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Q2 Staff Meeting on Zoom
We at the office are social distancing and holding our staff meetings online, just like everyone else.
We also have tech problems, just like everyone else.
Not to mention….crazy ideas. Pretty much all of us have those!
If you want to help with dog cookies or toys, Chewy loves to send treats!
Or support mama at Patreon or take a class!
Stay Home Stay Safe: Ink + bleach and a free digistamp
Are you swinging by here fir the first time? HELLO, I’m glad you’re here! I’m an artist, crafter, and art teacher, and you’re welcome to subscribe here, to my IG, FB, YT, or wherever you like to get content. You can also check out my teaching site!
This weekend, I created an ink painting – yes an INK painting – that felt so therapeutic; it’s a technique I’ve been wanting to play with, and as the color began to interact across the page, it captured my current mood. It’s been heartbreaking watching the numbers of the infected and the dead rise – and all I can think of is how each one touches their entire family. So when we have three and four thousand dead, multiply that by however many people are crushed by the loss. It’s just an unimaginable pain.
Supplies for this project are linked at the end of this post. Compensated affiliate links may be used at no cost to you.
This wasn’t necessarily a “planned” piece. I had taken a class from Nick Stewart (visit his site HERE and his Udemy class HERE) – and had been away from the lessons for a couple weeks and wanted to return to them. He’s an amazing artist with inks and understanding the chromatography that some of them have, and I’ve been buying inks to try to learn what he’s learned too! See the reaction of the two black inks in the video, then pop back to read on below.
The inks I used are listed in the supplies – the golden yellow is the Faber Castell, the turquoiose is the Montblanc. SUCH cool effects! I got the little jar for my bleach at the grocery store – I could only find them in packs of dozens online, so I recommend getting them locally. Bleach too. Nobody needs to ship that. LOL.
The glass pens are way fun, I have a couple of them. the ones that are $6 or $7 seem to work as well as the pricier fancy ones. All glass pens, from my current knowledge, are a little “scratchy” on the paper surface, so I’m not keen on drawing with them in general except for testing out colors and papers – it’s a great way to try out a new ink I’ve gotten but not have to fill a pen yet. (Which requires washing out the previous ink color!) The dip pen allows me to be lazy! But the TWSBI Eco is my affordable pen-to-love; I have one in medium and one in a fine nib…so if you’re looking for one to start with, I’d begin there.
FREE DIGIS!
Since I’m in thinking-about-staying-home mode, I decided to create a couple digis too – they’re free, you can pop over to my other site to pick them up.
Be sure to share what you create to remind your friends and family to stay home too….and send your card on to someone who might be having trouble staying in. It’s hard, but we need to break the back of this virus!
SUPPLIES
Compensated affiliate links may be used – that means if you make a purchase using my links, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support of my work on this blog! Read more.
- Montblanc Mystery Black Ink – turns goldish with bleach
- Graf von Faber-Castell Carbon Black Ink – – turns turquoise with bleach
- Platinum Carbon Ink – waterproof
- Glass pen (they come in all kinds of colors/styles!)
- TWSBI Eco Fountain pen, medium nib
It’s mah birthday!
In this random art vlog (now titled “Stay Home Art Vlog, do ya like that?), I talk about social distancing tips, hopscotch, and birthday cards!
When it’s coronavirus quarantine season, you need to make your own birthday fun happen! Indeed I was shameless in
Social distance lessons
My pups have gotten together to help you learn to distance yourselves. First, DISTANCE.
Second, NOT DISTANCE. Got it? Y’all gotta stop doing stuff together or we get to keep doing this for a long time…lol.
Even when walking with a friend who you think isn’t sick – and you’re not sick – remember you could BOTH be carriers without symptoms. That means no matter how awesome your friend is, save the hugs for summertime! My friend Lorrie and I walked together and kept the distance…the cool thing is when nobody in town is going anywhere, there’s no one on the roads – so we can walk in the middle of the street!
Crazy art idea
I had this little idea that I hoped would take off — get my whole neighborhood to do a GIANT hopscotch to connect all our houses! The idea didn’t take off but….well, we’re older folks in the hood for the most part.
