we're going to get quite experimental. So I'll add what I use for each lesson in the class notes. And I'm going to put in last week's episode material list as well, because it's quite inclusive. In this week's lessons, we're just adding more to the C, which is a whole lot of fun. Right? So let's get going. Go for a treasure hunt around your house. And definitely through your crafting stash, see what you can find. Pull out some beautiful pieces, put them in a box, and let's see what we can create this week with our fabulous reimagine treasures, found objects in collage. 3. Material List: So, what do we need for a material list? Well, of course, first of all, you need your art journal. And as I've explained, it doesn't have to be a commercial one. You can make your own or you can work on loose pages and bind them together. I love using this particular commercial art journal because it holds up under the pressure and I can look back in a year's time and see the journey that I was on and really appreciate the development of both my art and the techniques, the skills that I've learned in just creating. Next we're going to use a selection of acrylic paints. Now, I love acrylic paints. I love the water based application. We won't be using any oil based products in this particular art class because I love to be able to clean up easy and quick. And I like things simple, so I'll be using a selection of acrylic paints. I do like the Liquitex basics because they're affordable. But then there's also the beautiful golden ones as well that I just have to have. Now, you don't have to use the colors I use. And hopefully you've already got a selection of acrylic paints or you might like to use water colors. Using watercolors is also really simple, especially for art journal pages. You can use whatever paints you've already got. For each class and each lesson, there will be a material list. I'll be telling you exactly what colors I use every time I create something, just in case you want to achieve similar results. But just know you don't have to use the products that I'm using. I will give you a list. I'll even give you links to those products if you want to find them. But don't feel pressured at all at any stage that you have to rush out and buy new materials or use what I'm using, you don't have to at all. So make sure you know that I don't want you to feel pressured to have to buy art supplies, especially if you've already got a heap. We're going to use a selection of drawing materials. So maybe some pencils or even some watercolor pencils or water soluble crowns. You might have some markers like these. Posca pens, these are actually paint pens or even just some sharpies. Some pencils. Whatever you've got to actually use, you're going to be pulling them out of the cupboard. You're also going to need some basic supplies, like some scissors, different sizes, some paint brushes. Now, what are you going to use for an adhesive? We are doing collage. I like to use a matt gel medium for collage because I find it's great adhesive and it works well with most papers. If things get a little too heavy, I like to use the VA, but you don't have to use these particular adhesives. If you've got a glue stick and you don't want to use the matte medium or the PVA, not a problem. Use the adhesive that you already have or that you want to use. I just find that these particular mediums work really well. I like to brush it on. I come from a painter's background, so brushing on the page is just so natural for me. It makes me happy. I really like it. So that's what I use all the time for my collages and because I use a variety of papers, it helps to adhere the really thick pieces. Talking about papers, we're going to use a selection of all sorts of papers and we're going to create some along the way. Now, don't rush out and think you have to buy a whole heap of specialty art papers because you're going to find a selection from around your home and we're going to be making our own. Which brings me to the last point on my material list. Do you have a gel plate? This is my 108 gel plate. And I'll put all the details in your material list which you'll find in the note section of the class. So we're going to use the gel plate and the Brayer and we're going to be creating some beautiful collage pages along the way. Now if you don't have a gel plate, don't rush out and get one unless you've always wanted to. It's not mandatory, but it is really fun. And we're going to do a basic lesson of jelly printing in this particular class. This printing method creates an incredible amount of papers. Very easy, very fast, very experimental, a lot of fun. And I use it a lot for my collage papers. So of course, it had to be included in the class. But like I said, if you don't want to, you don't have to get one if you don't have one, right? So that basically sums up the art materials, but I will give you a comprehensive list each time I do a lesson with particular materials. I'll tell you the colors, what I'm using, and don't forget to use what you've already got at home first. I'm so excited that you're on this journey with me. I really hope you're going to stick around till the end of the adventure, and we'll both see where we are after 100 days of college. 4. Found Objects in Collage: Day eight, found objects in collage. So what are you going to use from your treasure trove of beautiful bits and pieces in your collage? Today, the prompt is very simple to include found objects in your collage. Not very specific, is it? I thought I'd start off very easy, very open to interpretation, because I know some people are really going to enjoy the challenge of working with found objects and maybe some others are not going to find it very easy at all. The first lesson is broad and open. Any colors, any textures, any shapes, anything that captures your attention and inspires you to get going with your beautiful collage page is included in today's lesson. What are you going to find? What treasures can you explore? What objects can you experiment with? How many layers can we add to these pages before the page doesn't shut going to be a whole lot of fun and I can't wait to get started. Right, So I'm going to start with some cheesecloth. Now, I just bought this cheesecloth from a kitchen shop. I think you can get it from supermarkets or maybe even the dollar store or the cheap store. It was traditionally used for straining cheese, of course. But look at the beautiful texture of it. I just love using it because it's just so soft and easy to use. Now I wanted to die the fabric. So I pulled out my zinc die spray and I sprayed it and I put water on it so it would absorb the die spray. Which worked rather fabulous. But if I was to do it again, I would use gloves because my hands got really stained dying. The cheese cloth, which was actually quite funny. But just note to self, if you're going to dye cheese cloth with any kind of dye spray, like the inc, or the oxides or one of those sprays. Because I was combining them, they will stain your hands incredibly gloves, but it's a lot of fun. I basically just sprayed it on raw, like this, these pieces, a few of the sprays, and created these glorious colors, which I like very much. They worked really well. Now the problem with the die sprays is they do reconstitute. They are a die, they will release the color in collars if you've got something else on it, especially if you're using mat medium. The moisture in the medium releases the die. As long as you know that everything's okay. You can also spray everything with a mat spray varnish like this one. I like to use this to spray paper or even the fabric like these small pieces after I've used the E, because it just helps to seal it. Maybe it won't bleed as much. It definitely works for the paper that you're spraying. It helps to stop them bleeding through. You don't have to use matt varnish. Of course. I just like to. You don't have to use this brand. This is just what I have on hand. Had it for a long time, it sits in the cupboard. Occasionally, I actually remember to pull it out and spray something. Now, I'm going to start with one of these. Which color do I like the best? Either this one or that one. Maybe this one. But I think I might like to stain my paper first again with the Zinc. This is the coffee color and it looks like it's running pretty low. Oh man, I sprayed on like that and then I just rub it over with a damp cloth and it basically just dies or stains the page. Really nice way to start, especially if you're using fabric or pieces of paper that are transparent or that you can see through. Because they've got a weave, all they're textured. 2 seconds really easy, the pages now are much nicer color. It shouldn't take too long for that to dry. And then I'm going to put this piece on, then I'm going to scumble some turquoise on top. That's what I'm feeling like I want to do. So that's where we're heading. I'm just going to tear it across the bottom to see if I can get more of an organic line rather than a straight cut one. I think my piece is very wary, it's definitely not straight, but I do like the frayed edges. I like the rawness about it. We'll see how we go, give it a little tug. It's really easy to work with. It's lovely and soft. My stained pages are now dry. That really is that quick. I'm going to put this on the page. I'm just going to use my map medium. Stick that down and then decide what's next. I'm feeling like I definitely want to go with some turquoise today. You know, if you get a color in mind, you've got to go with it, right? I like the color of this stained page. I think it works really well when you don't want to have the bare page, but you just want a little something underneath easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. It takes 2 seconds to do it. Dries fast and ware away. It's a really good way, actually, if you're a little stuck and you don't know where to start or what you want to do, spraying some color on your page can just help you get moving. Once you're moving, your creativity kicks in. Then you can get going. And you can think of some ideas as you start moving, sometimes spraying the page is just a really good way to get started, right blowing that down. Then I'm going to pull out, think I've got some turquoise stencil butter that could be fun. I'm loving the pattern and texture of that fabric with the dying. Now, it's not entirely dry, but it's mostly dry. It's probably a good idea for you to leave things to dry, but man, I'm a little impatient like that. I've got some stencil butter in turquoise. It's rich and thick and glorious. I'm going to put some on here, look at the color. Just love it. Just get a scratch some on here. Not sure exactly how I want it to be, but I just want that magnificent color against the brown. I think it's going to work really well with that beautiful texture. Right. I'm thinking that that's probably all I want. Just a little bit of that on there. Now, what are we going to do next? I think I'll let this dry properly. I'm going to put a print, a jelly print on the other page that I was working on the other day. And that I think would go really well. The other day I was jelly printing, I was using some print, some older prints which is this underneath print. And then I pulled out some masks which are these. I put them on plate and pulled a new print with them. It's a really easy technique for jazzing up older prints, creating new colors or just establishing a different pattern. Put the masks on the plate, run the paint over the masks and the plate, pull the masks off, and then print your paper. It's absolutely fabulous. Especially if something's a little older or you want to change the color or you just want something new and fresh. I did that with these prints here. I really like the way they came out. I like the color of them, and I think they would work really well as a texture opposite my dramatic pattern over this side. I think I'm going to put that down and then I've got these beautiful pieces. Now these are the masks that I used to pull the print. Don't you think they just look beautiful in themselves? I mean, I do. Seeing as using found objects lesson today, I'm thinking that I could get away with actually using the mask as a found object in my collage. I'm thinking this one, either that side or that side, That pattern happens on the mask because of the printing process. These are just made of Po paper, but you could make masks out of anything. You could use plastic sleeves or even just paper packaging or standard paper. You can cut any shapes to put on your plate to pull some prints. When you want to mask out some areas, it's a really easy technique and very satisfying when you want to just jazz up some older prints or change the color scheme. I'm definitely putting this on. I just can't decide do I want the whole thing or half, or put it on the edge like that. That could be fun. Do I want more than one man? That's the question. How many do I want to put on the page? I think I'll just put this one and I might put it so it cuts it off the edge like that. That's really interesting just to have it in that section. Put that on there. Yeah, I think that'll work really well. Right. Let's do that. I'll stick that down. This has got to dry and then we're going to decide what am I going to put on that for a focal point, right, That I use some PVA to glue my mask down because I just wanted it to grab quicker. And it does, it's a lot stronger than the map medium. That looks pretty cool. I'm pretty happy with that. What a fun idea. Create the prints with the mask and then use a mask in the Conageya, my stencil, but is still wet, which means man, I'm going to have to wait for the stencil button to dry before I can decide on the focal point. I want to use some of these power shells, I'm thinking, because they match really well and they're beautiful colors. And I'd like to put them somehow on this page on top of something, maybe some of this textured. This is a ribbon from so studio, well it's said ribbon on the packet. It doesn't look like a ribbon. I know it's really fibrous and absolutely beautiful. It's a type of paper. So I'm thinking some of that and then the power, but oh man, I got to wait for this to dry, but that's where we're headed, right? So the turquoise stencil butter actually took longer than I thought it would to dry. It's perfectly dry now because I left it overnight. But what I love about the stencil butter is the incredible metallic finish. It's just beautiful. And you can see all the glorious texture and weave coming through there on the page from the fabulous cheesecloth. Yeah, I just love it. Now, of course you don't have to use stencil butter. You can use acrylic paint. You can mix it with a heavy gel medium of some description, no problem at all. And if you put in some iridescent medium, that will also create a lovely iridescent or almost metallic shine. You just have to mix it all up. And because, you know, I tend to be a little lazy, I just get the stencil butter because it's already mixed up now. I get that from my local craft store. You can also get it on Amazon. 