Peek Week {Crayons, Watercolour}

Leandra here again for another Peek Week Post

Crayons and watercolours seem to be pretty hot products at the moment, as they offer so much flexibility for the mixed-media artist. This year we have added a lot of new things to our website in this category, so I thought i'd run through the basics. I have tried to stock cheap, mid-range and high quality brands and options. Tonight we take a look at this category up close to explore colouring options surfaces to work on, brushes etc.

Water Soluble crayons - product options

So crayons are a bit odd. How IS a wax water reactive? Well, that is one for the chemists, but for all, but there must be pigment, and a binder. Some are creamier than others, and some are more easily dissolved in water.

1. Portfolio Oil pastels (Crayola) £9.95 pkt of 24,  0.50p each

Student grade product, pigmentation and blendabililty varies from colour to colour, yellow, orange, reds, pinks seem to perform wonderfully, blues/purples are less pigmented and harder to blend out, some colours are a bit naff, a very good starter set.

2. Neocolour (Caran D'Ache), £12.00 Tin of 10, £1.20ea
Very similar to the above, more expensive, pigmentation more consistent, nice range of colours, cute tin, overall slightly creamier.

3. Slick Stix (Crayola) £12.95 pkt of 12, £1.08ea
Super-Creamy, really pigmented, easy to blend. 2 metallics included. Nice colour range, easy to make any colour of the rainbow.

3. Distress Crayons (Ranger Industries), £10.95 pkt of 6, £1.82ea
Matches the distress palette of colours, creamy, well pigmented, a bit crumbly when applied, smallest pen/ stick size, probably 1/2 or 1/3 of the slick stick in actual product to use.

4. Gelatos (Faber Castell), £20.50 pkt of 15, £1.35 ea
Pigment varies colour to colour, lipstick style container, very little permanence once dry. Spray fixative required, or combine/ activate with Gum Arabic or glaze to help permanence.
{NB we are not selling these at present, as the price from kit to kit style varies and single colours not easy to source of newer shades, larger kits very expensive}

More Crayon Information:
(A) Pinterest: For more examples of crayons and ideas, go here to my Pinterest Page. 

(B) Videos: Videos listed below.

(C) PaperArtsy Blog: use the search bar at the top of the blog, type in Distress crayons, Slick Stix, Portfolio Oil pastels etc and posts using those products will pop up. Idea posts below.

MY TECHNIQUE TIPS with crayons:

• Working on a sealed surface (snowflake chalk paint, PaperArtsy Matte glaze, Clear gesso, Distress crazing collage glaze) are all brilliant ways to give tooth to the surface, and allow your crayons to 'grab' on the surface more easily.
• Working onto stencilled texture (remember Grunge Paste has awesome tooth) also gives an interesting surface for crayons to grab onto.
• Blending can be with your finger, a baby wipe, but also with a brush or Cut n dry foam wet with mediums like matte glaze, Snowflake paint
• Heat setting does not necessarily make a crayon permanent, but with Distress, Portfolios and Slick Stix, it seems to help a lot. Not with Gelatos though.
• Applying direct through a stencil is easy, soften with a baby wipe or your finger.
• Grating your crayon into texture pastes can be fun! You then can alter the colour of GP to anything you like
• You can even dissolve the crayon in water and make sprays.
• Try working on watercolour papers (unsealed) to achieve more traditional watercolour effects.

Videos:

Kim Dellow Comparison

Sandy Allnock Comparison

Sandy Allnock Distress Crayons used as traditional watercolour

Neocolour Crayons

Blog Posts:
Chris Cresswell, making sprays from crayons

Lin Brown, Blending crayons with Snowflake paint...

Hazel Agnew, Using crayons to watercolour doodles on vintage papers...

Anneke using gelatos in all kinds of ways to create a notebook...

And if you go back to the Wax challenge bog post here, scroll down and I summarised a bunch of samples i made with various Portfolio techniques from about 5 years ago...

Surfaces to work on

1. Smoothy 
This is an incredible, super smooth Italian Card stock available in Regular (£2.90, Pkt 10) and Heavyweight (£3.40, Pkt 10). It is beautiful paper that accepts all media, from paints to inks. Images such as photographic stamps will show fine detail of the images beautifully. The card is an un-coated, matte, surface, so inks do not bleed into the 'grain' of the paper as it is so smooth, but not shiny. This paper is perfect for journalling, scrapbooking, and all your stamping or mixed media crafts.

