DIY Gesso Pages

Using an unusual ingredient which even our local Ace Hardware store has:

At several different places online, I kept running into things about DIY Gesso. In my latest junk journal, the one with the duct taped cover, I wanted to strengthen some of the brown paper pages with gesso or paint--or something. Brown paper can be very brittle, easily torn. I liked the wrinkly look I'd achieved, and also like the torn edges I've added, but brown paper needs more body before certain kinds of treatment. 

I already had used up all of my white gesso, unfortunately. I did not wish to track down a new bottle so late in the creative process. I did still have some chocolate brown gesso left, but applying one brown to another seemed a bad idea for my blue and green color choices.

The recipes for DIY gesso do vary widely, especially where the ratios are concerned. Mine started off pretty grainy, even a bit lumpy--sort of like extremely white, very bad pancake batter! LOL

So now I've added more white acrylic paint to my previous mixture, stirring away lumps. Here is how it looked on the page prior to my adding more Titanium White paint and smoothing the mixture.

Though it's a rough cut journal and those are wrinkled 

pages, I must say that it looks unusually bumpy!

The 2 acrylic paint colors (later applied using my fingers and some water for a thinned look) have stuck to ridges and bumps. I'm not sure yet what to do with these pages. Perhaps by next week, I will have the answer.

Hope everybody's enjoying their week!

Auto Parts Stamps on White

Welcome to the Wild Stamp Deli!

Last week, I got a small box of deli paper sheets. The tip I followed in order to find the right ones was from Shel C. Thanks, Shel!

This week, for Carolyn Dube's "Let's Play" weekly Link Party (see link button in my right hand column) I tried a first experiment using a number of the sheets plus pigment ink pads. The stamps I chose were a mixed bag. Many of those stamps are old rubber auto parts. While they are not exactly hardware items, they at least would be unusual and also not the kind of thing generally to be found in most people's art kits. They are actually among my very favorite art tools.

Auto part, lower left.

Above that is something which I will explain later on.

Upper right, some sort of rubber pedal cover.

(?)

Lower right is a rubber stamp store blank + shelf liner imprint.

Left to right:

Far left--Regular rubber stamps.

Next--Rubber auto part.

Green is made using a broken off piece from 

a rubber flipflop which I sanitized.

Left to right:

Pink + purple + orange is the rubber auto part.

Black is 2 postage rubber stamps + 2 stray rubber car parts and London's Big Ben.

Lower right is a set of nature rubber stamps.

Again, left to right:

Lower left is 2 rubber auto parts + a cast off toy truck tire track.

The others are, of course, flip flop bit and rubber auto part.

Another view of the same pile.

I am really enjoying the new lamp bulb!

Ott Light bulbs really do light nicely.

Somewhere in this mix are imprints made 

using a cast off spark plug's rubber handle.

What I've learned by this experience:

When I heat set these sheets using an old light weight iron and my Talbot Arts Release Paper, what I noticed was that the pigment stamping ink did dry, but would smear if dampness touched it.

In other words, I will have to bear in mind that this will be an issue. I think that next time I will go with acrylic paints instead of stamp inks. Same stamps, just paint, not ink.

Can hardly wait to make some time for visiting everyone else's Let's Play pages. See you there!

:)

Let's Play: Hardware #2

The Duct Tape Saga, Episode Two

Having fallen in love with the newly handbound duct tape junk journal, I really wanted to keep the style loose and nice 'n' easy.

It is freeing to simply let go and stop working the pages in favor of play. Plus reupcycling everything is so much fun!

Hope everybody's having a good week.
~Rose

Doodles and Wrinkles
OR
(with a grateful nod to Zsuzsa)
"Wrinkly Inky Doodle!"
;)

WOYWW # ? Altered Book

From second hand to creative play.

I'm a bit late, but it is still Wednesday here!

This week, I've been playing around using my monoprint stash. 

Today's project was a relatively simple one. I had already used brown gesso on the outside sides of 2 doubled and already glued together pages, prior to cutting them using decorative scissors.

Then I simply tucked my monoprint page in between the 2 snipped and doubled ones, and glued all 3 pieces together using Mod Podge.

Still working on that lamp problem. Sorry the photo looks a bit wonky.

Monoprint Page, Altered Book Art Journal

WOYWW

Inspired by artist Shel C

...and my silly tendency to make puns or connect things together in weird ways.