5. Finishing Project 8: Now, I'm loving this page. I was very tempted to add some more elements to it because it just looks so beautiful and I had so many of these fabulous masks. But I'm not going to, because I really love it, just as it is. I love this section. Putting one piece of the mask there, the print looks beautiful. I'm going to leave it alone on this side. I want to add some of this now. This is natural coso fiber ribbon. I don't know, man, I don't know why it's called ribbon, because it doesn't look like our normal ribbon. But look at it, it's absolutely fabulous. It's so textual. I just love it. Now the information for Coso is going to be in your class notes. All of the information, of the materials that I'm using will be in your class notes. So make sure you have a look there. It's so fibrous and so beautiful. I just have to put in a piece. I've torn off this piece here that I'm thinking might work. I want to put it like that. Yes, I do. The other element that I want to add to this page is some of the beautiful power shell. Now, I was born in New Zealand, lived in my whole life in Australia, and my parents divorced when I was very young. My dad came back to New Zealand when I was about seven, and I would come on school holidays to visit him every few years. Really, whenever I went back to Australia, I always took something with powershell. To me it's just innate. New Zealand is the colors of the power, the beautiful turquoise and purple that you see in the glorious shells. I just love them. I know it's really personal, but you know, I did give you a disclaimer that this class will get more personal as we go on, more and more deeper in our fabulous connection when we're creating art. So I'm definitely going to use some of the power, I'm just not sure how to choose the pieces, because, look, when Mom and I came back to New Zealand six years ago, we were tripping around all over the country, visiting all sorts of areas, and we came across this place called Power World. Yes, we did go a little, okay, I went a little crazy buying bags and bags of pieces of the power because it meant so much to me. So I do have a lovely big box of power. Now, there are cousins to the power I think is abalone. In America, it's very similar sea creature. I actually think they're cousins, I'm not sure. But anyway, power is the Mali word for the sea creature. That's what it is to me, that's what it means to me. And I just love the colors, really. It's all about the colors and the texture. I'm going to put this beautiful fibrous piece on first. I know it's like a cross between fabric and paper, but enough map medium and we can get that to stick down. Now I'm really happy I left the page overnight to dry because I can now plaster it with map medium. Whereas if I hadn't have waited, then it would have all just come up and smudged all over my beautiful fiber piece. You know, sometimes it really is good just to be a little patient, Walk away, let the page dry overnight, and then come back fresh in the morning full of excitement and inspiration. Right. I'm loving that shape. I love the texture of the beautiful paper. Material feels like material to me. I love all of our layers. Yes, my art journal will be nice and fat and probably won't shut, especially by the time I'm finished with it, but I really don't mind. It's all about me creating what I want in a fabulous book that I can look back next year and flick through and go, man, I learned so much, I had such a good time and that's what I want to do. You just have to work out what it is that you want to do and what it is that you want to achieve. Right? That's not too bad. That's pretty stuck down and that's going to look pretty nice when it's dried. Now, the hardest part is going to be deciding on which ones of these beautiful shelves I want to add to the page. The more I pull out, the harder it gets. Some of them are turquoise in their colorings and some of them have more of the purple. They're beautiful and iridescent. I just love them. I'm going to put a few of them on my beautiful textured ribbon that's just going to really make me happy. I'm just using PVA to put them on. I put it into this little bottle because it's just convenient. It's just easier. It's got a great nozzle on it. These bottles you get from the dollar store really cheap, fill them up with glue. Just easier to work with. It's pretty hard to decide which piece to put on, but they're all really beautiful. So I'm just going with what size I think is going to work best. They've all got the beautiful colors in them. They shine gloriously in the light. What do you think? Do I need more? Shall I stop? It's so hard to stop. Okay, well, I think I'll leave it there and let it and then come back and have a look and see if I'm happy with that amount and that placement or if I need to add a few more. I have, but we don't have to put them all on the first page now. Do we? Absolutely beautiful, love the colors, love the textures, and so enjoy this first day using found objects. So my beautiful pages have all dried up. And what do you think of the glorious texture? I absolutely love these pages, both of them. I love the colors and the textures. I love the overlay of shapes. And I absolutely adore my power shell. So much fun, fabulous. First day of using found objects in our collage. Yippie. We're off to a great start. What's next? 6. Keys to Success: Day nine, Keys to Success. Now as you can see, the days are going to continue throughout each of the classes, and each of the lessons. Because that's how we're going to keep track of what number we're up to and how we'll know when we get to 100. Don't forget, you do have the fabulous treasure map to look at. If you forget where we're up to or if you want to see where we're headed, it's so much fun. I so enjoyed making it keys to success. What kind of key are you going to put in your collage? Are you going to use a real key? An image of a key, a photo. Maybe you've got some crafting items that are key shaped. I don't know, anything's possible. What is the key going to open? Is there a mystery or a story with the key? Does it have a door or a lock? Anything's possible. The prompt is quite simple. Incorporate a key into your collage. It doesn't say how many keys, what shape the key is or what the key is doing. That's totally up to you and I can't wait to see what you're going to create. So, what are the keys to success? Well, first of all, you'd have to work out what success means to you to figure out what the keys are. That's going to be different for everybody. I'm going to start with this stencil, it's got some fabulous key shapes on it. And it says blessed something. I actually can't read all of it, but I really love the texture. Blessed key, unlock treasure. Yeah, we love that idea because to me, keys to success really is all about what's going to make you happy. I think gratitude, or gratefulness is a really good place to start. I think having a grateful attitude really does unlock blessing and keys to success in your life. I'm going to start with this stencil and I'm going to put it on my page. And then when it dries, I'm going to add paint to it and decide what I might want to collage after that. Now I have some light molding paste. And I'm going to use the light molding paste because I don't want it too thick and heavy on my fabulous art journal page, But I really do want the texture. I find that the light molding paste is light and fluffy. Look, it looks like beaten egg whites. Don't you think? I do. I'm going to just scrape over sections of this stencil on this page. Now it's not going to look perfect because the stencil is clearly not entirely flat, because it's the back of the page with the power shell, it's going to be a little wobbly, but I'm really not worried about that. We're not after perfection, we're after creativity. I like the concept that blessing comes from a grateful heart. And having a thankfulness for what you have, expecting what more you would like, I think unlocks keys to blessing. I'm going to put this stencil on here. It's going to be rough, rough and ready. And I'm doing it in the light molding, paste, so I can then paint over it once I decide what colors I want to put on my page. Right. It's simple as that. It's already done. I've put the texture on the page. The hardest part is going to be waiting for it to dry, but then we're going to move onto the other side anyway. Let's see what we've got. That looks pretty nice. I like it. What you can do straight away is wipe off with a damp cloth, the areas that you don't want your stencil to be like here and here. Don't forget. I like to add the baking paper under my page so that it protects the page before it and also the next page after it. Now, I don't want the modeling paste to be right on the crack here of the pages because it's just hard then for it to close. It just makes it break in the binding a lot faster. I'm going to move those areas so easy, while it's still wet. Just wipe them off the page so that it's not so hard for the pages to close. Just a little bit of housekeeping to try and keep the art journal together for as long as possible because I really want to have my whole collection in this book. I think it'll just be so much fun. Right? I think that's okay. It's not about reading the text on the stencil because that's pretty hard to read anyway. But it's about the texture. I've got bless there. I've got blessed key, and I've got a couple of keys. It's a great place to start for our keys to success theme. What are we going to start with on this side, don't forget, you will need to wash the stencils that you use with the modeling paste. Otherwise they'll get stuck up and you won't be able to use them again. Go and give it a quick wash while you're waiting for your page to dry, so you keep your stencil functionable. Now I'm loving image, my friend Teresa. Set this to me. It's on some really nice paper. I'm going to build a page on this side with this particular image. I'm loving the texture here. I'm loving the look of that really rough wall seeing as we've got the light modeling paste out, that would be really fun to add some of that to the page. Maybe if I put the image on the side of the page on the straight line here like that, then I could tear off these other sides, make them a little more rugged looking. That would work better. Then I'm going to add some of the modeling paste around the image to create some texture. Maybe some of that fibrous ribbon. I haven't quite decided what we're going to do with it next. And I also need to find the key. I need the key to open the door. I've torn around the edge to make it more raw rugged. I'm going to glue it onto that side with my Matt medium. Then I'm going to add some of that fabulous modeling pastingers. I still have some on my palette, which I like to use paper plates because they're disposable, they're very cheap from the dollar store. Then when I'm finished painting and using my mediums and paints, I can just throw it away. You can get the fabulous disposable palettes. And I have some of those as well. But if you're looking for something very cost efficient, paper plates are a great idea. Right door is down on the edge there of the straight line. I'm just using a stiff bristle brush with the modeling paste and I'm going to put it around the image very rough because I want to add that texture like that's on the image there. I think that would be really fun. I'm just going to put it on very rough and textured. You'll see more of these marks once you add some paint to the page. Maybe go over the image a little bit just so you can blend it in more pretty quick. Don't take too much time. A little bit on the image. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. A little bit with a palette knife, then it looks like those plastered marks. Trouble is you don't want it to be too thick. Stiff bristle brass makes a lot thinner texture, but just a little bit of the palette knife could really make it look similar to the image. And that's a whole lot of fun right now. We have to wait to these pages dry completely before we can put any color on them. Now, the modeling paste won't take too long to dry, but you are going to have to go a little bit gentle because the top layer or the skin will be dry, but the thicker parts underneath will still be wet. It will have be a little gentle. I'm just pulling out some of my favorite colors. I have some copper, some magenta in the Liquitex basics. I've also got a little quinaquidone, red violet, which is very similar, just a little deeper. And some fmillion, which is basically orange. Now I've decided in this art class, I'm pulling out paints that have been in my drawer for some time. They do not last forever. You really do need to pull your paints out because they will go off sitting in the drawer, especially if you're in a humid area where there's a lot of heat. Your paints will not last forever. If you've got some in the drawl that's been there a while, pull them out and see how they're going. You can tell when these ones get a little old because they start to get like stringy, they're a lot thicker, I guess it's just the molecular structure of the paint starts to fall apart after a while. Nothing lasts forever, right? I'm adding water from a water spray bottle just to get the paint moving around. I'm going to do these pages in layers. We're going to put a layer of color on and then I'm going to add another layer on top once this layer is dried, so I'm not too precious about it. These colors will mix well together. They're beautiful, rich, warm tones, and they really are my favorite colors. That's the only reason why I decided to start these colors. You can use any colors on your pages. You don't have to use what I'm using. You don't have to do what I'm doing. I'm just hoping by showing you what I'm doing and explaining my colors and my choices, that it inspires you to pull out your art materials and your supplies. And just to get creating because it's really good for you, it releases all of the happy endorphins in your brain. Life is just better when you're making art, right? So I'm just going to put these colors on the page in quite a thin layer. I'm really slapping the colors on because I do want to add another layer on top. Our beautiful texture paste will be able to shine through because it's got that little bit of raised edge on it, right? That's a good base coat. Now I'm just going to leave that to right, what are we going to do on the other side? 7. Finishing Project 9: For this side, I'm going to use some unbleached titanium and some bronze, both in the liquid text basics on my very fancy paint palette, I'm just going to put a base coat down of these colors and then yes, we're going to be putting another layer on top. Love the texture that the modeling paste has created. I think it looks fabulous. It really suits that texture there of the image. Very happy with it. I think that it should look really good. I think it's such a fabulous and easy way to create texture. It's a whole lot of fun, right? I'm going to just dirty that up a bit with a little bit of the bronze, so it's not so yellow. See how fast that color changed? Just adding a touch of the bronze to it. Just a bit and not so yellow as you can see. I'm doing it quite messy. You don't have to be all precious about it because we want to have that rough wall look to it. We want it to be roughed up. Looking anyway, don't get too precious if you do have a little upsize and you go over an area that you don't want to go over, you can just wipe it straight back off with a baby easy Pz, no stress. You can also, of course, rub it with your fingers because you've got all that fabulous texture on there. Then you won't have the straight paint brush lines and that can sometimes look a lot better. Have a little play. Allow yourself to just try a few things, run over your image A that it blends more in. Say look at that, yes, that's looking fabulous. And then if something goes wrong and you're not quite happy, you can pull it back off with your wet wipe. So don't be afraid to try, right? I'm pretty happy with that. I think I'm just going to leave it. I like the roughness of it. Love that light molding paste. I think it does a fabulous job of creating the texture. We'll let these two pages dry and then we're going to add another layer to them. Yeah, Pretty happy with that. Looking good. Now if you do want to use a beautiful rustic old door image, you can have a look at some royalty free websites. Unsplash.com is my favorite go to site, but there are quite a few other ones as well where you can use images royalty free, no drama. Download them to your computer and print them out. I'll put a couple of the websites that I know about in your class notes, so have a look there on your class notes. If you need some images at any time through this whole class and process, I find it to be very helpful. Right? My pages are mostly dried. Before I go any further, I'm going to put some washing tape down the crack here of the two pages. Because I find that when there's two pages together like this with the acrylic paint, they often stick. Then when you open your book up and pull them apart, it tears at the page. It's because the acrylic on the acrylic, especially when the book is closed and the heat warms up the paint, it tends to stick to each other. I'm going to put a piece of washing tape down the middle there to help with that problem. Because this side is the lovely, neutral colors, I'm going to use this one and put it mostly on this side. Just putting a little bit on that side. I'm hoping that it will just help with the sticking. I also then like to put a piece of baking paper between my pages like this so they don't stick. But it's right there that I have found previously a problem with these art journals. I just like to try and help it last as long as possible, looking as good as possible, because I love to look back over these books a year or two down the track. See how far I've grown. See what different works I'm doing now, or different techniques that I've learned, or things that I forget about. I look at it and go, oh man, I forgot that I really liked to do that particular technique. Now, good reminders for that. I'm going to put it mostly on the neutral side because it's going to suit better. But I am going to put a little bit on the beautiful red side because I don't want my pages to stick. That's just a little tip to help with your art journal maintenance, right? Hopefully that will help it from sticking. That's my solution. We'll see how we go. Right. Seeing as I'm using my favorite colors today, on this page I've pulled out Lumi by Jack Art. Halo, pink, gold. It's one of my absolute favorite colors. I haven't used it for ages. I'm pulling out paints that I really want to use. What I love about this paint, look how glorious it is, live. The sound of its luxurious, absolute opulence of the colors. When you spray it with water, it releases the halo color. This is halo, pink, gold. It releases that pinky color. It just looks absolutely magnificent. I'm feeling like a little bit of beauty and opulence for my fabulous keys of thankfulness. I'm just going to put some on the page, spray it around, release the color, and that is just going