2. Watercolour Papers
In the online shop we have numerous brands of Watercolour papers. My comments are based on information I have read or videos I have watched online.

Paper comes as Hot Pressed (smooth), Cold Pressed (more tooth/ texture) or Rough (even more textured Cold Pressed), which relates to the smoothness of the surface (may be important for those stampers out there) and affects how you want the colours to sit and grab on the paper, how fast you want them to dry, vividness of the colour, and layering. On the hot pressed you will get paints pooling and sitting on the surface more than on the cold pressed.

Watercolour papers can also come in different weights, and artists will wet and stretch the paper, tape it to their working surface. This prevents buckling when you work with it. If it buckles/ cockles, the paint will not lay down onto the paper properly.

As crafters, we generally don't bother with the stretching paper process, but maybe you should try and see if you notice a difference. make sure you stretch onto a sealed surface, and its important to wet both sides of the paper.

Obviously the quality of the watercolour paint products you work with also plays a big part on how they sit on the paper. High quality will wet out, blend, dry and layer colours better, low quality may separate the pigments and look more grainy. There are lots of videos about this online. If you are using cheap paints, then use cheap paper, Don't use cheap paints on expensive paper. Craft brands are less likely to represent value for money than artist brands, you can get reasonable quality artist grade papers for less than some of the craft brand papers.

Arches- One of the top end brands. You might find it easier to work on the more expensive stuff, due to the way it absorbs the liquid, and allows colour to blend nicely.

Canson XL - Good quality product at a reasonable price.

Prima - cream in colour, better than Ranger, but still a cheap option. Type not differnetiated on packaging.

Ranger - Fairly low quality, very white paper, but the paint seems to struggle to sink into the paper, not clear which type of paper it is, seems to take time to wet.

3. Vintage Papers
As some old book papers are quite absorbent and sucky, you can get surprising results on this type of paper.

4. Sealed Surfaces
By adding tooth to a surface by sealing with a matte glaze, chalk paint, gesso (white or clear) you will create a surface for the watercolour to pool on. 

This can be fun to get 'tide mark' effects, but I am sure watercolour artists would be horrified at us experimental crafters using them on sealed surfaces! 

Personally, I have never understood why you would buy good quality watercolor paper and then seal it with gesso. I think it makes more sense to use a cheaper heavy paper, eg cartridge paper. If you are working onto of gesso, then logically what does it matter what paper is underneath, and certainly I wouldn't be wasting my Arches by putting gesso anywhere near it, perfect with the Ranger or Prima stuff though.

Watercolour Paints

Watercolour paints either come in tubes or pans, both options can be in various sizes. You can make your own palettes using tubes into an empty palette. The advantage of this is you can use the colours you prefer rather than standard primaries. (see picture below where I used tubes to create colour wheels onto cold pressed paper)

Tubes are creamier, more pigmented and wet out more easily. Pans are good to be spritzed with water a few minutes ahead of working with them to soften before you start using them

We have a few travel size pans for sale, which are compact and good if you scrap on the go, or take stuff with you places.

Kuretake Gansai, 36pan £49.50 - High quality for a full pan, nice range of colours, wets out nicely.

Koi - 18 pan £25.50 or 24 pan £29.95, reliable, blends well, nice range of colours, travel box with useful palette.

Prima - Confections (3 colour options) £22.50 Considered to be quite opaque for a watercolour, but cute tins, and you can stack way more extra pans in the tin if you re-arrange how they sit onto a magnetised backing.

We also have a range of masking fluids and paint mixing palettes online too.

Watercolour Brushes: 

We have a range of watercolour brushes, the set of 3 pentel is useful, and its a great pen. 

As far as real sable or squirrel brushes go, you probably need to visit an art store to see the size, feel the brush, and decide what you need. Sizes from brand to brand are not consistent, and price varies too depending on the quality you wish to purchase. 

A basic set you would need a large mop, a small, medium and large point, a flat wash, and maybe a rigger.

I hope that helps as a starting or reference point if watercolour or crayons are new to you. Remember, pinterest and YouTube are a great source of information!

People to watch online if you are getting started as a crafter.

Sandy Allnock

Christine Werner

The mind of watercolour

Watercolour Misfit

See you Friday! We are off out tonight for Courtney's graduation meal, postponed from last night as it was too hot! And we were too tired after being oop North for the ceremony!

