Michaels and coupons

See what I was able to get with Michael's coupons! My first set of illustration markers; no they are not copic, but they are good in their richness and deepness of color. I am waiting to use them for a couple of weeks till vacation so that they are special. I am going to doodle with my manga pen/markers and these beautiful colored markers. Check these inexpensive watercolor crayons too! If you are a mixed media and collage artist, inexpensive products are so much fun to work with and try out. The longer I am in the art community, the more supplies are made and the more there is online. It can get overwhelming. But I truly find that I resort to my same supplies anyway. So take note on a day that you are working on a journal page and after you use a medium, put it to the side. When you work on another piece of art, put that medium on the side. See if there is anything in common. Are they the same supplies? Gesso, black markers, white gel pen, colored pencils, gel medium, water soluble crayons and oil pastels, acrylic paints, papers, ephemera...How many of those stamps and punches do you use anyway. I like picking up the $1.00 stamps at Michaels, ACMoore and JoAnne's because I may use them a couple of times. If you have a friend, perhaps you could switch off your stamps every once in awhile to make use out of what you have. It is terrible the amount of money we spend for a variety and then they just sit there.
One of my friends daughters was trying to sell her stamp collection prior to her wedding because she had 3,000 stamps; and they were not the $1.00 ones either.

Cloth Paper and Collage

My girlfriend Yolana are in the process of sending each other cloth paper that we made.

Yolana's paper was so different than mine. She used red white and blue and I used greens, yellows and whites.

Now what we are to do:

1. I cut her piece in half
2. I began to create two collages with various papers
3. When I am done, I will keep one and send her the other

RESULTS: We will both have a piece of each others cloth paper which is cool
We both will have worked on each others papers coming up with various
ideas
Then we will be swapping again, receiving our original paper with the
others art work on it.

The below picture is Yolana's paper with my working on top. I have gessoed, and have cut and tore papers to apply on top.

The cloth paper I created was much more textured than Yolana's. I added dried flowers into the surface with more glue added. My base cloth paper was canvas.
Yolana used cotton plaid fabric and papers with type.

I wanted to implement her type into my finished collage collecting my own type papers and applying with gel medium and surrounding texture with gesso.

Finished Tutorial and Views of all transfers

Going from Left to Right
Gel Medium on water color paper. The first went bad, the second I blow dryed and waited longer

The third one is the image with gel medium put on the surface of the image and the brown paper. They were bone folded, breyered with the wall paper seamer, blow dried a few times for a few minutes waiting for about 30 minutes, then wetting with water and rubbed off. A light coating of gel medium was rubbed into the surface for the image to come out clearer and the tag rumpled up a bit.

The fourth one is the packing tape. This was the second one. The cheap tape or cheap printer paper may have been the problem here. Remember I mentioned that the magazine images come out a bit better. When you are making one out of a magazine, you can actually let the image sit in water overnight before you rub the paper off of the tape.

The fifth image you are seeing is just the ink jet copy that was wet and layed on top of water color paper. It held up well. I blew it dry and am keeping it for another project.

Plain Water Transfer

This is 140 lb water color paper. I wet one side of the paper with a paint brush and water, then placed the image down on the wet, used the wallpaper seamer roller and rolled it out well. I also did a transfer with the extra heavy gel gloss medium and painted the paper, the ink copy and layed them together. Rolled that one with the roller also.

Blow drying your images I find is a great help. Let them sit for about 15 to 20 minutes after you have used the blower or heat dryer to let the ink bond with the paper. Your using a bone folder and or brayer of some sort makes the air bubbles come out between the two surfaces. You can use your finger or anything that is blunt (not sharp)to rub these surfaces together. The blower dryer sets the ink. If you desire to wait longer, that is o.k.

The plain water transfer can be lightly removed without adding more water. the gel transfer will need water sprayed on the back.

Voila!

Plain Water is What I Used

Plain water is what you use in a spray bottle for gel medium transfers, packing tape transfers and of course, plain water transfers.

Tutorial for all sorts of Transfers-tape-watercolor paper, gel medium

What a fun day doing these transfers to use for collage and mixed media projects. Do them for your artist journal pages too!

Today, me, myself and I made quite a few transfers. I took my vintage postcard and made a bunch of copies on my ink jet printer on plain white paper.

Making transfers is not a science. You do not know how they are going to come out and you almost hold your breath towards the last steps.

I made a transfer with packing tape, a transfer with gel medium on watercolor paper, a gel medium on brown envelopes and a water transfer on watercolor paper.

Let's go step by step for each transfer and you will see posted pictures of the work along with final pieces and also how I used two of them in projects of mine.