to look beautiful. I also have the same paint in the halo, violet, gold. I am very keen put some of this one on as well. I've been using these paints in my paintings for years and they're just absolutely magnificent. Put it on, spray the water, allow the halo to bleed out, and it just looks amazing. It's going to highlight all of the fabulous texture from our modeling paste. I think I'll put some of the violet gold down the bottom here. Have a little dig around in your drawers and pull out paints that you haven't used for a while. Make sure they're okay and they haven't gone off. And then have a little play with them. Remind yourself what it was you loved about them, especially if they're beautiful, opular colors like these ones. Just the beautiful color and the texture makes me so happy, makes me feel very thankful, very blessed. And I think it's perfect for our keys to success. I'm loving that now that I've sprayed the thing with so much water, I'm going to have to let that dry and see if there's anything else I want to add to it. But I'm pretty happy with just the beautiful opulence of the colors, the textures. You can see the keys read a couple of the words. It's just looking beautiful, right? Well, let that dry, right? While that beautiful opulent page is drying, I've got a little piece from yesterday's collage with the fabulous fiber coso ribbon. I'd really like to put it on this side. It's a, an off cut piece, but I just loved the beautiful texture that it created on the page. I think it's beautiful, the color is working well and the theme on this side, I'm going to glue this piece over this side. Something like that, I'm thinking. And then I'm just going to let it dry overnight and then we'll come back tomorrow and see how it's looking because both sides really need to be dry before we do anything else. That's the plan. Stan going to blue that on there and then I'll let the pages dry overnight. Right. Both these pages have dried up. Absolutely beautiful. I'm so happy with them. The colors on here are glorious. And you can see the fabulous molding paste underneath with the key shapes from the stencils, just looking beautiful and it's dried up so well. You can see the halo pink gold and the beautiful violet gold. Love this side. I'm just as happy with that color. Works really well. Loving the texture of that fiber ribbon, it's absolutely glorious. Even the washi tape down the middle looks like it's meant to be part of the overall artwork. So I'm pretty happy. Now I want to add little key feature focal point onto this page. I've pulled out my scrap bag. Now whenever I do a collage, I always make way more papers than I need. Or I have little off cut pieces like these pieces there ends of the page. Or they're torn bits, or they're just little off cuts from different jelly prints or different textured papers. And I put them into one of these clear bags where I can see them. Now I like to organize all my collage papers into color blocks. This bag is going to have small pieces like this, and they're going to be in black and white and bronze, earthy tones or natural fibers. Then when I feel like I want a piece of that color or texture, this is where I go. I might just want to use a little piece like this for something or a piece like this. It's a really good way to stay organized and find what you want when you want it. I also have other bags like this with red and orange and warm tones, and blue and green and cool tones. It's just really easy, I find, personally, to put them into blocks of color. Now, bigger pieces I put in boxes, the smaller pieces I put in these clear folders, it just works really well. I pulled out a piece like this from my scrap bag and I'm going to put a focal point onto this side with this fabulous key that I've cut out from one of my crafting pages. I think putting that on there like that's going to really finish off this page, makes me happy. It looks glorious. Keys to Success. Baby is a thankful heart. That's my interpretation of Keys to Success. Now I finally found my key that opens this door. Look at this, look how cute that is. That is just beautiful. Yes. And it suits the style so well, and I think that I might showcase it on this piece of ribbon. It's a really beautiful color. The texture would work well. So I'm thinking just maybe a little piece like that. Put that on there like that. Put the key on there like that. And that is going to look fabulous, right? So I'm going to glue that down and then I'll give you a close up when it's dried. What do you think of my beautiful collage pages? I absolutely love them. I love the colors. I love the meaning. I love the keys to success. Being a thankful heart, and I absolutely adore the other page. The colors work so well with the door image. I absolutely love the roughness of it and the fabulous key that I found. I'm really happy with the pages. I enjoyed so much making these, and I'm really enjoying the found objects. Then I can't wait for the next lesson, what are we doing next? 8. Collage Poetry: Day ten, collage poetry. All this one might get a little tricky. So we're going to combine words written or stenciled, or book pages to create narrative collages or visual poetry I know doesn't sound exciting. You could try some blackout poetry, which is taking a page of written texts, blacking out some of the words so that the ones that remain actually tell a story or a narrative. I know I love using book pages in college, so if you've always enjoyed that particular element, then today's your day, you can go crazy with your book pages. I really like the idea of creating some kind of hidden message or having something written or said that's really important to you. So allow yourself to really be imaginative, to have a lot of fun, to explore the possibilities, and perhaps create something that you've never done before. That's the purpose of this particular art class. You're in a safe and friendly environment. You can create incredible artworks that you've always wanted to, but been a little scared about because you think somebody else is going to laugh at. You are not like it. It doesn't matter. And it's in an art journal, no one even needs to see it, although I do like to see them. But I understand. If you don't want to show me, there's such an opportunity in these lessons and this class to really create something you've never done before. I know I'm going to be challenged to do that. I've written out the whole class, 1-100 every lesson. It's already written out. And some of them that I have coming up in the future, I've never created like that before. I'm going to be challenged by my own class, so don't worry if you're feeling challenged along the way, because that's the fun of it. It expands our creativity, it grows us as creative people. And it's really quite good to allow yourself to do the things you've always thought about, but hadn't been brave enough to try. So I think I'm going to try a little bit of blackout poetry. I've never done it before, but I think it could be a lot of fun. So let's get going. Let's pull out some words, some written texts, maybe some Stentils. I've got a few of those. Can't wait a fresh page. And a new adventure. How exciting. Now I love putting text and writing into my collages and there's so many ways we can do that. I have this stampera craft paper, as you can see, it's well loved. I've cut bits out of it here and there. I think it's really interesting, but it's got a lot of great areas of writing and background texts that I think would work really well to start my collage. But the papers are very thick, which is great when you want a focal point like these areas here or these pieces. But it's not great if you just want background because I am always conscious of looking after my art journal and preserving its integrity of structure. When I'm going to put something that's just going to be completely background and I'm probably going to cover most of it up. I want to use thinner papers. The thicker papers I'll use for focal points or on top or transparent layers, or for creating other elements of texture. But for the base background, I like to use thinner pages. What I did was just took a print copy on my ink jet of this section here, look, that's where it's got cut out. Because I think this will be a great start for the collage poetry, it feels very collage poetry like with all of the writing in the different fonts. That's fun. It's a good idea if you've got some craft paper, but it's a bit thick and you want to put it in your art journal and you don't want too many fat layers. Print it out on your ink jet, give it a little spray with the mat, varnish spray, because it just might help to seal the ink a bit, especially if you're using the mat medium on your collage. That's when I did. So we'll see how well it works. It only takes 2 seconds. I really like the designs and illustrations in this one. I'll put it in your notes if you want to find it. I think it's called alchemy. Really fun. I printed out a few of the pages and I'm just going to stick them down as a background. Once I decide which one I want, I'm feeling I might start with this one and perhaps one of these because I really like that text look or that one because it's pretty. Oh man. I'm going to include the background down and then we're going to see what we're using for the next layer. Right. My background pages have dried and they're looking fabulous, especially for papers. That just came out of my ink jet printer. I'm rather impressed with how well they did actually print. Now I sprayed them with the matt varnish to help to deter the ink from bleeding. They did bleed a little along the edge here where I put the mat medium to join a little extra piece on. You can tell with the little ink bleed there's a little green tinge but that's okay. Overall, I think it was very successful. There's an idea if you're using your ink jet printer to print out prints, give it a little spray with the matt varnish. It does help, right? What are we doing next? I'd really love to have a try of blackout poetry. I've never done it and there's going to be quite a few lessons in this art class that I've never done before. Because I just think that would be fun to do things you haven't done before. Now this is a piece of text that came in a paper pack. I can't remember which 11 of the crafting packs of paper. And it looks like it's Alice in Wonderland. Because it says, just at this moment, Alice felt a very curious sensation, right? La, I'm figuring that's going to be a little fun. The premise is to pick out some words that create another story or a poem, or some meaning, and then cross out the words you don't want as like a visual expression of text or poetry. And that sounds really fun. What do you think? I think we should just go for it just at this moment. I really love that idea. I'm going to start by circling some words and then I'm going to put a line through the other words. You can really block out the other words, which is why it's called blackout poetry. But you don't have to, It's totally up to you. You can make anything you like for this idea. And it's just an idea, you don't even have to do it. But I think it's fun. She was beginning to grow. I like that sentiment just saying because I think we are all on an adventure that is definitely going to cause some growth for all of us. She thought at first she would get up and leave the court, but on second thought, she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her. I like that she decided to remain where she was. As there was room for her. Yes, there is room for everybody. I wish you wouldn't sneeze. So said the mouse who was sitting next to her. I can hardly breathe. I can't help it, said Alice, very meekly. Oh, would we like that? I do. I can't help it. I'm growing. Yes. Yes, I can't help it. I'm growing. You've no right to grow here said the mouse. Don't talk nonsense, said Alice boldly. You know you're growing too. There you go. You know you're growing too. What a fun piece of text. Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace, said the mouse, not that ridiculous fashion. And he got up very sulkily and crossed over to the other side of the court. All this time, the queen had never left off staring at the hatter. Right. So that's really fun and what have we got? Just at this moment, she was beginning to grow. She decided to remain where she was as there was room for her. Yes. I can't help it. I'm growing. You know you're growing too. Oh my gosh. Had so much fun. You really have to give it a try. I thought that was really fun. Now, I'm just going to see what it looks like if I just cross out these or I can do it in like a big fatter Sharpie or something else if I want to make it more dominant. But I'm liking the slimness of the lines, I really don't mind that it is all about the visual presentation. It's completely up to you. You can make it really prominent and thick and cross it out and make the words more obvious. Or you can just do it quite simply. But have it go find a piece of text, pull out some words, and it was a whole lot of fun. I mean, I was pretty happy that I found this in my scrap box, and it was Alice in Wonderland, because that really suits me very well. I often say to people, welcome to Wonderland when they find me on Youtube, because it has to be a whole lot of fun and you never quite know what we're going to get up to. Right? Loving that just at this moment, she was beginning to grow. She decided to remain where she was as there was room for her. I can't help it, I'm growing. You know, you're growing too. How fun is that fun? That's one piece that I can add to my pages or I can add part of that piece. I don't necessarily have to put the whole piece in. I also have some book texts. Now I've sprayed these with the Zinc. I personally love the coffee and the licorice in the Is sprays. They'll be in your notes if you want to know what they are, where you get them. I love them and use them all the time. I'll repeat them through many of the lessons. I've also got these book pages, which I pulled them out of a book or the history of New Zealand because I got it in the Thrift store really cheap, sprayed them. They look really good. I might use some of this text in one of these colors because I think that could work. And that could work. And there's also, what I wanted to add was my own poem. It was quite a few years ago. I was having a bit of a hard time. I was working on collage, a beautiful, big, glorious collage, and I wrote myself a letter into the collage. I wanted to encourage yourself, I put this poem together. Of course, it's also for you because that's how I create. I did some jelly printing yesterday. Printed out from the mask or stencil of my poem. Now you can't actually read what it says on the printed jelly print. And that's okay because I love the texture. This one's obviously a clean up ghost print, but look how fabulous the texture is. I absolutely love that this one pulled on wet strength tissue is pulling the paint from around the mask. You can't actually make out the words on this one, I really don't mind that because I love the texture. This one you can make out the words because this print has been pulled from the ghost print. So that's the paint that's trapped under the mask, pulls that print, It looks fabulous. I also pulled some prints, did the same process on glorious rice paper or mulberry paper. These are the ones from Coso Studio, and this is a sample pack. 9. Finishing Project 10: What I love about the sample pack is they're already cut into the right side. It works so well for the jelly plate. This was, I think, natural colors or neutral color, something like that. Anyway, I thought it was fabulous, had to have it. And it printed really well. You can see where it's gone around, the words and the mask leaves the color of the glorious rice paper. It works fabulously. This one here, I printed with the wet tissue. I've used the golden, iridescent bronze for all of these prints because it's my favorite. Then I sprayed it with the eggs. That one's in the licorice, this one's in the coffee. Look how good that looks. That's definitely the ghost print that pulls up the text from under the mask. I love it. Now the thing you've got to remember when you're using text, stencils or masks on the gel plate is you have to put them down the opposite way. So when you pull the print, the print comes up the right way of the text. Sometimes I do that and sometimes I don't. But you can notice the writing is sloping this way on this print. But it's sloping that way on that print. Because that one's gone down the wrong way. But I really don't mind because to me it's all about the texture. It's about the lines and the pattern and the way it looks. And it's not about you actually reading the text. That's what I love about putting text into your collage is you can read it like our beautiful black out poetry. Or you don't have to read it like this fabulous text. This one here is the print taken from the paint around the mask. You can see the difference in how it looks when it prints. This one I've also sprayed, there's so many ways to use this fabulous stencil or mask. I absolutely love it because I