Though it was SUPER fun watching kids come by and jump on my drawing!
On a slightly sad note – one tiny overnight rain erased my art. On a good note – I have another box of chalk!
Birthday cards!
Thank you to everyone who sent me CARDS! THANK YOU everyone for all the pretty birthday cards! I read them all after shooting the video, while icing my thumb 🙂
I know it was a shameless plea, but looking at a birthday during stay-at-home orders was just more than I wanted to deal with. Having to regularly check the PO box is a good excuse to get “out” – the route from my house to there is unlikely to run into people, and Vienna is a GREAT walkin’ buddy. G not so much (he’s distracted by EVERYthing and pulls a lo!)….so V has been loving making the long walk with me.
And a little gift arrived recently but it got separated in the studio from the card that came with it – I feel so bad I couldn’t write a thank you note! Whoever you are, I LOVE my little yellow bag!
Plans for the day
So what does a quarantine do to your birthday when you live alone with pups? Well – you have awesome friends who drop off lovely things like tulips and cheesecake on your doorstep the night before. You have a friend invite you for a virtual lunch over Facebook Messenger. And you hope the booboo on your thumb lets you get back to the studio!
You also get to invite your internetty-studenty-friends to get out their colored pencils and take a brand new storybook scenes class! The best two parts? 1/ If you took the Jumpstart class you already have the supplies. And 2. It’s on sale through EASTER! You can ask Da Bunny for the class in your Easter basket! 🙂
Mama Bear – new baby card
I’ve got a little bonus card for you here on the blog today….I did shoot a quick speed video to post over on Instagram so be sure to check in for that!
A bunch of us on the Ellen Hutson design team got together to make baby cards to send to Emily, a member of the team. After I made mine I realized she was having twins so….we’re gonna pretend that Papa Bear is off with the other little baby, maybe he needed to go get whatever mama bear said she wanted at this moment!
Hopefully Em will forgive me for my ooops 🙂 Because it’s a darling little card anyway. It goes to show you don’t have to have specific themed stamps if you can adapt what you have!
You’ll see in the IGTV video that I didn’t fully stamp the bear – did a little post-it masking to leave room to add her hospital gown and baby.
And then I reallllly wanted a “mama bear” stamp, but even looking through all the stamps I have, I didn’t have anything to adapt….so I just wrote it in by hand!
Go over to Emily’s blog and give her a little love on one of her projects. Or two or three! She’s not a new mom but if you have any mama-of-twins advice, maybe she could use some!
SUPPLIES
Compensated affiliate links may be used – that means if you make a purchase using my links, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support of my work on this blog! Read more.
Squeeze the Day (clean and simple watercolor card)
Back in February I posted this simple card over on Instagram TV – and since I have some news to share, I thought I’d do that while showing the video.
It’s about Ellen Hutson….and that darned covid19 taking another bite out of us! Ellen needs to close her business for the time being – the state we live in has been hit hard by the virus, and they keep trying hard to make everyone stay home. But since folks aren’t abiding….they’re getting stricter. How dare they say art and craft supplies aren’t “essential”??? Gah! I’m SO GLAD Ellen is complying and keeping her staff safe, though. I wish more did that!
Supplies for this project are linked at the end of this post. Compensated affiliate links may be used at no cost to you.
In the meantime though, I’m going to do a couple things.
- Remain a loyal customer of Ellen’s. A few other crafty places still are open at minimal levels, but I’m gonna wait for Ellen.
- Continue to share videos on YT – just change it up a bit! I’ll be making things that you can still learn from for cards, like backgrounds, ideas, products you may already have in a new way. But just not on card, or not with stampy stuff. Like….I have some videos about coloring Easter eggs! And painting on wood, and all kinds of fun stuff.
- Do more speed videos on social media.
- Do daily (weekday) chats every morning on Instagram (8:30am) and Facebook (9am). Until I run out of stuff to say, LOL. Join in the fun!
