My Printer Sucks!!

Oh, no, not MY printer. That's YOU saying that. I LOVE my printer and I've had it since Christmas of 2006 and it has outlasted many computers. My parents got it for me, along with my first copy of Photoshop Elements, just before Mini Me was born. That way I could print the pictures I took of him. It's an HP 4300 series (I think) and takes six different ink cartridges and whatever. If you really wanna know, I'll find out the details. But that's not the point. Here's the point:

You see the quality difference between these two pictures? You see it? The one on the left (top and bottom) is shitty. Extra shitty, really. The one on the right? Not so shitty. Now, it's NOT a great picture because I had to get it off the Fan HQ website. It's my son giving Denard Spann (a player for the Twins) "five", while Denard holds out a dollar (to entice Liam into giving him five). Tim and Liam know Denard outside of baseball a little, but still - this cracks me up.

(Point, Goog, what's the point??) These two pictures (one picture, really) are printed from the EXACT same printer, using the EXACT same settings both times. The quality difference is THE PAPER. That's right, people. I bet your printer doesn't suck at all. I bet you've been paying $5 for a ream of shitty ass paper and then blaming your printer for giving you shitty ass results.

If you were going to pay Wal-Mart (or CVS or who the fuck ever) to print you an 8x10 of a picture, you'd GLADLY give them five or ten bucks for it. So why do you whine about buying printer ink? Do you know how many 8x10s you can get with $50 of printer ink? WAY MORE than if you pay someone else to print them. The paper that I use is called Royal Brights and I buy it at Sam's Club for about $10. My printer takes six ink cartridges and they're about $10 each, except the black, which is $20. Yellow ALWAYS runs out the fastest. I don't know why. It just does. The left paper is "regular" printer paper. What happened here was: I had the good paper on top of the crappy paper and they got caught together and the pic accidentally printed on the crappy paper. Blah. But I thought it would be a good way for people to see how to get what you really want out of something you already have.

Twinkling Goog2O's

OK, so...I have some of these...

Added water and a few drops of gum arabic like the YouTube lady said to...

And this is what they look like today.

EPIC FAIL.

However, there WILL be a take two. Stay tuned.

Something new in the works...

What shall it be? You'll see when it's all finished and ready! In the mean time, here are some of its insides!

Hm...

NON-Alcohol Sprays

OK, so since there's been some concern from our peeps about inhaling the alcohol from the sprays that I love. I don't feel like it's a viable concern, AND I don't usually like using water soluble stuff in my work because it's water soluble. (I know, I know - DUH, Goog!) But since I know some of you DO think it's a viable concern, for you I have made these new sprays. Honestly, I didn't think I would like them. I didn't expect them to be vibrant enough, I didn't think the colors would make me happy at all. See how dedicated I am to you? Anyway, I got two types of Caryola markers because they're non-toxic. (In case you're wondering, ALL Crayola products are non-toxic and yes I do know that for a fact and yes I did have a reason to request that information from Crayola.) Non-toxic pretty much screams "water-based", so I figured all of these markers would work with water, rather than alcohol, to draw out the color from the tube inside the markers.

I bought these ones because I thought since they're fabric markers they might be permanent.

 Still non-toxic, see?

And sprays :) 

I also did the normal Crayolas:

Also non-toxic:

And all made into sprays:

Bottom line: they are RIDICULOUSLY vibrant, especially the original crayolas, and they are ALL permanent when sprayed on Stonhenge printmaking paper. The reason I'm qualifying the paper to you is because I know things can react differently on different papers. My wonderful friend Kelly insisted to me that Glimmer Mist is water soluble, but the three regular ones and one chalkboard on that I have are NOT - could be the paper that I use.

There is ONE con. Water takes longer to dry than alcohol, so the spray has more time to absorb into the paper. If you're just looking for color, or you don't mind the non-crisp result, and you're afraid of alcohol, these are the perfect solution for you. If you need a crisp spray from your stencil, you're going to want to stick with alcohol because it dries a lot faster.

Here's an example with the water sprays:

It's a very cool teal sprayed over yellow. The paper was pretty wet at the time, and it's actually the reverse of a stencil - so, I actually sprayed through to get the alphabet and then flipped it over to get the leftover. This is the leftover and it's not horrible, but it's certainly not a very crisp result, either. So, it's really going to depend on what you're looking for. I think the alcohol isn't that big of a deal, I doubt anyone is going to sit and work at their table until they're sick from alcohol sprays, but why take a chance if you don't have to? 

FIrst Fairy Palette!

Will posting this here help me actually start painting? Am I accountable to you? Maybe! Here's the palette:

And the paints I made for it!

More to come!

YSM - Joint Compound

That's right, peoples - You Suck Monday is back and will be better than ever! We're excited, we're crazy, we're caffeine-addicted. What could be better?

So, we were trying to find some YouTube videos we'd seen of someone using joint compound in a syringe to make texture. We failed. But, I did find one by The One Minute Muse and she just slapped it on a journal cover and dug into it with stuff and made shapes and it looked like fun, and we were pretty sure we'd be able to find the other video, so I got some joint compound. Well, I went to the hardware store and to the spackle aisle (it annoys the shit out of me that "spackle" comes up in spellcheck - it's a freaking word!!) and I hunted for joint compound but I didn't find any. 