know what it says. It doesn't matter to me that you can't read it in the font of it. There's just so much more to enjoy about the texture. Now this is what the poem says, let me share it with you. Dream big, there's nobody like you. You are unique. One of a kind, irreplaceable, beautiful cherish who you are, love out loud and allow yourself to shine. Be kind, generous and know that you are loved, darling. You are a work of art. I absolutely love it. It means so much to me. I love the mask stencil and it makes absolutely incredible prints. Now, I'm going to use a little piece of one of these. I know why print one When you can print ten, love jelly printing. I'm going to use a little piece of my poem. I'm going to use some of the blackout poetry and maybe some texts. How am I going to do that and not cover up all my background? That's the question. Well, I think I'll start over this side. I'm going to tear some of this book text. I like the color. It's got a great story. The fish of Mai, let's put some of this texture on this side. How much? I don't know until I start to work with it, how much I want or what size I want. Book text is really easy to work with. It's really cheap to find old books at the Thrift store. Give them a little spray up or use them in the natural color. Whatever you like. I would really like to use this. I think that's a lot of fun. I'm going to just tear the edge so it's not so straight. I might need to trim it down a little, right? I could probably take it off here because we don't need all of that extra piece there. But it's still fairly big. What do we think? Do we want the whole piece or shall I cut a section of it? It's a pretty cool story. We're growing. It fits really well with my background, texture, and colors. I'm liking this piece here. I don't know, man, I think I might just leave it, the whole piece on that because it's pretty fun what it says. I like that it's Alice in Wonderland. And I like that we're growing, so I'm going to leave that there for now. Now, this piece, I would love to put a piece of the glorious red on there. I think that looks stunning. I know you can't read it. I don't care if I'm honest with you, I've got the stencil back to front because they're sloping that way, but that's okay. Don't tell anybody and we'll be fine. I think I would love a piece of this because look at the glorious rice paper. Oh, it's just such a beautiful texture. The bronze looks amazing on this color, and I just have to use it. I love the shape that the paint makes going around the mask, the rice paper didn't pick it all up off the plate. I think because it's so fiberous it basically just sucked in. I don't know. It's just worth experimenting with different textures to see what they do on the gel plate because they all make incredibly different responses. I'm not sure how much I want, I just want some of it. You know what else I want to show you. The beautiful mask. This is my stencil mask, there's the writing dream big. There's no one else like you. Yes, I know. I love it. So that is what I was using to take these prints. But then of course, I also have a smaller mask, which I was playing with as well on some of those prints. And then I have these tiny little bits. I look how beautiful they look because they've been covered in bronze paint. I'm thinking we should put a little piece of this on here because it's found objects weak, right? So I can stick as much on these pages as I want to. I'm thinking, I want to use my glorious poem. I love it so much. It's so meaningful to me. What about we just like snippet? It looks fabulous, covered in the bronze paint? I'm going to do it. It's another glorious found object. Here's a little piece for another day in my scrap bag. Yes, that's how it works. I'm thinking, loving that I want a piece of the red. Probably now, not so much because the other piece is taken over. Just to add a little bit of highlight. It's just such a fabulous color. I know it's my favorite color. I just love it. I'm going to put that right there and then I'm going to put this on. Do I want it to be square? No, I don't think so. How about we snippet some more? Not so square. Maybe there, look, you can see the word love. I like that idea. What about like that? Then It's not so square and straight. I can see the word love on the end there, that's making me happy. Look at that color, That is glorious. Okay, I'm doing it. I'm going to stick that down like that. I'm going to put this on this side that might need a bit of a spray because I don't know if I'm really happy with that color. We might need a little bit of bronze shimmer on that. But I'll stick that down first and then we'll see what we think. Right, It's all glued on. I've just used the mat medium. It's all wet, sticky, but I'm loving it so much. That's the history of New Zealand piece, my fabulous Blackout poetry. I love the background, I love my poem. It's so meaningful to me and I love this particular bit of the jelly print there. The colors are glorious. I'm going to give that a little bit of a spritzer with bronze shimmer. I'm thinking I might touch it up down here with a bit of spraying. But other than that, I'm thinking it's looking pretty good. We're going to have to let it dry. I'll show you when it's dry. And that was a whole lot of fun. Well, it's not entirely dry, but it nearly is. It's still a little soft and damp. But I'm feeling more brave, so I'm thinking, what would it look like if I did black out The other words, for our blackout poetry. Did you hear me hold my breath? Because I don't know what it's going to look like. But I am feeling a little more brave, or it's going to make it more dramatic. And you know, I love a good drama now, it looks really like blackout poetry and that's really exciting. Look how fun that looks. Oh man, I'm glad I tried it. So what do you think? I think that looks fabulous. I'm glad it doesn't look crappy because it'd be too hard to change it and fix it. I'm excited by that. I think it looks great. My mask is down and it's drying nicely. The pages are beautiful. What do you think, so much fun? Be brave. Pull all your courage together and give it a try. It was so much fun. 10. Portrait Collage: Day 11, and this is portrait collage. I know are you going to use your own portrait or are we not quite there yet? You can use vintage photographs or your own photograph. You can use royalty free photographs from different website. I'll put a list of some of the royalty free websites in your class notes, so have a look at that if you want to find a different vintage image from somewhere and you definitely want it to be royalty free, or you might have your own. Maybe you've got some family or some ancestors that you want to create a collage about. Maybe this is something you've been wanting to do for a long time. I know I've got some beautiful photos of my family, some relatives up the family tree. I don't know if I'm going to use them or find a different image. Mm. I find I really get into it. Once I think about what I want to create and then I start researching, do I want to use my own family or do I want to find a royalty free image? Do I want it to be vintage? Do I want to do a self portrait? Wow, that could be really challenging, but interesting. So many exciting things to think about. What are you going to do? Are you going to use your own family? Some vintage photos. There's so many possibilities. So many options. It really is quite endless what we create and it's so much fun. What are you going to create and what stories do you have to tell, right? So I have a few projects in mind. I'm going to do a jelly print image transfer with this beautiful picture of what could be a vintage lady from Unsplash.com Now I know that not everybody likes doing image transfers on the gel plate, so I'm also going to do another project using this glorious photo of my mom, and that is seriously vintage. My mom here is about 15 and she is now 81, so that's a classic vintage photo. I'm going to use this and put it on some different textured background. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do with it, but I'm definitely going to use this photo. It's a little grainy and pixelated because it's a photo of a photo that I took years ago. And I don't know where the original is, but I'm going to work with this. I know I could create something fabulous with it. First of all, we're going to do an image transfer on the gel plate. Now this process is really very straightforward and very simple. The most important part is your print copy. You must have a color laser print because the process works in a laser copy has to in the color pigments where all the color is. It has a build up of toner and it resists the paint that's on the gel plate, sticking the image to the plate. And then you pull the transfer where there's no ink in the print, there's no toner. It absorbs the paint and that's what creates dark and light shades. You do need a good contrast for your image. That is really important. But the most important part is to make sure your print copy is going to work. Because not every laser printer works, even from the office shops. Now, I get mine printed from warehouse stationery because I know they work. I don't have a home laser printer. I only have an ink jet. If you're trying it on your home laser printer, you might need to run your copy through twice to build up that toner because that's what makes the magic happen. Now a thin coat of paint on your plate, you want there to be enough paint to create the transfer process, but not too much. That it makes the image smudgy, you just need a thin layer print copy straight down on the plate. Give it a rub for about, shall I count to 30/32 Now this is real time. You can see exactly how long I'm taking. It's not very long, but it's long enough to create that resist effect and leave the paint on the plate transferring our image right. She's a beautiful transfer. It really is quite a simple process once you get the right print copy because that is the most important part. Now I'm wet strength tissue. You don't have to use wet strength tissue, It's just I have a pile and I love it because it doesn't tear. What I love about putting the image transfer onto tissue is that you can then choose any background that you want to put the transfer on. Give it a good rub for about, shall I count 40 this time? Not very long, but long enough for that transfer to stick to our fabulous tissue. And then we see what magic has happened, right? So as you can see, it's come straight off the plate. She's looking absolutely beautiful, Very vintage looking, because I've used this fabulous brown black color, she looks very vintage. Like I said, it's not a hard process. It's very simple. You have to have the right print copy. If your prints aren't working, try going to a different office shop or if you're using your home laser printer, try running your prints through twice to build up the toner. Now as I said, what I love about printing onto tissue because of course you can print onto anything, is that you can put a background behind the image, maybe a different color or a different pattern or texture. I like using text, sometimes I like to use music pages and they just look beautiful on top of the image. There's so many options of what you can do with your transfers. All right. I've decided I'm going to use the French. She's beautiful lover, very vintage looking. And I'm going to put it on this background which is just a piece of Yes, very vintage looking music notes. I'm going to stick that on there for the background and then I'm going to put her over the top what you'll see the texture of those fabulous notes coming through just slightly on the clear areas of the print on her face and her neck. And I think that just adds a little bit of fun, little bit of texture. She'll look beautiful and it's quite a subtle color in the background, so it's not going to overpower my beautiful print. That's that. Image transfers, I love them to bits. Now, if you don't want to do an image transfer, no drama. This is the vintage photo of my mom. The first thing I did was to remove the background because it's got way too much black area in the background. That's boring. Simple program on the computer deleted the background and then she looks like this. From here, I decided I wanted to print her onto some more vintage looking craft paper. I chose this piece. I have a very simple cannon printer in my garage, inject printer. I stuck the fabulous craft paper in the top, comes out the bottom, all printed. She looks fabulous. There's a little bit of text over her face, but not too much. I think it worked well. I like the text pattern here. I love this section here. I think it really adds to her ball gown look. So I'm going to put her on this side of the page. I know it's a shame I have to chop off so much, but that's how it goes. She's going to go on there like that. I'm going to stick both these pages down and then we'll decide if we think they need a little bit of color or do I want to just leave them in the vintage tones. That's the question. 11. Finishing Project 11: Don't forget if you are using your ink jet print out to print out your prints, to give them a little bit of a spray with the mat, varnish spray because it helps to seal the ink and if you're putting matt medium or ink or paint or anything on top, it just helps that it doesn't bleed. I find it definitely does. He sometimes just knowing a few little tips that's going to help really do improve the quality of the print. Right, that looks great. She's down and there's a small gap down the side of the page. So that is a perfect opportunity to pull out the scrap bag. There's bound to be something beautiful that I can add to that little gap there on the side of the page. Mom is looking fabulous here in all her ballroom glory. I might add a little, maybe something there. I'm going to go and have a look what I can find now, There's so many possibilities in my fabulous scrap box. It's just a matter of finding something that's going to work. I love this paper, the beautiful. So paper, it's glorious. But do I want something that full on? I think that might be taking away from my beautiful portrait, even though I love it. What about some gold? Gold always works well. That is a possibility. I do like the fiber and the texture. That is definitely a possibility. We could put maybe some book text that could work as well. Don't mind that idea. Or perhaps, what about a little more fibrous? I could use this piece, but I think the whites a bit stark. I could color it. I could scumble over it with some bronze that could possibly work. I don't mind that idea. Maybe we'll go with that now. What am I going to add as a final piece to the other side? I think it definitely needs to be a little more vintage. I have these from my taperology box. Maybe something in here would work that would be fun. I love that. That would work. Or the gold one would work. Especially if I'm going to put some bronze over on this side, that could work really well. It suits the vintage feel. My mom definitely would have worn things like that in her day. I know she would've. That's too small, that's too nonexistent. Radio radio, the green's not bad. Not bad. Not bad. But I'm thinking, I like either that one, which might be or the gold. Yes, I think I'll go with the gold. Seeing as this has found objects in collage class, I'm thinking we should definitely put an embroidered rose on the corner that will finish our beautiful vintage page with my gorgeous mum. I'm pretty happy with my pages. I love the subtle way you can see the music notes coming through, but they're not too strong. And it's given the print a beautiful sepia tone which adds to the vintage feel. Now I'm thinking I want to put a little bit of bronze over the wide because it's a little stark. I'm just going to scumble a bit on with this brush. Iridescent bronze, fine. I probably don't want to add too much, just enough to make it a little warmer. The bronze is going to match really well with our beautiful gold rose on that side. Then I'm pretty sure we are done, which was a whole lot of fun. I loved pulling out that photo of my mom. Just think it's so fun when you've got fabulous photos and history of your family and you get to use them in your artwork. It just makes it so much more personal and rewarding, I think. Anyway, that photo really suits the vintage feel and style of today's theme. If it's not a good photo, it doesn't even matter because printing it onto that paper, removing the background, adding a little bit of embroidered rose. I mean, it's just beautiful. It doesn't matter that the image quality wasn't perfect because I think that contributes to the vintage feel. Anyway, I'm just going to finish up this with a little bit of the bronze. Try not to get too carried away. I'll give you a close up when it's dry. There we go. They're looking beautiful. I'm just loving it. 12. Gelli Print Found Objects: Day 12, Jelly printing with found Objects. How very exciting. I love jelly printing. It's so much fun. It's so quick, it's so creative. There's so much you can do with jelly printing. And we're going to have a look around our house, pull some