This is what's been on my work desk for 3 days. At the moment, it's had waxed paper laid over it and is in the process of being flattened, so here is yesterday's photo of my cartoon

Moptopus!

You see, Shel and I had been sharing some ideas one day very recently. She had posted her recent YouTube of her splendid octopus.

You can see it right here or visit her channel. Lots of fun things happening there!

Awesomeness!

We ended up chatting about which brand of Deli Paper I should choose over at Amazon. She pointed me in the right direction. Thanks, Shel! I'm looking forward to being able to play with some one day very soon.

But the story did not end there. Oh, no. Somehow, 3 wires in my brain crossed, and sparks flew. Well, perhaps suds began to bubble instead LOL. I had a journal page to complete, and so far had not one idea in my pea brain as to how to tackle the problem. That page was a clean-up or mop-up pull from an earlier adventure in monoprints using my glass sheet (an earlier post here at this blog). This had turned out to be a little more interesting once I'd coated it with a transparent glaze of blue. In fact, it had begun to remind me of the ocean's depth.

Brain said: "Mop-up print page. Shel's brilliant octopus. Ocean floor. Bathroom mess." It mooshed everything together and that is my excuse for my double pun for this week's WOYWW.

And would you like to know what I really find most funny of all? LOL I usually dislike tentacles of all types intensely!

:)

Thanks, Shel!

A Book with an Edge

Starring the Handy Woman's Secret Weapon!

This month, Carolyn Dube's "Let's Play!" theme is all about things that we can find at the hardware store.

Duct Tape is in a class by itself as far as hardware items are concerned. As far as I know, there is nothing more versatile than this extremely sticky and rugged tape. People use it for temporary repairs on car parts, to seal things such as boxes, and even sometimes as a handy art supply.

I'd used it before, of course. I think that most of us surely have. I'd also made a little art using it, as well, one time for a special altered book show years ago. Another time, it was a weirdly wild little ATC card. I used a big, black Sharpie pen with it. That was fun!

This time, I made a book cover using a cereal box and a number of other materials. I finished the pages and the binding last night. This was ten times more fun than my prior two projects!
:)

I made a sort of photo diary of this project. This starts with the "bones" of my book, that is the structure upon which the text block will hang once sewn into place: the cover. I have to tell you that the cover and I had words at more than one tough moment! I am still not satisfied with everything about it, and already plan to alter it to suit the look I wish to achieve.

So here's that very, very, very long photo diary!

1.) Cereal Box

2.) First layer of Duct Tape

3.) A Distressed Lining

The lining is from an old book of scrapbook paper. I used 2 different but similar ones for the lining. I distressed all edges using an old Rubber Stampede Coffee Bean stamp pad. Having kept that well loved stamp pad in a ziploc bag for years has made it last a very long time--at least 6 years! I have never re-inked it, but have kept it for one thing only, that it adds a distressed look that won't budge if any moisture touches it.

4.) Materials and Tools on Display!

I don't show everything in the above picture, but you get the point, I'm sure. I'll give a list later on in this post. The white template on the book's inside cover (over its spine area) was used to gauge where to place the holes prior to binding. This was later removed.

5.) Junk Journal Spine

The spine may have a rougher look, a kind of "edgy" look to it, but it's a rugged enough book to take some hard knocks!

6.) Junk Journal Pages 1

Photos 6 and 7 show the signatures I'd already cut and folded. These are the pages before binding. A signature, for those who've never tried binding their own book before, is a collection of folded sheets, generally (although not always) sized the same way. Here I've shown how I chose to use rougher paper than I normally might to fit with the rugged look of the duct tape cover. All except, of course, for 2 sheets from a recent monoprint adventure (that's in my "No-Gelli Print" post from last month). You can see one of those in Photos 7 and 8, just below.

7.) Pages 2

8.) Sewn Pages 1

Some of you are familiar with my first blog, Plush Possum Studio, a Free Graphics place. If you are one of those people, you might recall my "Favorite Things" posts there, including my "brown paper packages" themed set. I confess it--I just love to play with brown paper. That is, most brown art supplies in general. In Photos 6, 8 and 9 are shown pages cut out of old brown paper items like old paper sacks. Mainly, I've used packing paper. The wrinkles make me happy. How could anybody resist such lovely old folds and wrinkles! Plus, I even added some purposeful tearing at the top and front edges.