~Leandra

2015 #1 Playful Portfolios {by Helen Chilton}

2015 Theme 1: Fragile Papers

Hi everyone Helen here, joining you this evening with a post about Waxed Tissue paper and heated Portfolios. By shaving the Portfolios onto tissue paper and then screwing it up into a ball, it stops the shavings blowing away as you heat them and also reminded me of tie dying with material. You can work with one colour at a time or lots of different coloured shavings in one go. The Portfolios melt and you can scrunch the paper up several times to spread the colours.

Step One.

Fold a sheet of the tissue paper in four and scrape some of the Portfolio pastel onto it:

Step Two

Scrumple up the tissue paper and heat with heat gun. Squidge it around a bit:

Step Three.

Open up and add different colour shavings. Scrumple and heat:

Add further colours in the same way:

Step Four.

When you've finished, separate out the layers of tissue paper. You'll see the crayon has seeped through to each layer. I've used the lighter one for stamping my image onto and the darkest for making my background:

Step Five.

To make my project, I stamped text onto the tissue paper first in coordinating colours of Distress inks, then added shavings and heated.  Then I stamped the text in white Portfolio crayon over the top. To do this, heat the stamp, rub over the crayon, heat again and stamp:

Step Six.

Stamp the image from Hot Pick 1004 and die cut this and bottom layers using  Grunge Flowers 2 and 3. Layer onto white Portfolio stamped corrugated card and add embellishments.

Hot Pick 1004

I like the element of surprise you get with this technique - you could try working from dark to light with the Portfolios, or adding a whole layer of melted white on top to create a subtler colour palette.This technique works equally well with the Waxed Kraft Crunchy paper which is a little more robust. I got round the fragility of the tissue paper by using several layers at once. 

Thanks for looking! Helen

Thanks Helen, your command of the Portfolios never ceases to amaze us. Such vibrancy from a relatively simple medium.. and of course because they aren't wet, your fragile tissue isn't compromised.. only enhanced. 

We would love you to join in with challenge #1: Fragile Papers. If you are inspired by any of our guests who have blogged on this topic over this fortnight, then please join in and link up your creativity HERE. 

All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. This link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Jan 18th 2015, winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

Xmas 2014 #3UP {Tricky Things}

Hi everyone Leandra here again, almost at the end of this round of #3UP. Tonight we have 3 ladies who I have been referring to at my Tricky Dickies. They are all attempting to do those difficult things that many of us avoid. These lasses are up for it! 

And yes, they are made enough to admit doing these things are some of the favourite things to do! These ladies are therefore masters and gurus of Tricky Things.

First up it's Gabby Price, (@FreyaTom). She is using tissue paper with paint and water! Yes it is possible. Gabrielle is happy to show you have to use it with paint, without it disintegrating into a soggy chewed up blob of mulch. Here we go!

I am more than a little taken with stamping on tissue paper! I love the versatility and the effects! It has meant that I can create a using a mishmash of images that I turn into people which makes my heart sing! Now, what to make? I wanted to make something for the festive period and so I bought three plain porcelain baubles that came in their own box and knew they were just the thing! Lucy, Julie Ann and I plotted to use the same stamp set (LPC030) but I couldn’t help but dip into other sets by Lynne Perrella as they are just so fabulous!

Step One:
I started by painting my box Turquoise and then dry brushing Chalk over the top, both colours are from the JOFY Limited Edition Set 2. I then sanded the whole box back. I stamped lots of Lynne Perrella images onto tissue paper and painted the reverse of the images. This is one of the most satisfying things to do but you do need to make sure you turn the tissue paper over and paint the reverse! You can lose yourself painting, pausing to turn the tissue paper over to see how the image builds up! You do need to think about the order that you paint in – if I paint a face then I need to think about painting the eyes and lips first as I use Vintage Lace for the face colour and this has such a good coverage that it can cover up smaller details so you want those done first!

Step Two:
For the lid I wanted to still be able to see through it so when I come to find them again next year I know what’s in the box! I knew I needed to feature one of my created people and there is only one person we think about at this time of year! So I stamped out a head, a nightshirt and two ‘legs’ and painted them on the reverse (Hot Pick Christmas 02, LPC026 and LPC029). I then stuck them to a piece of card and then cut out the whole figure. I did this because I didn’t want the glue to show on the transparent lid. I usually use Multi Matte Medium as my glue of choice for tissue paper and I’m pretty slap dash when I use it! I must confess to being a little amused by my Santa! He looks like he’s off to bed after a busy Christmas and as he’ll be put away when the decorations come down (on New Year’s Day in my house!) then that’s terribly appropriate! 