resources together from found objects, and create some fabulous prints. You might be very surprised at how easy it is to create fabulous prints. Items from around your house. Unusual shaped, different textures, they're fabulous for using on the jelly plate. I can't wait to get going and to jump in, so let's pull out the jelly plates, get some acrylic paint going and have a lot of fun, right? I'm pretty excited about today's listen because we're jelly printing with found objects. Now if I can find it, we're going to use it. So you need to have a rummage around your house to see what you can find to make some fabulous marks on the gel plate. We're going to do some printing. Have a lot of fun. It's going to get messy. It's going to be a little crazy, but it's going to be a lot of fun. I've pulled out some of my favorite colors. I just put copper on the plate. This is a draw liner. I love it very much because it makes a great textured pattern. Now today I'm just using my ten x eight gel plate and I'm going to be fast and furious creating marks on the plate and we're going to be doing layers on our prints. Look how fabulous that texture looks. I just love it. Another thing I love to use so much is yarn or string on the plate. It's absolutely fabulous. It makes great lines. You can do so many incredible patterns with it, and it's so simple, so cheap. Hello, so easy yarns on plate, you already saw. I put down some texture with the draw line up. Now I'm just going to pull that. We're going to make multiple layers on our prints. We're going to experiment, see what makes great marks, see what we can find. Then we'll use the prints in our collage today and maybe even tomorrow as well. Make sure you're storing up all of your prints in a box where you can find them and all your papers. Because we will be reusing things as we go along with the lessons. We'll be pulling prints out. Again, adding other layers or other textures and seeing what else we can create. These techniques are so simple and so much fun. A look at that. Draw a line up with a bit of string. We're often running, we're away, and I'm loving that. Now we have the fabulous ghost print under the string on the plate. Looks beautiful. I could pull that just like that onto something, but no, I'm too excited. We're going to add some more texture. How about we add some of my mean almost finished favorite Alizarin Crimson on the plate, right over our fabulous ghost print. And make some more texture on top. Now I absolutely love making circles on the plate, and this one is my favorite role. You can see right from the thick amount of paint that was a tube out of something, maybe paper towel or baking paper. I have used toilet rolls. Okay. But I find that they're a bit thin. I don't really like the mark as much. I find it too thin. See how much thicker that one is? Much better. Personally, that's what I like, but the tubes and rolls and ends of things are so endless. This one's pretty cute. It's got a great size. And look, we can even go smaller. Let's use this one. Oh man, too easy. Lemon squeezy. It's really fun and really therapeutic. Let's put that on the top half then let's at the bottom half put now this something a bit of mesh. I don't even know where I got it, I'm really not sure. But we're going to put that on the bottom half like that. Push it down with a bit of paper so that the mesh leaves a mark. A loving that texture. And I'm just going to pull that onto some wet strength tissue. And let's see how that looks. What did we get with that? Look at those beautiful textures. I just love it because I had so much paint on the plate. You can see that there's still quite a lot there to pull. I'm going to use some of this paper, which is the Japanese rice paper. Let's use some of that. Put that on the plate and see how much of that we can get up. How very exciting. Now remember we are going to do some numerous layers on these prints. Just put them aside, put them on the floor. And then when our floor is completely covered and we've trapped ourself entirely in the studio, we'll call it a day. But until then, we're just going to keep printing in a frenzy. Rdo. Let's see what the fabulous rice paper is going to pull up. Oh, I love it. I already love it. Have a look at that. That is glorious. Now, I'm going to let that dry and then I think we're going to pull another color over the top and add some more texture. Yeah. What are you going to find from around your house to create some prints on the gel plate? What have we got in the kitchen? Oh man. We've got so much in the kitchen besides my mom's favorite cereal bowl. We paper towel, look at this paper towel. It's got a fabulous circular pattern. Let's try putting that on the plate and see what it does. Is it going to leave a pattern? Did I put on too much paint? That's always a polity. What did the paper towel do? Oh, it left a beautiful little pattern. Look at that. I might just wait a couple of minutes for that to dry and then I'm going to pull that. Besides that, we also have a beautifully painted paper towel which we can add to our collage. Paper towel makes fabulous material for your collage because it's so soft, it's really easy to ad here. As you can see, it's easy to paint. Look at the fabulous texture on it. Yes, we'll be using that at some stage through these lessons. Of course, the paper towels come in a couple of layers. You can also pull that top layer off so that it dries better and then it's thinner to adhere in your collage. Then hello, you've got a second piece that we can now use for printing that's going to dry better. It's a lot thinner, lighter, and easier to use in our collage. It makes absolutely fabulous paper right now because this pattern is so pretty and so delicate. I'm just going to pull that print just like that with some tightened buff. We'll have a look and see how much of that we can get off the plate. I think that's going to make a really pretty print. I'm going to pull that up with glassine. Glassine has more of a plastic component in it. It grabs really well to the paint on the plate and it pulls it up everything that's in the underneath layers. It's also very strong. If you've got something that's stuck on your plate, it's really good for helping to lift up those stuck layers of paint. All right, let's see what we've got with our fabulous glassine and paper towel. See how much paint it's pulled off. All of it. Love it. And look how pretty that looks. I thought that would make a pretty print. It's got the glorious pattern of the paper towel. Now, how easy is that paper towel, baby? I'm telling you it's a fabulous resource for printing with on your gel plate. But also you can then use it in your collage, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I'm loving that. What's next? Right, this time we've got some of the Liquitex bronze. It's a lot brownier and darker in color than the iridescent bronze of the Golden brand. And I really do enjoy this color as well. How about our fabulous paper packaging? It always comes, it's free and it makes fabulous texture bubble wrap. Love using bubble wrap. Of course you get different size bubble wraps. I love the small size. But then it's really fun to add the big size as well. They take different prints. Let's have a look and see what marks that left. I love it. Fabulous texture on both the small and the big bubble wrap. Oh man, those ones must have been popped. That's pretty funny. Now, I'm going to let that dry and then I'm going to pull that print. I really do love the bubble wrap mark. Oh, I think it's mostly dry. I know it's simple, but I just love it. I love the texture that it makes and it's just fun to me. Right. Let's see how this looks on the Japanese rice paper. It's so easy, It's so cheap and it's so much fun. It's so experimental. Just keep trying different color combinations, different sizes. If it sticks on the plate like this or it doesn't go exactly right, don't worry, don't stress out. We can just put another print over the top. This is a great base for printing. Each time you add more to your print, it creates more and more interest and more and more textures. And some of the best prints end up being ones that started off the worst. We're going to add another layer to this print once it's dried. Why? We're still playing with paper packaging. What about some corrugated cardboard? I love it. I love the way you can create all of the fabulous lines. I have this piece here, it came off some paper packaging. What I love is how simple these techniques are and how easy it is to get all of these fabulous papers for making the prints. I love that. I just love it and it's so easy. What about if we go this way with it? Yes, it looks just as effective. Whichever way you go, I love it. Now I'm going to pull this print straight away and then we're going to add another layer on the print once it's dried. Look at that there where it crosses over. You get even more texture. So much fun for so little money. Straight onto a piece of the rice paper. Straight off the plate, looking fabulous. Going to do another layer on top of it. 13. Gelli Printing Part 2: Now some other paper you can get is going to interior design shops or decorator shops where they have wallpaper sample books, because you can get them either free or really cheap. My friend, Beautiful Levy, came to visit recently and she brought me some wallpaper samples. I just love using these on the gel plate, especially when they're really textured. Have a look at how beautiful that is, that's going to leave a great texture. She got them for free, I'm telling you you can't get more affordable than free. She brought me over a few just to show me how great they were. I'm loving it. I always love using wallpaper samples because they make great texture plates. Look at that when you finish playing with them and painting them. You can use them in your collage. Paper is paper, baby. There's so many ways to use it. Look at that. Absolutely beautiful, let's put that on the paper. That's going to pull a great print. So many ways to make texture with found objects, for really easy techniques, very little money, and a whole lot of fun look at that, look at the way it leaves those fabulous marks. And that's just from wallpaper samples. Right before we move on to adding our second layer on our prints, I have to show you my favorite mark making tool from the kitchen. Have a look at my fabulous rolling pin. Yes, I love this. I actually bought it as a fundraiser to support Ukraine because, you know, it was a great cause and I just had to have it look at it. It's absolutely magnificent. I think you're supposed to probably create cookies with it. But you know, who wants to make cookies when you can make amazing jelly brings? I absolutely love it. It makes a fabulous pattern. Such fun textures. Now I do have to wait for that to dry and then what will I print it on? Maybe I'll pull it on. Maybe some raw sienna or some copper or maybe some nickel, Oso gold. All that could be good, right? Well, just wait for that to dry a bit. How much fun is that rolling pin? Okay, you might not have as fancy one as that, but there's probably something in your kitchen that you could roll onto your gel plate. Have a rummage through your drawers. Have a little look, a little try a bit of an experiment and see what you can come up with. It's really a lot of fun, right? A little Oso gold on there. Put on some wet strength tissue and let's see what we can pull off the plate. Right now, I've given it a good rump. Hopefully we'll pick up all of those beautiful textures and patterns. Oh, it's just so much fun. Now, this is wet, strength tissue, but you still do need to be a little bit gentle. Have a look at that. That is just beautiful. I absolutely love it. So what are you going to find in your kitchen drawers to roll on your plate? You're going to have to show me. I have to know what you're going to create with no. So let's put some second layers on those prints. Now, this print here is really beautiful. I really like it just like that. So what I'm going to do is use a little bit of the nickel Ozo gold. Now this one is transparent. You can see because of the black lines that are on there of the paint swatch, you can see them really clearly. Whereas if you look at the Titan buff, you can't see those black lines as clear. That one's more opaque. What I want to do is to put a thin coat of a transparent color on top. Just so it fills up all the white lines, but it doesn't completely cover up my print. I really like this print. I like the texture of the drawer liner and the yarn, but I just want to add a little deeper color to it. To make it a little bit more interesting, I could add some more texture on this layer or I could just leave it like it is, which is what I'm going to do. I'm not too precious about lining it up exactly because I'm going to be using these papers for collage anyway so they don't have to be perfect prints. This is a great way to add another layer onto your print, a thin, almost like a glazing effect. Just make sure it's a transparent color and not an opaque color, otherwise you're going to completely obliterate your print and you won't see all of the beautiful textures that you'd previously made. That's just to add another layer of color, like a transparent layer to color in the white areas to have a little extra on there. And it's a really fun way to be able to do that. Now what about this print? I like it, it looks beautiful. But we could put some areas of masked out. These are actually called fix a loop. It's one of my secret circle makers. They're actually washes for using in the toilet. They're clean, they haven't been used. I promised it was a brand new package. I love using them because they're thin, they're made of rubber. They're really great to use for a mask. I'm going to put paint on the plate, then I'm going to put the mask on like this. Wherever these are, it keeps the paint color original. Then the color that I put on the plate will cover the rest of the print. What about we add some of the iridescent gold? You can see that it's a little more transparent. You can see the black lines. It could be rather a beautiful color on top of that rest. It's a little okay. It will cover up a lot, but I really don't mind. I think it will be interesting to see what it does. You do have to try, you have to experiment and see what you find out. Now, I'm going to put three of those on there, and then I'm putting my print down. I'm going to push around the fabulous masks. They're not fix loose the masks. I'm going to push in the middle. Then the paint is going to be all over the print except the areas where the circles are. You can really do this with any shape, anything. You can make paper masks, you can cut shapes out of plastic folders. There's so many ways to create masks like this, It's just a matter of looking around, seeing what you've got, finding it, and then being adventurous to have a try. It can only not work. It really doesn't matter. Every time you try something, you're learning something new. So all that looks really pretty. The gold wasn't as transparent as I thought it might have been. It's covered up all the rest of the background, but I really like the texture that it's made, and I'm loving these shapes. I think that looks far more interesting. Next time I might even put more on there. Now we have the fabulous masks. The paint that is trapped underneath that can go straight onto a print. What about I put those straight onto this one and add another layer of interest onto my fabulous rolling pin print. The gold will look really nice with what we've already got there. I think it would contribute without making it up straight, straight off the plate. And look how fabulous those circles look on top of that print. Just loving it. What about we add another layer to this print? Now, I'm thinking this is a completely opaque color. We're going to need to put a lot of texture on it so that you can see some of the underneath color coming through. Otherwise we could add some more of those masks. That's not a bad idea as well. I think add a couple of the circles, then I'm going to add more of my corrugated card because I just love it. I'm going to put it both ways and then see how much comes through on the print. Really doesn't matter if we have lots of texture because we want to see that underneath color coming through anyway. Yeah, that looks good. It's always so much fun when you lift up the paper and see what you've got. Sometimes it's not as good as what you wanted and other times it can surprise you. And I do think that's the fun of jelly printing round the circles we go and let's see how she looks. So much fun. I just love it. Look at that, you can see the glorious copper coming through and we've got a few different lines in different directions. The corrugated card really does make fabulous texture of lines on your plate. Yes, these are all my favors. I'm going to say it's one of my favors, but they're all my favors. What about we add another layer to this print? I'm thinking perhaps maybe we'll add some lines of the yarn that could be fun. Or maybe some of my drawer liner. I really like that texture as well. We'll start with the