Using New Product

This week I've been in a painting mood, playing with paint - not painting a portrait or a landscape. Just seeing what different products do when you mix them. Above you see my finished tile.

I began with a zentangle® zendala tile and spritzed two splashes of color onto the tile. I used Donna Salazar's Smooch Spritz - ink in a spritzer bottle, color Seabreeze.

It was a whole lot darker than I wanted it to be, but not as dark as I expected just looking at the color in the bottle above.

I wanted to lighten up the dark blue, so I started by spraying some Fresh Lime Dylusions ink spray across the top of the tile. I sprayed a direct hit on the higher blue splotch and it lightened considerably. I  liked the contrast, so I left the darker blue spot alone.

I like the Dylusion line of ink sprays a lot and have several of them. They are easy to use. Some other sprays are hard to pump and control the amount of ink that comes out - and the Dylusions sprays don't leak on your hands - yay!!! Because that seabreeze smooch spritz left my hands in a big mess! Here it is three days later and I still have blue on my right hand. Sorry to ramble . . .

The last thing I did was to spray rubbing alcohol across the top of the entire tile. Then I let it sit while we went out for supper. By the time I got home several hours later, the tile was dry. I really like how the colors blended into one another. I can see blue, and several shades of greens and yellows. I don't know where those pink spots at the bottom came from. Probably off my craft mat from one of the other projects. But, my point is - I only used two products of color to make this tile.

 I made another project on a zendala tile from Zentangle®. To make this tile, this is what I did:

I sprayed some Tea Party Smooch Spritz from Donna's line several times across the tile. 

You may notice I was getting paint and spray inks all over my desk top. You might already know about this product, but in case you don't let me introduce you to Tim Holtz' amazing craft mats.

It is 15" x 18" and virtually impermeable. (Spell check is telling me that is spelled correctly, maybe it is, doesn't look like it to me, though! Anyhoo!) This craft mat is so wonderful I went back and bought a second one. I cover my work top with these mats and spray away to my heart's content. Where you see color on the mats - notice it beads up and stands above the mat. I just wipe it off with a paper towel and I'm good to go.

For the next step, I used Sunset OrangeAdirondack Color Wash on top of the previous color, to fill it in a little more. To get the colors moving a bit I spritzed some water over the tile. Unfortunately I did not get a photo of that step.

Then I took some Cherry Blossom Walnut Ink (Tsukinek - I love this stuff!) and tried to spritz some on. Came out a little heavy handed, so I sprayed some rubbing alcohol over the top, which toned down the heaviness a little.

The rubbing alcohol made the colors spread, so I gave it a few minutes to let it work.

 After the colors stopped spreading, this is what I had. I still wanted a little more purple, so I sprayed on some Wild Plum Color Wash and loved the way it looked. This is a good time to tilt your tile and let the color move around some .

I was really starting to like how the tile was looking, but it still needed a little oomph! You can see on that lower right section I sprayed some Sailboat Blue Color Wash. Actually quite a bit. And I let it sit again for about a minute to let some of the colors blend.

Another spray of water, a little blotting with a paper towel, and I was to this point.

I left it to dry over night and this is how it looked the next morning. I really like the colors and the way they blended into each other. I used a total of five colors on this tile. The water and alcohol used at different steps in the journey helped the colors to mix and blend. What an easy project - I can't wait to tangle something on here!

And I saved all those paper towels with color all over them. Does anyone know what I'm supposed to do with them? Someone told me I could use them in a journal, but I don't know how. That would be fun to know!