Step Three:
I had had a sneaky peek at Julie Ann’s gorgeous project and as she had used the Lynne Perrella stamp all the way around her lovely box I decided to use snippets of the images along the outside.  I anchored some the images with a hand so that they weren’t ‘floating’ along the side (the hand is from LPC016). I tried to stick to a limited colour palette so it didn’t matter which images I used. I only used five colours in total (Cherry Red, Turquoise, Chalk, Yellow Submarine and Vintage Lace). As a final flourish I added a little brown Distress Ink around the sides of the box – this made it look a lot less ‘new’!

Step Four:

The baubles were painted in Cherry Red, Turquoise and Chalk and then I added two Santas per bauble, again painted on the reverse. As the Santa image needs to curve around the bauble I allowed the tissue to ‘wrinkle’ naturally around the face. I added coloured butchers twine and hung them on the tree! 

Huge thank you to Julie Ann and Lucy for their company tonight in this post, and to Leandra for letting me play along! Such a privilege to be encouraged to play with your very favourite things!

Gabrielle x

Next we have Lucy Edmondson (@CraftyLuce). Lucy has a bit of a thing for portfolio pastels, if you are not familiar with these, they are basically a wax crayon. Lucy is going to show us how to stamp on top of them, yes she must be magic! Ink and wax...lets see how she does it!

Hi everyone, Lucy here! I was experimenting with Portfolios recently, and wanted to exploit the wonderful vibrant colours to the full! I wasn’t very happy with my previous efforts so I looked back at Leandra’s blog post here, which was full of techniques and tips. It occurred to me that if the wax in the crayons would sink into sucky cardstock when you heated it, enabling you to stamp on it. So what about Stampbord,  which is also a porous surface? I gave it a go on some tiny pieces and I loved it! I had a problem, though. Gabby, and Julie Ann and I had decided to use this gorgeous Lynne Perrella set and the one inch and two inch square and domino size pieces of Stampbord just weren’t the right dimensions for the postage stamp size images on the large collage stamp. I then realized though, that the postcard size Stampbord is exactly right for the whole image! Result! That led me to making a quadruple slide mailer as it was also the perfect size.

Step One:
My aim was to go as bright as possible and then have white highlights, so I chose Yellow, Green, Red, Pink, and Light and Dark Orange Portfolios. I warmed the Stampbord piece with the heatgun first to help the application of the crayons. It’s a thick piece so this takes longer than with cardstock. I aimed for the lighter colours towards the centre with a framing of Red. Then apply your heat gun. It will go wet-look and swimmy for a few seconds and then matte. When it is matte it has been absorbed. If it stays shiny you have applied too thick a layer of crayon and the clay surface cannot absorb it all. You will need to mop some up with a tissue. It’s best to avoid having to do this as it looks patchy so try not to overlap layers of crayon.

Step Two:
It’s best with Stampbord to take the piece to the stamp rather than the other way round and press it down firmly. Ink the rubber it thoroughly with Jet Black Archival. For this particular stamp and size piece, lay it down as shown so you miss off the edging strip on one long side so you get all the little images on.

Step Three:
Use an emery board to sand around the edges. You can then use a Stampbord scratch tool or the tip of a craft knife to etch in some white highlights. To finish the project I painted the Slidemailer all over with Old Gold Fresco. I coloured some cardstock with Portfolios in the same way and same colours as for the Stampbord and stamped with a selection of Lynne Perrella images. I glued microscope slides to four images and adhered in the apertures, and added another image inside the cover, and on the back (not shown).

Finally, I glued the Stampbord piece to the front, trapping a piece of ribbon behind it to tie in a bow, and edged it with a string of pearls.

Thanks Everyone
Lucy

Finally tonight it's another familiar face, Julie Ann Lee (@woletz1). Julie Ann is one of our most adventurous #PAtwits. And one of the most humble. Those of us who watch her exploits are constantly getting our socks blown off by her creativity. She blends paint colours beautifully into one another, she makes utterly bonkers items, but always does it in such a thoughtful manner. Not content with simply stamping onto shrink, Julie is using paint onto shrink plastic..watch what happens next...