beautiful gold. It's still got some ghost print from the previous layers and that will just all contribute. Yes, I'm going with the yarn. I'll add some lines to my print right on top of the circle shapes. That'll be fun. Let's go diagonal this time. There's so much you can do with such simple techniques then it's always such a surprise. In the end, when you pull up, you print absolutely fabulous. Pull the yarn off. How do we go? I love it. Look at the beautiful colors coming through. You can see all the texture and it's so interesting. Okay. Well, yes, I care printing and printing and experimenting with the yarn, and then I returned to my favorite circle makers using the tubes. A little one and the bigger one. I had so much fun, I just kept creating beautiful prints. And now I think I really do have enough just to do two collage pages. I'm going to let all these beautiful prints dry, and then we're going to look at which ones I want to use for the collage. And I know that I'm going to have a really good stack of papers that I can use for a few more other lessons. So make sure you're keeping them aside. Put them in a box. When we get to other lessons that require some jelly prints, you'll have some fabulous ones to work with y. 14. Finishing Project 12: Now I have a whole heap of absolutely fabulous prints that I totally love. My problem is going to be deciding which ones to use, which ones I want to add to my college, and which ones I'll keep for another day. I'm absolutely loving the yarn on these prints. They work so well. And of course, my fabulous rolling pin towards the end, I pulled out my gorgeous little tube and was printing on these fabulous papers. And of course, I used my favorite circle maker as well. So much fun. But let me tell you what I really love the best is these pages. This is the wallpaper that I used to print the texture on the gel plate, and look how cool the paint looks. It's got like a sparkly element on it, so it looks really pretty. This one too. It came up fabulous when it was printed on the plate. But I'm just loving the way the wallpaper looks now that I've used it for a texture plate. I'm very tempted to use that in my collage today. I'm going to have to make up my mind, they all look fabulous. Look how the good looks. I put another layer on top, some string and then some circles. So if you've got something that you're not happy with or it didn't work out or it's just not the way you want, Create another layer, put some more of the fabulous texture over the top, add some more elements of shapes, and just keep reprinting on your piece of paper until you're happy with your design. I'm thinking this looks so much better now. I added extra texture and a few circles. It really does make a difference. So don't give up. Just keep printing. Right? So I'm going to have to decide that's all there is to it. I'm definitely using my wallpaper sample because I just love it. What am I going to put with it is the question, and what am I going to do with it? It's such a great color. I think I'll start with this one. I'm going to put it on this side. I think I'll cut a circle because I could get a really nice shape out of the middle piece. And I'm going to put something dramatic behind it. Maybe one of these prints. Because this deep moroni color, the deep purple matter, I think would work really well with those colors. I think head in that direction. All the bronze, No, stick to the first inspiration. I really love this one too. I love the color of it. Maybe I'll put this one under this, or even a section at the bottom that could work loving these colors. And of course, you can always pull in prints that you've done before. These prints I took the other day with my stencil mask on the beautiful rice paper. The colors would work really well. That one would work or even that one. I just have to decide what it is I want to start with and get the background down first. Make sure you're keeping all of your prints together that you're making because we will keep using them through the lessons. They are a great source of collage paper. They make fabulous backgrounds. And if you're consistently using similar color tones like I am here, then you get to use them again and again. And it's just so easy, right? First I'm going to start with this one. I think I like it up that way. And this water bowl, I think is going to make a good sized circle. So we want it about there, out there. You can see how precise I am. Not really, I can make it work. Cut a template, cut it out. Let's see how it looks. Right. Let's see what we've got. Yes, that's going to work very well. I think I'll start with this background. I'll put that background down, and then I'm going to put the circle in the middle. I might add something textural behind it. I'm thinking perhaps some of the beautiful lace paper from, so I'll get some of that. See how that looks as well. Because it just needs a few more elements, a few more layers and textures, right? So the first layer of the background, I've pulled out some of this beautiful lace paper. Now the thing is, with this paper, it does go very transparent. You won't see it a lot when it's dried, but you will see the fabulous texture of the glorious fibers. And that's what I want. I want those fabulous fibers. I just think they're going to look really good against the sharpness of the line of the circle. We'll have a look and see when it's dried, if it's going to be enough to make me happy or if I want something else. Sometimes you really don't know until things dry. Now, which way do I want to put it? I'm thinking up this way. Yes, just like that. I love the diamond pattern on it. I love the pretty sparkles. It's got a really textured, very raised aspect to the paper and that's what was printing when I was printing it on the gel plate. Sticking it in my journal is so much fun. I mean it is found objects weak. So we can get away with sticking anything on the page that we can find. I love this class. Just such an element of freedom and creativity. It's just so much fun, right? That's on like that. Got a little gap there because the paper wasn't white enough. I'm thinking whatever I decide to put on this side, I'm just going to expand to there because that'll be fun. I definitely have to put something in the center. I'm just not sure. I'll let that sit there while I think about it and it dries. I'll do the background for this side, Well, this is not an easy decision, but I've ended up deciding to go with this piece from my printing the other day because it matches really well with that print. And I could continue the color like that onto this page. I absolutely love the drama of the dark chocolate brown with the orange reminds me of Jaffers. That's just fun. The colors look beautiful and it's matching the side as well. So I'm going to put those two down as the background. And then I'm thinking I cut this down a little so it wasn't so big, but I'm not really happy with the shape. You know what I'm going to have to do, I'm not even going to tell you, but yes, I'm going to. Now, you just knew I would, didn't you didn't? I had to cut the circle shape. The square shape just wasn't making me happy. And look how good that looks with that fabulous line through the middle. I'm going to glue the background down and then I'll decide if I might put some of the fabulous lace paper underneath it, just so it pops out a little more against the textured background. Or maybe I might get dramatic and put some of the black down. Oh, all right. Okay. The background is down. I'm loving those two colors together and the textures. That is a perfect match with this page. Yeah, there's my circle. Yes, I had to cut one, couldn't handle the square. I don't know what's wrong with me. That's just the way it goes. Now, what do you think about this idea? I'm thinking the black in the beautiful handmade lace. Do you think it's too much? Too much. Do you think too dramatic. It does look really good with that color and texture. Oh man. I am a little tempted because we can't do it the same. I mean the same but different, right? I'm doing it, I'm sticking that down like that. And then I just have to find something special for the middle pieces of both them. So I'm going to have to go and have a rummage. Maybe I'll have a look at that paper pad from Stam Perra, that alchemy pad that might have something really interesting in a little shape that I could put on. I'll go hunt that up and have a look. Because it just needs a little finishing touch. Just a little element. I'm pretty happy where these pages have headed. It's so funny because it's not what I initially had in mind that I thought I was going to do, but I'm happy where they're going. That's all that matters In the end. We've just got to be happy with what we're making. It doesn't really matter how we get there. As long as we get there happy with how it comes out, then we're doing okay. Right. The pages are still drying, but they're definitely dry enough to put something in the middle. I had a look through the stam perra paper pad, which I'll put it in the notes if you want to know what the heck I'm talking about. Anyway, I found this in one of the pages. I just really like it. Don't know why, just do feeling like it today. I'm going to put it right there. I think the colors work, the texture works. And it's just a little quirky. Never put a bug on my artwork before. I don't know if it's a dragonfly. Definitely not a butterfly. I don't know what it is, but I like it. I'm liking that particular pad at the moment. I think I'll probably use it quite a few times through this entire class, like the big 100 days because I'm feeling a theme happening. It's so much fun to be developing this class with you as I'm using the prompts and creating my pages. And it's really fun to me now with this one. I also cut this out of the Stamperra paper pad, and I'm loving this as well. What do you think? What do you think about that one? I think they're a bit of fun. I like the black lace paper that I ended up going with on this side. It makes it more dramatic. Of course it does. I really like it against the orange and the brown. These colors are working for me today, and that's the thing you've got to go with, what's working for you on any particular day. If I was doing it another day, I would have probably chosen different colors. In fact, I definitely wouldn't have thought that I would end up in the direction that I. But I'm just really enjoying the pages. It is a lot of fun to me today and I'm happy with how they've come out. Right, That one's down for our fabulous middle piece, focal point. I'll put my little bug down, I'll let the pages dry, and then I'll give you a close up. I can't wait to see what you're going to create with your jelly print. Don't forget to keep them in a pile somewhere close because you're going to be using them again for other lessons. Jelly printing is just the best. That's all I'm going to say, right? Well, let these dry and then I'll show you how beautiful they come out when they're dry. Yeah. 15. Natural Design: Day 13, Natural Design. Now what are you going to use? Are you going to use real objects or imitation objects? The prompt is to create your design with the inspiration of leaves. But it doesn't say what those leaves have to be. It could be paper, it could be printed, It could be an image, it could be a photo, it could be. The possibilities are quite endless and it's completely up to your own imagination and your creativity to create a fabulous mixed media collage with this beautiful natural design theme. Can't wait to see what you do. What colors are you going to use? Are you going to be in autumn or winter? Are you going to put things on your page or maybe stamp images on your page? I know it's so endless and so much fun. I can't wait to see what you're going to create, right? So I picked up some leaves on my way home last night from a walk to the beach. Aren't they beautiful, so glossy and green and shiny? I think we're going to start with some gestural drawing with some ink on paper. Now, don't panic because I said drawing, it's not going to be serious. Gestural drawing is a lot of fun. And because we're going to be using ink on some paper, we're not getting super serious about it because we're going to use a twig to draw with. How much fun is that? Don't worry if it drops dirt all over your page. Now remember, we're making paper for our fabulous natural design collage today. Now I've got some glorious acrylic ink in sepia. Look at that. It looks like black, but it's not. My idea is to use a twig and to draw some shapes of these beautiful leaves. Oh yes, I think we should try some different papers. Try some different shapes. Have a bit of fun. Then make some collage papers that we can then put our collage together. Now don't get all super serious and be stressing out about trying to make things perfect, because if you have a look at the leaves scattered around me, they're not perfect. They're not perfect shapes. Look how different they are. They're different shapes, different forms. Some of them curl up, some of them are flat, some of them are round on the end. Some of them have got bits out of them, some of them are pointy. Wherever you are, your leaves are probably going to look even more different than these ones. It's not about perfection. It's not about drawing something perfectly. It's about having a bit of fun, creating a bit of a splash on the page with some ink and a stick. You have to use the right equipment and a twig. Then we're going to create some fabulous collage pages. Now I think this is really, actually, so easy, so quick, and very therapeutic. I think I'm probably going to want to add. What about some sprays or some water colors? Really We could do anything with these pages. You don't even have to put the lines in the middle. I don't man, I don't think I like these lines in the middle. Maybe I just like the shapes. I don't see, that's the thing. You're going to have to have a little play and work out what you actually do, like do you want them to be, oops, that went right off course. Close together or far apart? Do you want them to actually look realistic? I mean, do you, do you have to make it look realistic? This twig is really holding the ink very well. I must say this is just a piece of the Japanese rice paper that I've been jelly printing with. It's responding really well to the ink. I'm just winning at the moment. Now see how wonky my leaves are because it's just a little bit of fun. Get your creativity going and see what fabulous ideas you come up with, right. Don't get too precious about it. Definitely don't get stressed out about it Fast, fast, little drawings of beautiful leaves. Look at that. It did like a double thing. Oh, I like that. That looks pretty cool. Have a little play. Have a little experiment. Find a twig, Do some drawings. Look at some leaves. Allow yourself just to create some shapes. Then we're going to put some inks on it. Maybe some water colors. Have a bit of a spray. See what mess we can make and put a colos together in our fabulous Journal. Yes, loving it. If you try different papers, I'm pretty sure that the ink and the twig is going to respond differently. Let's have a little play with some other papers and see how it responds to that. This one is a piece of watercolor paper. Now, you know, I'm going to get even more messier with this one because I can, because the watercolor paper is going to handle the ink a lot better. What happens if we put a few of the shapes on and then we give it a spray? Yes, that's a bit of fun. Actually, really impressed with this twig, it draws really well. What about if I spray it now with some water? Oh yes, that's way more fun. Al right now, things are going to get a little crazy. I love that. Look at that. Look at that. That's fantastic. Love it. And the sell, let's add some dots. Oh, yes. And the CP ink is a really nice color. I like the CP ink. Now, there's no right or wrong in this. You can create it however you feel like you want to create The more seriously and more realistic then go right ahead. I'm just not a serious and realistic kind of a person. I'm more of a splash it around, have fun in a person. But if you want yours more seriously and realistic then you can do that. You can do anything. I'm loving that. That just makes me so happy. Well, we need a few more, let's do a few more drops. Yes. Look at the splatters. Love, love, Love the splatters. Remember we're making colas paper, we're going to be tearing it up anyway. That is just a beautiful color right there. This one's a lighter weight paper. It's not a watercolor paper, but I just wanted to try it and see how well it would absorb the inks. I think it's okay. Feels pretty nice. I think it's 110 GSM weight, whereas the watercolor paper was like 300. That it could work pretty well. You know, pies don't matter just so you know. Cops don't matter when we're doing our beautiful creative expressionistic leaves. I wonder how this paper will cope with the water spray it hopes. Oh, that's exciting. Think you just have to try different things. I like the spray much better than the straight line. But you probably knew that. Yes. Definitely