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!

Splashin' Some Color

I've been trying to revamp my blog the past couple days. It's like expecting a car to be able to sing and dance. Or like thinking you can teach a cat to quote Shakespeare on a motorboat on the Nile. Not good. I got so frustrated, and wasted so many tiles, I decided to stop and play. You can see above what I made in about 5-10 minutes.

I made two tiles before I thought to photograph them. Before I started painting, I put my craft sheet on my desktop. I got mine at Michael's for about $3.00 on sale. An Inksentials Craft Sheet. That's the brown tweed looking sheet you see above. It's plastic and wipes clean (pretty much) with a baby wipe afterwards.

For the tiles above, and the ones in this set, I used Adirondack Color Wash that Tim Holtz uses. I started by washing a good layer of clear, clean water on the tile. Then I used butterscotch color wash - spritzing it on the right hand side of the tile. Then I spritzed some sunset orange on the left. I learned that I need to test this out before I blast a heavy shot on my tile - like you see above. All that came from one push of the button. 

I blotted some of the color away with a paper towel, then added some purple twilight and wild plum on top of what was left behind. Because of the amount of water still on the tile, the colors will run and bleed together giving you the pretty colors you see above.

Definitely more color than I need since I want to tangle some designs on these tiles. So I should have remembered what I wanted to use the tiles for before I got trigger-happy with my color wash :), but never fear - this tile will go great on an art journal page!

For this tile, I used the color wash sprays in a different way. I left the tile dry, and spritzed some color wash all around the tile. I used at least four colors and a light hand. Then I took my wet paint brush and dropped some splotches of water on various parts of the tile, allowing the paint to run.

I had a little bit too much water here . . . 

. . . so I wicked away the big blotches by lightly touching them with the paper towel. (Just so you know, I get my nails done at Davi Nails at Wal-Mart.)

And this is what I ended up with. Probably another art journal entry :).

For this tile, I dropped bits of water here and there on the tile, then sprayed on some cherry blossom walnut ink spray by Tsukinek, as well as some lilac. I thought it was entirely too dark, so I . . . 

. . . blotted it with yet another paper towel. This time I placed the paper towel right down on top of the entire tile - which picks up excess color, but also leaves a cool textured design in the remaining color.

Those of you who know me, know that I am all about the color. At times (like now) I actually have this shade of pink mixed in with my brown and blonde hair. To get this color on the tile, I sprayed some raspberry Inkadinkado spray ink right on top of the tile you see above it. 


(An aside note here - I do not like the Inkadinkado spray inks! It is next to impossible to control the amount of ink that comes out, and when you press the spray button - ink shoots out onto your fingers. This has happened with every bottle of Inkadinkado spray ink that I have tried. I was hoping this one time it wouldn't happen. Oh well. )

I dripped a little water on top of the color and pushed the color around a bit with my heat gun. Works pretty well for pushing, and you get some nice colors as it dries.

I wanted it to have some contrasting color, so I took a few swipes across the tile with a broken china Tim Holtz distress stain.

I just noticed I have the wrong bottle of color showing with this tile. Oops!

Speaking of Tim Holtz distress stain - new tile! You can see that I just splashed some drops of water onto the paper. I didn't want full coverage. I wanted to see what would happen with just a few drops. Then I used the dried marigold stain and just tapped it onto the tile in a couple places. I was surprised by how much color came out and by the intensity. I like it!

So I added some more colors - spun sugar (my favorite), dusty concord, and broken china (the blue) - staying with the tapping.

There was too much water, so I blotted the whole thing with a paper towel. Then it was too light.

But my paper towel looked awesome!

The only thing I did was to tap back on a little orange (dried marigold) and I was done with this tile.

So there you have it. The 5-minute-Alice-Hendon-teaches-a-cat to quote Shakespeare on a motorboat on the Nile technique. I hope you enjoyed it! You just learned how to do it right along with me, cause there's a first time for everything :).