Hello Julie Ann here from Magpieheaven. For my favourite technique I’ve chosen to work with Shrink Plastic. I know that some people find this a frustrating material, but with Fresco Finish Paints it provides a fabulous surface for stamping, and it’s so satisfying to be able to create your own co-ordinating embellishments. This project started life as a box of Marks and Spencer’s Truffles, which I wanted to recycle PaperArtsy style! If you look on my blog, you will see full details of my process.

Step One:
I painted it with Gesso, then NougatFresco Finish. For the lid, I used Grunge Paste coloured with Chocolate Pudding Fresco, pushed through a Prima stencil and a big paper rose made with Paper Artsyflower dies and some Hot Picks stamping. 

Step Two:
Lucy, Gabrielle and I planned to each explore how adaptable the Lynne Perrella stamp from LPC030 could be, and I stamped it onto painted and brayered tissue before using it a slightly different way with my Shrink Plastic. 

Step Three:
I learned so much about Shrink Plastic from Lin Brown, France Charles and Carol Quance’s imaginative use of it on the PaperArtsy blog. I’ve found that Polyshrink works really well and, even if it curls to begin with, don’t panic! It always smoothes down flat eventually! You need to rough up your plastic with a sanding block first in cross-hatched patterns. Then apply a diluted coat of Fresco Finish. I used Guacamole. It won’t look well-finished, but when the plastic is heated with your heat tool the surface becomes beautifully matte. The next step is to die-cut your Shrink Plastic. I used a PaperArtsy leaf-shaped die which comes with the Grunge Flower #1 set, although I have sometimes drawn and then cut out shapes. I punch a hole in the plastic at this stage. Although holes were not needed for this project, I like to cut out plenty of shapes while I have my die-cutter out and use extras as charms, and that hole can be very useful later. 

Step Four:
It’s best to place the plastic paint side down on the inked stamp and press with little circular strokes. You can hold the plastic steady while it’s melting under the heat tool, by placing tweezers or a skewer in the punched hole to prevent your work flying away! I chose those images on the large plate that I thought would best adapt to being ‘singled out’ on the leaves. Once I had enough, I edged them with Treasure Gold and attached them to the lid with a blob of Glossy Accents.

I was really pleased with the effect of those contrasting tiny green leaves with the more neutral shades of the box! Thank you PaperArtsy for introducing me to this and so many great techniques and materials!

So are you going to master of these tricky dickie techniques too? IF you get a minute, show us what you can do too! See you back here again tomorrow!

Leandra

We would love you to go in our challenge draw for a prize from PaperArtsy, a voucher to spend in our online shop. Link up your creativity HERE. All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. This link will close 17:00 (London Time) December 31st 2014, the winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00, Dec 31st, 2014.

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Experimental Die Cutting {by Helen Chilton}

Good evening everyone, Darcy here. Tonight we are joined by one of our experimentalists, and i think when you scroll down you will be astounded by all the samples that Helen has for us. Feast your eyes on these fantastic embellishments, and then go off and try them. 

Hi Everyone, Helen here. I've got another experimental post this month, this time with one of the PaperArtsy flower dies, Scallop Flower. I thought I'd try it out in as many different materials as possible, layering them up, cutting into the petals, stamping on them etc.

Here's the finished project using Hot Pick 1305 and two of the flowers:

Here are the results in photo form with labels underneath! I've provided links to relevant products under each photo.

(PaperArtsy Die - Scallop Flower)

(Fresco paints)

(Crunchy - Waxed Kraft Paper, Portfolios, Waxed Tissue - White.)

(Burlap)

(Shrink Plastic.)

As you can see, the variety you can get with just this one die is amazing. The cutting that surprised me the most was the felt - it went through it like a knife through butter. With some of the other materials (the calico and burlap) it had to be helped along with a pair of scissors.

As to which is my favourite - difficult to choose - the mix it up version, the half shrunk Shrink, the calico, the acetate, the felt - not sure! What do you think?

Thanks for looking!

Helen 

A huge thankyou to Helen from PaperArtsy HQ. Wow Helen, this variety of flowers is just stunning, and all with one die. They are such beautiful embellishments that can be themed and coordinated to match any project. 

We would love you to join in with the challenge. If you are inspired to action by any of this month's guests who have blogged in December 2014 then join in and link up your creativity HERE. You might win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. You need to add your link by 17:00 (London time) Dec 31st 2014, the winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00, Dec 31st, 2014.