So I picked up two little jars of spackle, a "lightweight" one:

And an all-purpose one:

Then when I finally asked about joint compound, the idiot man tried to take me back to the spackle aisle. When I pushed and said I already had spackle, but I was looking for joint compound he told me it might be with the sheetrock.I wanted to ask if he knew that most people said "drywall" these days, but I didn't. Joiny compound is MUCH cheaper than spackle. Three times as much for the exact same price. But I couldn't get a tiny little bucket if it, like the spackle, so I had to get a big thing of it. Hopefully I'll fall in love with it and want to use it a lot, or else open up a little nail hole filling business. Anyone need a nail hole filled? Twenty-five cents. Oh, and you'll have to come pick me up because I have no car to get to your place. 

Anyway, here it is:

When I got home I wanted to try them all at once, so I put down a stencil and slapped all three of them on to it. This way when I painted over it, it would be easy to compare them since they were all right there. I used a plastic putty knife that was 98 cents at the hardware store. The light one was ridiculously light. It's the texture of marshmallow fluff without being sticky. The other spackle was more wet than I expected, but still really thick, and the joint compound was thickest. They all held their shape just fine as they dried.

Here I added alcohol spray to one side (like glimmer mist) and paint to the other. The light, marshmallowy one feels like foam, even now. The other two are completely solid. The paint worked exactly the same on all three. The ink, you can see at the top, soak in differently to the light one. Then I rubbed at the dried paint and ink to see what would happen. The light one held it, because it soaked in. The other two, the paint rubbed off. 

I had an idea about adding some texture to a painting, and since this one was gray and I was looking to create a dark blue, I used it.

And a blue paint I created myself with glazing liquid:

I put down a plastic doily that Kelly gave me and slapped the blue stuff over it and here it is drying:

I'm hoping to use it more as I go through the Fairies class. I'd like to see what happens when I mix the white ones with mica powders or iridescent medium for fairy wings. I'll try to keep you up to date on how it works!

Oh, Glimmer Mist, how I love thee...

I was skarting with Kelly (remember that's skype + art) and she was using gorgeous glimmer mists on what she was working on and I was using the alcohol sprays I made. I love my sprays, I really, really do. The colors are fabulous, I just made a bunch of new ones with some different color markers, they're awesome.

But. (You knew it was coming, didn't you?) But glimmer mists are so shimmery. I love shimmery stuff. Iridescence has always been something I love. So Kelly suggests that I just try putting some mica powder in with the alcohol. I remind her that it doesn't have a binder and she tells me that if you rub your hand over glimmer mist that the shimmery stuff comes off! So I figured, what the hell?

I used the back end of a spoon to scoop it out and put it into the bottles:

These bottles are from Target, they cost $1.19 in the travel section which is .20 more than the Wal-Mart bottles - I threw all of the Wal-Mart ones away and replaced them with these ones from Target and I am CHEAP, so that tells you the Wal-Mart ones are super crappy!

Then I couldn't stop myself, you know how I get - I added the shimmer to ALL of them...

They are FANTASTIC. I bet if you sprayed one of mine beside a Glimmer Mist, you'd never be able to tell the difference. I absolutely LOVE them. And yes, some of the shimmer comes off if I scrub at it, but it doesn't just fall off (it's not glitter) and watercolor paint comes off if you scrub at it, too, so what's the harm?

Iridescent Medium!

I've been mixing my own paints because the fluid acrylics are so crazy expensive, but I ran out of glazing liquid  yesterday and I really wanted to make a black. So I mixed it with iridescent medium instead! I freaking LOVE it. I love iridescence. The shimmery stuff just makes me happy!

Here's how it looks in my journal:

I can't wait to try it for hair!

Liquid Watercolor

Spray bottles:

Watercolor:

Liquid watercolor!

One of the bottles didn't work right, so that's why I got 6 bottles and there are only five sprays. They're for Liam to play with but he doesn't know it yet!!

Pangea!

My science teacher tries SO hard to make boring stuff fun for us and I love it!! (Yes I'm a 31-year-old who goes to school at ITT Tech and we spent this lab time cutting and pasting!)

More paints!!

I made a BUNCH more paints today!! This is really the most sun ever. AND - I don't know if I already told you this part - I'm completely in love with the finish. It's satin and the mixture is half paint, half satin glazing liquid. I LOVE the way it dries. I can write over it and then it completely erases (unlike gesso or most paints). They really make me happy!

Fluid Acrylics by Goog!

I know we all love our Golden fluid acrylics, but you know what? I'm cheap and I'm poor. I have four bottles of Goldens and a countless number of cheap craft paints because that's what I can afford. Until today. 

Today I went to Blick's and got the cheapest acrylics I could find. They were $3.41 each and are 4 ounces. I got quin magenta, a "titan buff" looking color, and three colors I thought would make good face colors.

And I got this:

And I made these:

I just tested the quin magenta in my CTJ and it works exactly like my Golden one except one thing - it's not as shiny BECAUSE my Glazing liquid is satin finish. You can get a glossy one and it will look exactly like a fluid acrylic. I'm fucking STOKED! I LOVE these!