splatters? Definitely. What about if we took out the jelly prints that we made yesterday and add some leaf shapes to those? Yes. See how one idea just leads to the next? This is my print from yesterday's jelly printing. What about if we added some beautiful leaves to this? How we will it work over the top of the acrylic panek? Just fine indeed. Well, that's just fun, some more color to it. Or watercolors or some watercolor crowns or watercolor pencils or really anything. I wonder if it'll bleed if I spray it. Do you think it will? Let's try it. That's no fun. That's probably because it's sitting on top of the acrylic paint. Well, we've got to try these things. You just have to, we could definitely add some other layers to it. You can also get more scribbly. I think you'll get more adventurous there. You put the leaves on, I think, remember we're going to cut it up for collage, so don't get too precious. Yeah, I like it when it's faster. I'm not thinking about it so much. I think I like my shapes better. Don't think too much. Pops, Don't laugh too much, because then you go wonky as well. Well, that works. Let's have another try on something else. I've got this beautiful copper print from yesterday, and I've pulled out some white same acrylic ink, but why is it going to work over my copper? I think I decided I liked it fast and loose. Yeah, let it go. Let it go fast and loose. The lines are more exciting. It's more interesting. Go look at that. Yeah, that's way more fun. I have to go over the same lines a few times because of the acrylic paint that I'm putting the ink on is absorbing it. But that's okay. It's working right. I don't mind that at all. Just don't get too precious about it all. Allow yourself just to have a little scribble, put the lines on in the general direction of a leaf and it'll all be okay. Yeah, that's much, and it's more fun telling you. The lines are more exciting, it's more alive. Yeah, I like that much better. I might go over the first pages and I think have another go at them. Because you don't know what you're doing when you first start and you're a little scared to try. You can always go back over your first pages with another layer of a different color. Then when they're dry, we are going to add some water colors to them. But that's really fun. That works okay. On that jelly. Pull your jelly prints out from yesterday. Throw some leaf shapes on them and see what you can create. Look at that, that's a bit of fun. You might have to go over it a few times if you're trying to put white on top of the acrylic plate, but that's okay. It'll dry eventually. I think it's looking rather beautiful. 16. Part 2 Natural Design: It might be a bit tricky if your prints are thick or heavily patterned, but give it a go. Anyway, look at this one. That's just a bit of fun. Now, the ink is going to get absorbed into the acrylic paint for sure. For sure. But man, it's looking okay and I think that's pretty fun. My leaves are getting more abstract the more I do, cause that's what I personally like. I love abstract art. Yes, that's just making me happy. Well, definitely a couple of dots. Oh, love the splashes. Sometimes you'll have to go over it a couple of times if the ink is absorbing into your acrylic paint, but that just adds to the energy of your drawing to have that scribbly effect. Love, it can't wait to see what you do. This is just super fun. No, man, my page is already filled up. Stink. I'll have to find another one. Okay. So I pulled out my fancy pants, Chinese ink. It's a sumi ink. I picked it up when I was in China visiting my son. And it's black, but it does turn to gold if you have shaken it enough. Oh man. It's pretty funny. But look how beautiful that is. Oh yes. Now I have found that my lines have become much better with each page that I do. So don't be afraid to really have a good play and try the idea and experiment on some different papers. Because truly my little beautiful leaf shapes are far more expressionistic. The more I actually play around with this, they're going in all different directions. They're different sizes, they're different shapes. You do actually really have to get a bit of a warm up. Give yourself a little bit of play time. Pull out some papers, use up those jelly prints. This is another one from yesterday and it's a pretty nice color. Looks beautiful with the black ink. Very dramatic. I'm loving it. Look how fabulous those lines are. Much better than when I started a little bit of splash. I do love a little bit of the splash. You can even add the extra lines around the leaf for a little bit of movement. That's just so much more interesting than when I just started 10 minutes ago. Do you want to see my first one? Yes. Okay, I've been probably playing for 10 minutes now and I've made quite a few prints. That to me looks so interesting, so fun. Definitely going to use this for my college then. If we look at very first print. Yeah, hello. That needs another layer. Make sure you give yourself a little bit of playtime. Pull out some papers, even just papers that you're not scared of messing up. But then do try on your jelly prints because they just look fabulous. This sumi ink is going over the acrylic paint a lot easier than the white, probably because it's black. But all of it worked. I love the white ones. They look fabulous too. Don't forget to add a little bit of splash. Creates more movement, a few extra lines. This is what you call expressionistic drawing, but with a stick, I absolutely love it. See how stiff this drawing is? That was definitely one of my first ones. Now that it's dry, I'm going to put black straight over the top. This is actually the black gold sumi ink. Sometimes it turns to gold and sometimes it doesn't. Which makes me laugh so much. I think it depends on how much I actually shake the bottle, but I'm just wanting to mess up this one and see how much faster I'm drawing them and how more abstract they are. I think it's way more fun to allow yourself to really relax and just start to scribble. Put the lines on and just have fun. The drawings where I've had more fun and haven't thought about it, look absolutely fantastic. Go over them again. Go over your first ones if they're looking a bit stiff and sad and splash some more of the ink on. I'm loving the twig. I think it works really well. Add some extra lines, make it more gestural, then it just looks like some movement. Don't forget the splashes. The splashes look fabulous. You can always go off the page, remember, we're going to tear it up, then you're going to end up with a whole heap to choose from when we put our collage together. This was one of the very first ones. Yes, I know. It's sad, isn't it? I'm thinking we need to put a bit of the black gold sumi ink over top of this. Messed it up a little. Well, you always start more timid. You start more afraid because you don't know what you're doing or how it's going to look. But then you got to just let it go. Oh yes. If you put some beautiful leaves around you to be inspired by, then subconsciously you're already creating the shapes. Don't you just love this black gold color? Oh man, it's crazy. I love the way it does that. But you've got to give it a really good shake if you're going to get, give it a really good shake. Otherwise it doesn't do the whole gold thing. It just comes out of sumi black ink, which is fine. I mean, the black is beautiful too. But if you do want the gold, give it a really good shake for at least 5 minutes. This 1 minute deal, which I have done before, and then it didn't turn gold, it needs like a good 5 minutes shake, right? That looks fabulous. A few splashes, away we go. This is the one I did on the watercolor paper. It's still a little damp. I drew on the leaves with the twig, sprayed it with a little spritzer of water. That spa is such a lovely color. I'm thinking we could just give a little touch up with some watercolor paints just to add a little something to it, perhaps in the beautiful autumn tones. Yes, that's fun. Now, I'll try not to get too carried away because I do really like the drawing of the leaves, and I don't want to make it all too precious. I just thought I'd try adding a little bit of the water color and it's going to work fantastic. Add another layer to your beautiful drawings with a little bit of water color. Looks great, a little bit of fun, but don't get too precious about it. Don't try and color it in. Just let your beautiful expressionistic drawing be the main focal point. A little bit of color on top, yeah. Looks beautiful. Little spritz of water and away we go. Looks fabulous and it's a whole lot of fun. Don't forget, you can just dab it back off again if you're like me heavy handed and put too much on. I did want to keep the soft floating water color look to it back off. It goes a little bit of a spray and I think now I'll just leave it alone now, this one's just on the cheap sketch paper. Drew it with my beautiful twig and sprayed it with the water. I really like it. I think it looks great. I'm thinking maybe a bit of spray gloss. What will that do? It changes the color of the paper, but it's not really that exciting. Maybe it's the color. Maybe we just need more. That's how it goes. We just need more. They're okay. All that color looks beautiful. Yes. Yes, it does, but maybe I want some more dramatic lines. I do like the way it's done that it sits on top of the paper in the spray texture, which is cool. I don't mind it. It's definitely warmed up the page. But I'm thinking maybe we need to get a little bit more dramatic with our leaf shapes. I know just a little bit, I like them, They've worked well. It more, that's all I can say. It just needs more attitude like that already. I'm liking that the black looks good, everything's wet. And I did tell you that it's only a sketchbook paper. You know, hopefully it won't tear, right. Well, I think that looks a lot better. It's definitely got a lot more attitude. It's more exciting. You can feel the movement of it now. That just makes me a lot happier. I'm going to let all these prints dry and then we'll put together a collage and see which ones we like the best. Yes, I know I need to leave it alone. Back away from the drawing. Put the twig down and back away from the drawing. Okay, okay, there you go. Oh, maybe a few more splatters. See, it looks way better now, it's far more interesting. Don't be afraid to go over your drawings twice or even three times. Put some water color on them, spray some inks on them, spray water on them. And then if that doesn't work, have another drawer with your twig and see if you like it better. Because look, that's way better than when I first started. Yes, it is. Fabulous, right? So my prints are mostly dry. There's a few little damp spots on them, but I'm really happy with how they've turned out, how they've come together. I love my scribbling drawing with the twig. Make sure you try it. It's so much fun. 17. Finishing Project 13: So it's not going to take much to put collage together with these beautiful options. I think what I'm going to do is I love this one. I think I love that one the best. But then, oh man, I really like the water color one as well, that's nice and dry. That turned out fabulous. But then with all of the black gold ink, a little damp steel, but I'm loving it. I'm thinking I'll pull out my art journal. I'm definitely going to use this one because I love it. And I might then tear off one of the leaves from here and put it on there because that would be a really nice contrast. This strong color of the burgundy with the white leaf shape would look great. It's hard to believe that this is drawn with a twig, right? Make sure you're keeping all your jelly prints together because that was my print from yesterday. We're going to keep using our jelly prints and papers that we're making and it's going to create such a fabulous collection. I really love this one too. Maybe I'll put a piece of this, 1/1 of the others. I don't know, man, I love them all. That's the problem. I'll pull out my art journal and then decide. But I'm definitely going to tear out one of the leaves of one color of the papers and put it on top of the background of another one, just like a single leaf. That's the plan stand, that's where I'm headed. I'm definitely decided on that one. I think I'm going to tear out that little leaf there and put that on that page, because that's going to be a beautiful contrast against those colors and it'll stand out and be a feature. And I like that idea. I might even put a bit of the Lakes paper under it. Yes, that's a good idea for sure. Sure. This side, I don't know, Man, I keep chopping and changing because I've got so many beautiful drawings. I love this color, I love the movement and the lines. I could put one of these beautiful leafs on. It is very tempting. That's a definite. Maybe I might use that one again. I could use that leaf, or the copper one that at work or this one. If I want to get really abstract and minimal, I could use this one that would look stunning and put that leaf on. I could put the black lace under it, Yes. Okay. If you insist. I think that's what I'm going to do. I'll glue the background down first. I'll tear out the leaves. If I don't change my mind, then that's the plan. And I'll show you where I'm at when I've done that. Both the papers are down, Don't they? Look fabulous? I'm just loving these marks. Are they classified as drawings when you're using a stick or paintings because we splash the ink on. I don't know, man, but they're looking fabulous. I'm loving them now, I've torn out this leaf from this print because I think it would look great on there. And I tore out this one from the watercolor paper, which I think would look good on there. Now they're going to need something to separate them from the background, especially as this one. So patterned, I'm thinking perhaps some of the black of the beautiful coso paper that could work quite well with that one on there because then that will give it some more prominence and more form. That's going to work. This one. I do have some of the white, but I don't know that the white is going to be strong enough to separate it from the background. Maybe some of the gold after a rummage through my scrap bag, perhaps the gold. Is that enough to separate it from the background? I'm thinking so. I'm not entirely convinced, but I'm thinking so I'm thinking something like that on each page looks fabulous. Doesn't matter that they're both the same. No, maybe I'll turn it that way. All right. You convinced me. I'll turn it that way so it's not the same that makes me happier. These papers are so fun. So abstract expressionist, right? Well, I'm definitely putting that there and I'm putting that the other way. That makes me happy. Yeah, I'm going to glue that down and then I'll give you a close up. What an absolutely fabulous lesson it was today. I so enjoyed splashing around the inks, using the stick and the basic shape of a leaf. I really hope you join me with this experimental process because it really is a lot of fun. Don't forget, you can keep going over your prints until you're happy your first drawings are going to be lousy like mine were. But then keep creating, keep adding layers on top, throw on some water colors or some sprayings, or come back and just draw right over the top again. They really do look so much better the more layers you add to them. Absolutely loved it, had so much fun. Can't wait for tomorrow. 