Pallet Cleaning Tutorial

Hey everybody. I'm back with you guys today, and I've got something that I would call kind of cool. Although I'm kind of biased in that aspect of course. :) So today I've got a little type of tutorial for you. I know that a lot of you out there in the painting and art world use pallets to hold your paint. I don't really know how many of you let the paint cake up in it like I do, but I'm going to show you a fun, creative and useful technique to clean it, if you do this. It's fast, it's easy, and it's not as wasteful as just dumping all of that excess paint into the drain. Plus, that's probably not the best when you want to keep your drain unclogged. So let's get started.

The first step is to choose which section of your pallet that you want to clean out first. But let me note first that this method of cleaning is a bit slower, but it's a cool technique in the long run. After you've chosen the section that you want to clean, you're going to dump a little bit of water into that section. Then, you take a paintbrush, and mix it around. The paint will mix with the water, coloring the water and dissolving the paint into the water. I must tell you that this doesn't work with all types of paint, but I always find that it's at least worth a shot.

Then, you just load up your paintbrush with the paint and the water, and spread it over some paper. It works the same way as a color wash does, and gives you lots of colorful, pastel like pages to use in your work.

Here's a pile of papers that I did just today off of my pallet. They always seem to turn out nice and colorful. Just a hint, darker colors work best for this technique. That gives it a bit more colored pigment to mix with the water, and it doesn't turn out as just being a hint of color on the paper that is barely even there. Anyways. That's the tutorial for today. I hope that you guys enjoyed it. One last tip though, is that you can use these papers and scrape paint on top of them, stamp on them, stencil them, spray inks, and in other words just layer over top of them. A lot of times they can turn out really well, and you can never tell that they were made from leftovers. And there's no shame in that.

Beginner Art Journaling Supplies

Hey everybody! Jordan here, with yet another post to share with all of you. I know that I've been doing pretty short posts lately, so I thought that I might make it up to you by giving you more of an extra long post today. It is Saturday after all, so I can deal with it. As you have probably seen from the title, today's post is about the basic supplies that you can use to art journal. I'll probably have a separate list some other time, about all of the advanced supplies, which I also like for art journaling. I'm not going to go in depth in each supply. But I promise you, I will do them separately as well and link back to here. So let's get started shall we?

Journal: One of the first things that you're going to want to have is, most definitely a journal. I love composition books, as you followers of my blog know. I think that it's the cheap aspect of them that really attracts me, but there are other reasons too. They are very highly customizable, and you don't feel BAD decorating them. Say you buy a really expensive moleskin. It will almost feel like you're defacing it to put stuff on the cover. Or even on the inside. That's another reason for me buying composition books. Since they are so cheap, you don't feel like you need to be perfect while playing around, and you won't be AS scared of the blank page, since there are already lines on there. Of course, you can easily get rid of those by painting over it. Plus, I just love that there are so many pages. 100 sheets, 200 pages. Of course, you CAN choose other types. It's your journal. Do as you wish.    

Paint: Next up on my list, we're going to go with paint. Now, not everyone uses paint in their journals. But I'm making this list to go with the supplies that I find myself using on almost, if not every, art journal page that I make. If you just go to the art supply store and look around, you will probably be intimidated by all of the kinds of paint that you will find there. But don't be overwhelmed. Paint is one of the most fun supplies to search for and buy. There are so many different colors and shades of those colors, that just simply browsing them makes my head go ablaze with ideas, and just makes me HAPPY. I don't know why. But I'll have another post on this for sure. I might have to do a post on each kind of paint. I know. It's sad that I'm so obsessed. But at least I won't run out of blog ideas... ANYWAYS. Back to the subject at hand. There are so many different kinds of paint; craft acrylic, tempera, fresco tempera, oil, watercolor pans, watercolor TUBES, acrylic tubes, student acrylics, ARTIST acrylics, artist watercolor tubes, poster paints, gouache, and so, SO much more! Paint is the ultimate craft supply.    

Pens and Markers: Next up, we have our pens and markers. Now this is a bit of an interesting aspect of the art journaling world. Obviously there are many, many, MANY different kinds of pens to use. And lots of different colors too. It's easy to get lost. But, when you are just starting, I recommend holding off on the colored pens. YES they can be fun to use. Most definitely. But so are black and white. And they have many more uses than the colored ones. In this picture here, I have Sharpie Paint Markers, Sharpies, a ZIG calligraphy marker, a Sakura glaze pen in white, and a black Sakura GellyRoll. These are the ones that I find myself coming to most often. Of course, feel free to explore the vast world of pens and markers. They're out there, that's for sure. 

Glue: Next up, we have glue. There are many different kinds of glue as well, but this topic is much more scarce than the others. I left a couple kinds out of this purpose on accident, but I'll mention them here. One, we have Mod Podge. This brand is very commonly known, and has many different uses. There is Allene's Tacky Glue. Most crafters have at least heard of it, if not bought a bottle or two. If you haven't, it isn't a big deal. This glue does come in handy quite often however. You also have HOMEMADE Mod Podge, school glue, glue sticks, and scrapbooking tape runners and glue dots. All of these have come in handy to me at one time or another.     

