Paint the Town Red...or Pink

I got the chance to try out the brand-new Artistro Acrylic Paint 24 set and I thought I'd let you know how it went. I have to start by saying I use acrylics only occasionally, in my art journal. And I took some Life Book classes and learned to use them a little more there. I am in no way an expert but I love all the art media, so I gave these a try.

The colors in this set are vibrant and rich, with a range of colors including gold and silver and large tubes of both black and white. The set also comes with three brushes and a palette. The paint has a nice smooth body, not too thin. I used water to thin some out and the color stayed bright, though it became more transparent. 

I drew some simple flowers with a sharpie on 80 lb. paper and used just a pink, yellow, blue-green and white to paint both doodles.

You can see that the paint does cover the black lines some and if I'd wanted to, I could've gone back in with the sharpie to darken them back up, but I was okay with how it turned out.

In this doodle, I watered down the orange I made, the pink and the green. The lines show up better when the paint is thinned out like this. But the paint still has enough body to show the paint strokes. I think if I had been working on gesso, the brush strokes wouldn't have been as pronounced.

The price point for these 24 paints, the three brushes and the palette run $32.99 on Amazon. It's a good price for the amount of paint, the vibrancy of color and the quality of the brushes (no stray bristles in my work). I'd purchase these for myself or a crafter. I love that you get larger tubes of white and black as well. I know I'll be using these paints more in the future. 

Hope you have time to play around with a new medium this weekend!

Happy Friday,

Chark

Flower Power—Journaling with Julie 7

Lesson 7 from the Create Your Life Book Art Journal (that my sister, Julie, and I are working on in our respective craft rooms in our respective states) is about meditating on how you're feeling and what words come to mind as you meditate.

You're supposed to write down some words that come to you in pencil on the page...you can write anything and I wrote down tons of stuff I am worried about. I scribbled, I overlapped, I just spit it all out on the page. Then you're supposed to go over it and cover it up. So I did. I collaged with some papers, some die cuts,  and just a bunch of stuff. 

Then I painted over all of them with watered down acrylics.

Next, I drew some loose shapes, just hearts and flowers and outlined them in black gelato.

I went over all of it with white acrylic paint and it toned everything down too much. So I spent some time adding paint and tombow markers to make it more colorful again and smudging and adding extra doodles. I also outlined everything again with a sharpie. 

I'm happy with the final result, but it was a long time before I was. That yellow washi is from a defunct etsy shop, but I snagged probably five rolls in different colors and patterns. It just makes me happy.

Julie decide to use inspirational words on the first layer with colored pencil...faith, compassion, family. Then she added some papers, including scrapbook papers, vintage papers and some she had already painted and printed. Julie also used acrylic paints, using her fingers and then added white with a brayer to pull it all together.

    

She used white paste to stencil and added swirls for texture. Then she added a sharpie around the circles, which reminded her of flowers, so she used a Pitt brush pen to add branches and white gel pen for texture. I definitely like the contrast the marker gives and I didn't even push her to do it :) I also like how the contrast makes the flowers stand out and how she let the piece speak to her, as I really just drew flowers for no reason but she used the shapes to suggest what to make. 

This one was fun, I'm enjoying all the paper tearing and painting, but I think I need to let those papers show through a little more.

Happy Weekend!

Chark

Water, Water, Everywhere

So, I have a beach scene card to share with you today and it's a little later post than usual because I had to go pick up my son who was dripping wet from summer gym...they went canoeing today and his boat capsized. 

It was a whole adventure but if I was a betting woman, I should've bet he'd capsize. These last two weeks of summer gym have been one minor disaster after another. Huge bruise from ice skating, sore ankles and blisters from roller skating, scrapes today from the river and more. Four more days and I can only hope they are injury free! Cross your fingers for me!

This card uses one of the acrylic Hero Arts cards for the front. I used my new Bo Bunny pearl paints for the front ocean and sand. I just swirled the blue paint on with my finger and lightened it up toward the bottom of the card, so you can see the inside scene. I used Staz-On for the Hello sentiment from the stamp set Anchors Aweigh to stamp on the acrylic surface.

In this photo, you can see the front separate from the card inside.

Here's the inside scene, with the underwater and beach and birds. I watercolored a little to get the water and sky and sand.

This was so fun to make—inking up new stamps is a blast! If you want this set of stamps and some acrylic cards to go with it, you can order them at the a2z Scrapbooking Store. You'll have to special order the Anchors Aweigh stamps but they are on their way in, so it won't be long. And there's no extra charge for special orders. Plus you can use CHARK15 to get a 15% discount when you get $25 or more in your cart. 

Happy Monday! 
Chark