18. Miniature Collages: Day 14. It's the last day of this week's class and it's both bitter sued. Our theme is miniature collages. So pulling from the lessons of this week and the textures and the found objects, we're going to create little focal points. We can put a collection of the focal points on our page or we can just put one. It really doesn't matter. But what I'm excited about is we're going to make a whole heap of little collages that we can use, perhaps even another day in another class or at another time. So basically we're going to mass produce some little focal points using the different found objects from this week. And the different textures and the elements, and the prompts that you've really loved, put together a few miniature collages and let's see what we can create. I can't wait for this one. It's going to be so much fun. And what I love about this class is the fun of putting the different textures and fibers and found objects together. Right? Let's pull out all our resources and see what we like the most. I have absolute loved this week with the theme of found objects and I'm going to use something from each lesson from this week in today's collage. And that's so exciting. This was the first lesson and I'm definitely using the powershell, so am love them to bits. Yes, I'm going to pull out some more of these keys and I can't wait to create the little miniature collages today. It's going to be so much fun. I think I'll just pull out a whole collection of things and just go for it. I'm going to use some book texts from this lesson. Loved this, this was so fun. Oh, I think I'll pull out some more of that music paper that I used underneath her. That's going to be great. That'll make a good backing for one of the collages. Yes, I have a whole heap of the jelly prints left over from these pages. That's fun. Might have to find some of my favorite lacy paper. Love that texture and that fiber. And of course, I've got some leaves left. I absolutely love these papers that are made yesterday. Yeah. So I'm going to pull out all of those bits and pieces from all of those lessons, surround myself in them, and then we're going to be creating some miniature collages. How fun is that? First of all, I'm going to stain my pages with the Zinc in Licorice because I want to have a background color down. I'm not sure what size collage I'm going to put on. I just know I'm going to make some separate little focal point collages and I don't want to be worrying about not having anything on the background. I find this is just so easy, it's so quick. Covers the page with some color. This time I'm using the Licorice, which is quite a purple type. Black. Not really black, Black. See how it's got that purple tint to it? I like that. That's fun. I'll let these pages dry while I go and hunt up the pieces that I want to use in my collages. Where to start is always the hardest, especially when you have so much to work with. Maybe it wasn't so great pulling everything out. I think I made it harder for myself. But I'm just going to jump in and get moving because I can change things as I go along. Now, we want miniature collage. I'm not good for creating small. It will be a challenge for me, but I'm determined I can do it. I'm going to start with this beautiful jelly print. Is that too big already? No, we'll start there. I can get smaller as we go. This is going to be the base piece of paper for the collage. I'm tearing it around the edge because I do like things to have that organic edge. Much better. Much better. Great start now. What are we going to do with it? What do I want to add next? What about if I added some of this one? Will that circle fit on there? Oh man, it's already almost too big. I told you I'm not good for creating small. Maybe I'll just cut around this circle and then we'll see if I can even fit it on my little substrate. Yes, it's going to be a challenge for me today. I just love this rolling pin print. It's so pretty and it's so fun. I'm cutting around the circle that's on the print so that you get to see some of the print on the edge, but it's gone a little wonky. It's not such a great circle. Matter now. That'll be all right. Is it going to fit is more of the question. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's working. Everything's a little wonky, but that's okay. Now, of course, I'm going to need something for the middle. I could add one of these beautiful power pieces that could work, but I don't know. I'm not sure. I think I might just leave that there. I think I'm going to create a few things and then reassess and see if it's actually work. I think that's a bit he there because you lose your, my beautiful leaf. What about some of the raw cheesecloth? A little piece of that might be nice, one that I have not yet sprayed. That could be good. Sometimes it's hard to make these decisions when you have so many different options. You might need to narrow down your options to make it easier for yourself. I think that's going to work better. Yeah, it'll be a little more easier to see. I like that idea. Then what will I add as a feature on top? I think I'm going to get my scrap bag out that's going to help me just to find a little something to add to them that's come together. Nice. I think I'll just make a whole heap more and then decide which ones I like the best. Yeah, that's a plan. Maybe that piece could work on there, seeing as there's nothing to cover. Oh, I like that idea, right? That one on there. That could look good with some of this colored book text. That's fun. It's just a matter of getting the right sizes of things. Yeah, that looks fun. All right. Like that, that it needs a little something that needs a scrap bag. It is. Let's have a little rummage in here and see what we can find to add to these little collages. Oh, I'm liking this. That could go on one of them for sure. For sure. Just a matter of getting the right size and the right shape together with the right collection of little pieces. Which one should we put it on? That one might work right, right. Don't mind that idea. What about some of these? They could work somewhere. A pretty nice color, It's a great shape. What about it like that, one of these might work? Maybe, maybe it's going on at the moment. What about one of my keys that might work? Oh, that's pretty fun. Yes, I like that better. Okay, that's going to work. I might put some of the beautiful power on this one because the colors would work really well. It's just a matter of finding the right shape. Oh, that one's nice. They're so beautiful. Not about like that. Yeah, I'm liking that. One of these could work on there. These are all previous jelly prints that are in my scrap bag. It's so much fun to pull them out and find little pieces. When you want something that could work, I need to trim it down a little bit more. But I think the colors work. We're off to a good start. Maybe I'll glue some of these down while I'm thinking about what else I can add to them. Oh, I like this piece too, That was from yesterday's leaf drawings. I love doing that. That was so much fun. I might pull out some more of those as well. These little pieces are great. It needs to go, Someone needs it. Where will it go? This one? What about that one? Yeah, this is all going to be great until I come to glue it down. I'll start with these ones and then we'll see how we go. Now the thing is if you get on a roll and you make more than you need, then you'll be able to use them as focal points for another lesson. Put them in your box with all your other bits and pieces for the class. Another day you just need a little something to finish a collage there. It'll be in your box already made, ready to go. That's just a whole lot of fun. I think I'll probably just a few extra, so I'll have some another day, especially once you get on a roll. Once you actually get in the zone of making them, it's so much fun that you just may as well keep going. That's what I figure. Anyway, that's really fun working with cheese cloth. I really like it. It's so soft, it's easy to put down and it's just a great texture. This is also very textural. It's making me happy. I like texture. Put that one down next and then I'm going to use PVA for my key because I wanted to stay there. A few contact points of PVA should hold it in place and it dries clear. So it doesn't matter if you get it everywhere, it'll be all right. It will eventually dry and it'll look fabulous, right? I'll put that aside. Work on a few more and then we'll see. How many can I actually fit on the page? I might have to challenge myself by creating a couple, a little smaller man. That's going to be hard. 19. Finishing Project 14: 3,000 miles from home, trying to say, hey, that I will get there soon. Birdie. They say, I walk down this way, Hey, singing my madness to the moon. I met a cat on a tree. And it taut me about things we don't see. I asked, how do I know which is the right way to go to get home. And it said, for reason, don't look far another way cause anyway will get you home. You can get lost if you don't know where you go. Anyway, we'll get you. He's the right way to say if you just go your way, you are trust yourself. It'll be interesting to see how they sometimes they don't dry as you expect because they become more transparent or because the fibers act differently. Once they've been glued. I'm thinking that they're going to look pretty nice. I'm pretty excited. I love all the textures. What I really like about in creating these is having the different layers. Choosing the base plate, I call it the base plate, the first piece of paper and then putting another layer on top that's fibrous or transparent and then another interesting layer on top of that. And then a final piece or focal point or something special. That's what I'm looking at at the moment. That's the stages I'm going through. It's really fun. It's very therapeutic. You get in the zone. I think I'm going to make a few more. While I've got so much of this beautiful material around me, it's just really easy to do it all at once. I'm going to make a few more and then we'll see how they look when they try. But I do think that's a great way to approach it. Find your base plate or your piece of paper that you want down to add as the substrate. Then maybe something textural or transparent. Then perhaps a shape or another piece of paper and then a focal point. I guess there's four pieces to each one. That's what I just did with these ones. It was a lot of fun and I think it's a pretty good way to approach it. Yes, I'm going to make some more using that format. I put another two collections together and I'm just loving it. I think what's great is using the similar jelly prints and textures, because it then creates this beautiful collection. When you see them all together, they've all got similar colors and tones. And that's working really well. So have fun, put your little mini collages together and really get creative. Do things you haven't done before, that you'd really like to do. Have a play with textual papers and different fabrics and see where the creativity takes. You. Put different layers together, try different ideas. Remember, you can't get it wrong. Allow yourself just to have fun and create. Now, looking at all of my beautiful pieces, I don't think the background that I stained my paper with is going to work. I might give it another spray with the coffee. I think the coffee color is going to work better because I seem to have used quite a few of these tones. You really don't know until you start where you're going to head or what you might like to create. Be open to change your ideas. Be flexible in your creativity and allow yourself just to see where you end up. It really is a whole lot of fun trying different things and because they're so small, it really doesn't take very much to fill them up. I don't think I'd be very good at going any smaller because oh man, I'd just like to add too many pieces, but they're looking really beautiful. I love the whole application. It's so much fun. And I'll show you when they're dry. Right, so here are my beautiful miniature collages and I absolutely love them. I ended up doing 12. Baker's dozen because I was just having so much fun. I was using the leftover jelly prints and the leaf prints for my bases. Added some of the other little bits and pieces that I've been using through the week. And they turned out just beautiful. I really, really loved them. They're so cute, they're so textural. I followed my pattern of a base piece and then something textured on top and then a little piece and then a little piece on top of the little piece. And it was just a whole lot of fun. So of course they're not all going to fit in my journal. What I'm definitely going to put in some and then I'm going to keep the others for another lesson further on in the class, because I know that we're going to want to have some little focal points for different collages. Make sure if you make a whole heap of them, you keep them somewhere where you can find them again for another lesson. Just loving them. They look beautiful. Which ones will I put in my art journal? I love them all. So I think it's going to be a matter of which ones fit the best. Now I put a spray of the coffee Zinc over the liquorice because I wasn't happy with the liquorice color in relation to the tones of my beautiful little miniature collages. Then I sprayed it with a copper buff. Because I was trying the color, I knew it wouldn't matter because you're not going to see it. And I wanted to test and see what the color was like. It's pretty nice. Actually. Probably use it again another day. Now, how many am I going to put on? Do I want to cover the whole space? Probably because I'm just like that. Which ones are going to fit the best? I know I can keep them for another lesson, but you know, I just love them. The question is, what can't I live without? That's what I have to have today. I have to have this one love it, and that one fits really well next to it, or else I could trim this one down a bit and then that one would fit nicely because the colors would work. And I love the power. Of course, you don't have to fill up your whole page like I've done. You could actually take one of them. You could put a different piece of paper as texture behind your beautiful miniature very easily. And it could just be one focal point on the page. You could easily do that. Or you could, of course, you could just have two on the page. You don't have to fill them all up. There's so many options for how you want to create your pages for this particular class. I could do that, maybe I will do that. I shouldn't give myself so many options. I really like that one too. That one looks really good by itself. The options are endless. It's just a matter of deciding what you want to do and how you want your page to look. Okay, I'm going to decide, and I'll show you when they're dry, have a look and see what I decided on. Aren't they absolutely beautiful? And the background color works really well. Seeing as I didn't completely cover it, I'm glad I sprayed all that new color on it. Picked out rather good. See, you never quite know. Even when you think something's an accident, of course, you must have known. I wouldn't be able to stop at two pages. No, of course I didn't. I had to turn over and keep going. They're absolutely beautiful and I do still have some left for the next class, which is really exciting. I've loved it this week so much. It's been so much fun. I can't wait to see what you've done and what you've created. Don't forget to keep showing me photos. I absolutely have to know how you're going. 20. Let's Celebrate: We did it weak to a round of applause for us. Actually, I think I enjoyed weak Tom Even more than I enjoyed weak one. I absolutely loved it exploring the found objects and making the miniature collages in the last class. That was my absolute favorite. I absolutely loved them. I can't wait to use them again in another lesson. So how did you go? I'd love to see your collages. Don't forget to post a pick, or picks or lots of them. And jump in my Facebook group and add heaps of photos there. Because I'd love to see how you responded to the prompts. What you created, what textures you used, what found objects did you put? Are you creating in an art journal or on loose paper? I'd really love to know. So show me some of your photos because that would be so fabulous. Now don't forget the class notes in the class description. All the information there of the art supplies that I've used. Remember, you don't have to use those supplies. Use what you have first. But if you want to know what I've used, they're all there in the list. Some of them have an Amazon list. And don't forget if you want anything from Taperology or so or Pim Aa Studio, there's going to be discount codes. So make sure you look for the discount codes if you're getting any of those fabulous products. Of course. I've also added the treasure map, print that out and have a look. It's really exciting to see as we move along in each of the classes, the treasure map changes, and it's just a little bit of fun. I know it might be a little silly, but I'm loving making it because I'm so excited about this whole series. Now each class is going to compound, adding onto the next and adding onto the next. So make sure you're keeping all your prints or your papers or even your found objects keep everything together in a box. Because in the next class, you might want to use some of those pieces and we're going to be adding the mixed media techniques and just putting more into our lessons from the previous classes. I absolutely love that idea. I love being able to use the leftover prints and papers. And definitely I'm going to be using, again, some of those found objects from this week. Now, if you have any questions, you've got my E mail there on your class notes, or if you have any concerns, reach out. Let me know. If you're struggling with something or if something's not working or you just need more information. Definitely, you want to jump into the Facebook group and hash tag your photo, celebrate your creative self or celebrate you or something like that. That I can see your post and know that this is where you came from. It's so exciting and I love to see how you're responding to the prompts, what you've chosen to use. Because I know it'll be different from what I've done, and I absolutely love that. Don't forget, I'm journeying along this adventure with you. Some of the ideas from these classes I wouldn't have done before either. So I'm learning at the same time, taking the steps and being courageous. I'd love to see how you're going with what you're creating. Well, I guess you deserve a week off. And then we're going to be jumping into week three, mixed media mustery, a college unleashed. Doesn't that sound fantastic? Yes, it does. So I hope you're going to join me as we continue this fantastic adventure towards 100 days of collage.