Spray Bottle Filled With Water: Ah yes. Even though many people do NOT consider this a necessity, I in fact, do. I love my spray bottle, and used my old one so much that I wore out the spraying tip so much that I broke it. We went through a lot together, so I held onto it, and put something else in it to spray, while I got a new, bigger spray bottle in the travel isle of Target for a buck. I'm sure I'll go through quite a bit with this one as well.

Scissors: Scissors, of course, are important to the creative process. No matter how much you love the raw edge of a torn piece of paper, you will always come to the point when you want a nice clean edge to a piece of paper, or a shape. For instance, a circle. It's not easy to tear a perfect circle. Not that it's easy to cut one either...     

Paper and Fabrics: Next come papers and fabrics. Or any sort of collage material to tell you the absolute truth. I left out a lot of my collage papers and fabrics in this photo; I just wanted you to sort of see what some of the pieces that I use look like. I'll save leftover papers from projects, wrapping paper, greeting cards, pages from books, pictures from magazines, fabrics from clothing I've outgrown, receipts; any piece of paper or fabric that I find in my everyday life. There are many more kinds than this obviously; there are so many different kinds that it would literally be impossible to list all of the different kinds out there. I'll definitely have to do a separate post for all of you guys about papers and collage materials; that would be really fun!

Paintbrushes and Painting Tools: The next thing then would be paintbrushes and other painting tools. When you first hear the phrase "painting tools", I am almost positive that the first thing that comes to your mind would be paintbrushes. And while those are, in fact, one of the most COMMON painting tools, that doesn't necessarily meant that they are the only ones. But let me focus on them first anyways. I use approximately six different brushes; seven if you include the foam brush. But I have a 1" flat brush, a 5/8" flat brush, two 1/2" shaders/angular brushes, a 1/2" flat brush, and a glue brush that doesn't have a size; it came with a kid's paint set. There are also pallet knives, which you can buy fairly cheaply at Michaels, and an old toothbrush can also be used to spread paint. The last thing that I'm going to share in this subject is an old credit card. These have practically endless uses, and I have used mine so much that it's literally about to break in half from so much use.

Stamps: Last, but certainly not least, we have stamps. I know that a lot of people would argue with me about stamps being a necessity, but I'm going to stick with my facts that I've found, and that would be that they most definitely are. There are many different kinds of stamps to use, of course, and a lot of mine are either homemade or found. But I do buy some too. The ones that I buy are normally one of two kinds. The $1.00 stamp sets that you can find at Michaels. Or the cheap foam stamps. I can't make those, so that's why I buy them. But there are other, cheaper alternatives as well. Or rather, about the same price. But they're more custom. I make eraser stamps using cheap erasers and an exacto knife, and  cheap, sticky-back foam that I adhere to cardboard from cereal boxes. Of course, you can also use bubble wrap and other pieces as stamps as well.

Yeah. That was a pretty long post today, and I thought that I had lost the whole thing really close to the end. But luckily, I found it pasted into the search bar of my computer (it does that when text is highlighted). So yeah. Anyways, that's all for today, and I'll see all of you guys tomorrow! See ya!

A Wash Makeover

Okay, so as I told you guys plenty of times yesterday, I completely hated my page I made yesterday. So I thought I'd just give you a bit of a tutorial on how to fix/change a page that you hate. I decided that the best way to fix something like this would either be to paint over it or use a wash. I haven't done washes in a long time. So I decided that I'd go with that. I decided that the problem was that the page was just a little uncoordinated.

So I decided that I'd use a black wash over top of it, just so all of the colors will manage to meld together, as that's what I was trying for in the very beginning. So what you do is you start off with a bunch of supplies. I show them above. It uses a page you want to redo, a pallet with some black paint in it, a basic paintbrush, and a little container of water. You mix the black paint with a bit of water.

Then, use the paintbrush to paint over the entire background. I like to totally saturate it. I think it makes the end result much better. Then take a baby wipe, a paper towel, or a napkin and just wipe away. The below picture is what it looks like after this.

I really like it now. I'm pretty happy with this. It's awesome. I think it may be one of my favorite pages now since I first started this Art Journal Everyday challenge. It's day 7 I think, and it's been going pretty well up until now. I know that it took a bit too long to get this post up, but at least it's still today. It's pretty awesome. I also worked on this page for the Green Isle Crafts art journal challenge. Today's challenge was No Waste. To use something in your page that you normally wouldn't. I chose phone book paper.

Here's the finished page all in all. You know what I mean? I know that I'm totally addicted to this zebra ribbon. I like it so much. It's weird. :)

I've also got this card. It's been fun working with cards lately. I really, really like this card though. It's cool. I like the way that the curved lines make it seem like space. I know, it's weird. But anyways.

Here's a better view of the card. I like it a lot. The card challenge was called Just a Touch, and the actual challenge was to use a stamped image and put two touches of color in the image. I like the way it looks. It's pretty cool. So anyways, that's all I've got for today... hope to see you guys tomorrow!!