9.)More Sewn Pages

10.) Room to Grow

Photo 10 has 2 points to make. The first is how I bound my junk journal with room for stuffing it full of lots of collage and other fun things. the second is that I had a remnant of some very unique crinkled two-tone green paper, and thought it would look fun with the brown wrinkly pages already chosen for this book.

Materials, Techniques and Tools List:

--empty cereal box

--3M Duct Tape (every handy person's secret weapon!)

--waste paper (used paper bags and brown packing paper)

--Stiletto (for poking holes during binding)

--3m Gluestick (all out of Uhu)

--needle and waxed linen thread

--old scrapbook sheets

--2 black card stock monoprints

--discarded manila file folders (for templates + easy sizing of pages)

--ruler

--scissors, pencil, marker

--5 hole pamphlet stitch technique (I needed to brush up on that a bit over at YouTube first)

No bone folders were harmed in the making of this project.

:)

Yes, I really do have one, but I wanted this new fun junky journal to be fully what it is, and not to be refined.

Well I guess that would be all for this particular "Let's Play!" adventure.

Thank you for stopping by!

~Rose

WOYWW (a little bit late, but here it is)

Still messy this week. I've had 3 different small projects in the works lately, and not enough time for cleaning up completely between them.

Mess One

(The full spectrum lamp either needs a new bulb or is toast)

Mess Two

The remains of a journal page and stencil making project may be seen in the first photo, while the second shows 3 of my favorite watercolors along with some cleanup stuff.

~Rose

Homemade Stencil Play

...or fussy cutting for hours...and hours...

LOL I have to laugh at such an ambition. Sometimes I simply can't wait to see the end result of a new idea, and tend to jump in feet first before considering the amount of time it all could take.

This project had to be done in incremental steps. Details, details, details. I learned how creating a stencil is all about the little fiddly bits and details.

So I had to first find some easy-to-follow instructions at YouTube. I already knew that I had some leftover packing tape from a previous move in my hardware drawer, so that was a cinch. I'd recently finally discovered where I'd put my best cutting mat, and knew that I had new blades for my craft knife. So that seemed OK. 

What surprised me was how I gravitated toward my scissors instead. I guess that I knew how hard it might be to cut all of the curves and curls in my design as neatly using the knife as it would be to do so using my scissors.

The cutting process seemed to take forever, especially the fussier parts, and yet I'm glad that I made the effort.

Step one was a sketch which I later colored into and remade a little. I wanted it to look like curling strands of hair tossed by wind...or something like that. I can dream, right?
:)

Step Two involved fussing with the packing tape. Strips of this can (supposedly) overlap one another slightly until a surface is completely laminated. And without wrinkling. In my case, for some reason, wrinkling could not be avoided, no matter how hard I tried. The photo below does not capture every single little wrinkle in my packing tape strips. Despite that little hitch, the cutting part works out well enough so that I chose to use the stencil regardless.

So I spent a few minutes here, a half an hour there (HOURS all told), and so on, fussy cutting my brains out while listening to some music.

Due to the sheer fussiness and effort of making a first stab at creating a stencil, I neglected to make a photo record of most of the steps. In fact, I skipped everything except the two final parts, the stencil itself and the page I used it for.

Playtime Materials Included:
-a page from a drawing pad
-lots of clear packing tape (applied to both sides, and not very neatly)
-pencil, eraser, etc.
-2 sizes of scissors, one regular and one teensy
-pigment ink pad
-my Canson Field All Media spiral book
-acrylic paint
-watercolors
-previously monoprinted Canson page (see my last post)
-Mod Podge for paper
-micah powder (Perfect Pearls brand) in 2 colors, gold and white

Here's my result:

And here's how my journal looks:

(with very bad lighting--full spectrum bulb is toast)

The left hand page began as the earlier

monoprint cleanup pull mentioned

in my most recent post.

To that monoprint cleanup was added 

Mod Podge mixed with Watercolor pigment.

The page to be stenciled was painted first, then spattered using Mod Podge for a medium with Perfect Pearls to lend spotty glimmer. After the first coats had dried, I used the stencil along with my pigment ink pad in Dragonfly Black (which is a really lovely deep, dark green).

It's fun playing this way with my new journal, and I'm looking forward to this month's new Play prompt of Hardware.

:)