- Do an occasional Zoom meeting with my Patrons – that’s a video conferencing platform where we can actually talk together! If you;d like to become a patron you can do that for as little as $1 a month. Easy peasy. Means the world to my mortgage company and the dog food people.
I would LOVE it if you could do something special right now: send an email and let Ellen know how much you love her and her shop. She must be feeling down right now, and a flood of love and encouragement would mean the world!
Okay enough of all that, let’s get to the card, ok?
Check out the quick video below – again, it was shot for IG, so it’s not super high quality, but there ya go! lol.
TECHNIQUE TIPS
This was one of those see-what-happens cards. I wanted to create something loose to go along with the tight stamping of the limes. (I used a MISTI to stamp the front ones, then masked them and stamped the ones behind them.)
I splooshed paint across the main image, then bent the paper to let it spread up and down; dropped nickel azo into the limes after that, just to see what would happen.
Then once it was dry, I secured it down with some tape and did “normal” painting – and once there’s color behind an image, all the stress over not going outside the lines vanishes!
EXTRA VIDEO
If you’re thinking about getting this stamp set, I have another video with the same one:
SUPPLIES
Compensated affiliate links may be used – that means if you make a purchase using my links, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support of my work on this blog! Read more.
NOTE: you can’t buy this stuff right now while Ellen’s shop is closed. But I’ll keep the links here, so if you come back and want to get them once she’s open later, they’ll be all handy!
- Squeeze The Day by Julie Ebersole, Essentials By Ellen Clear Stamps
- Mini MISTI Laser Etched Stamping Tool (6-1/8 X 7), My Sweet Petunia
- Silver Brush Black Velvet Watercolor Brushes, Short Round 8
- Cold Press Watercolor Paper Pad 9×12, Arches
- Scotch Foam Mounting Tape
- DANIEL SMITH Extra Fine Watercolors:
- VersaFine Ink Pad, Onyx Black —- http://salln.net/2fQHEh3
Cannibal Cottontail Card!? (Lawn Fawn and Copics)
I’ve been running short of mojo of late…and I figured getting out some darling new stamps I bought by Lawn Fawn ( Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy, and Say What? Spring Critters) might help. I’ll let you be the judge after you see my card, ok? I might have stepped over the edge! Ha!
Supplies for this project are linked at the end of this post. Compensated affiliate links may be used at no cost to you.
First – the “expected” use: bookmarks or tags! These are super easy to color, diecut, and assemble – they’d be great for Easter baskets as tags, or bookmarks to give to readers. These use the regular dies to cut out the bunny and frog PLUS the Add-On, which cuts the tag part, and the sentiments are included for bookmarks as well as tag themes.
The backsides are so cute – look at that bunny butt! The set has “to” and “from” sentiments you can stamp back here for tags.
TECHNIQUE TIPS
Ok here are the marker colors used….sorry I didn’t get them into the video!
The colored panel is cut to 5 x 3-3/4, with a white popped layer that’s 5-1/4×4, and the full card base is the standard A2. It gives the panel a nice “framed” look to have the double matting on the dimensional adhesives!
Every so often I go around putting Glossy Accents on everything…the little chocolate bunny got the treatment this time!
Over on Instagram, I’ll be sharing a quick speed video on IGTV of this card using the lil sheepies exchanging gifts!
SUPPLIES
Compensated affiliate links may be used – that means if you make a purchase using my links, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support of my work on this blog! Read more.
- Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy, Lawn Fawn Clear Stamps
- Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy, Lawn Cuts Dies
- Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy Add-On, Lawn Cuts Dies
- Say What? Spring Critters, Lawn Fawn Clear Stamps
- Copic Markers
- Neenah Classic Crest Cardstock, Solar White
- Crafter’s Companion Gemini Junior
- Craft Assistant, Essentials by Ellen
- ABS-3 Airbrush Kit, COPIC
- Scotch Foam Mounting Tape
- Glossy Accents, Ranger Accents
- Clouds, Essentials By Ellen Designer Dies
- Craft Knife, Fingertip, Fiskars
- Tape, Judikins Eclipse
