More encaustic cards

Oops, someone told me that onery isn't spelled with an h.  How fun, it does look better.

Forgot to say, I do the art and mount it on a 5 x 7 watercolor card.  They pop right into  a ready made frame.  Inexpensive ones from the craft store work well.

Here are a few more.  You can also just do abstracts on plain paper.  I will do a tutorial on that later on.  So easy and fun.  The wax just melts right into your paper.  I love it.  I don't have to use a grill or pots of encaustic medium and it cuts way down on the heat level and easy to get out and then clean up.

And last night I found that I can also do monotypes.  And stencils.  Getting more ideas as I experiment.

You do need an encaustic iron and Suze Weinberg has a great tool that is a take off on a wood burner with different tips.  I plan to do blog posts on all this, but we are taking some time for a short trip. When i get back.....

Handmade Encaustic Greeting Cards

The other day, I looked at a piece of encaustic art that was one of my very first.  I remember (it was 8 years ago) that I had a terrible time learning this wonderful art.  There was one book by Joanne Mattera and it was the only thing that I could find to learn from.  So, I experimented and kinda learned by doing. No, that was it.  I did learn by doing.

I am happy to say that now there are tons of good books, some great dvds (some not so great) and the popularity of encaustic is growing all the time.  I love it.  I taught encaustic art for a while on line, but I do tend to be honery (I think that is a Texas word, or at least southern).  I just do the best best job that I can do and don't take criticism well unless it is constructive and the person knows the art themselves.  So, I don't teach for anybody else anymore.  And, I am not too crazy about parameters.  Maybe most of it was just that online teaching from other people's site wasn't for me.  Anyway, I get really honery when I don't work with wax for periods of time.  And, so much of the time it is just too too hot in Texas.  So, I miss a lot of the year.

Okay, I am long winded here.  But, I did do a chapter in my friend Pam Carriker's book Art At The Speed of Light.  The book has been out for a time, but it is great.  Get it.

Missing being able to work in the heat, I was looking to branch out and find out some different techniques.  I have found two that I am crazy about.

One, I will talk about later.  But, for now, I have become addicted to doing encaustic art greeting cards.  I love them.  I have done a dozen for my own home.  It is completely addicting and I go to sleep thinking about it.  But, again, zero information.  There is a lot of information about doing landscapes using an encaustic iron and there were several books, which I got.  But that wasn't my style.  I want to do flowers.

So, I am studying flowers, looking at books of watercolor art flowers and acrylic flowers.  Plus, gardening books.  A lot of what I am doing is semi-abstract. But, I think it isn't too hard to tell what kind of flower I want to show.  I believe that there is one other artist who is doing this type of work, and that is it.  She is amazing, I love her work.  But, I am having so much fun taking this farther and yes, I am offering some for sale.  Even though, I have started to remove them cause I can't bear to part with them.
Here are a few.  Remember, they are done with an iron.  A small iron, yes, but am iron.  So, there is a lot of serendipity that takes place.  But, it is so fun.  Just use glossy cardstock of a good quality and you can use a woodburning tool also but you do need one of those rheostats or it starts smoking.

Using the home made spray inks

Feeling better....but it was 88 degrees yesterday (nope, not a typo) and tommorrow I think 29 degrees.  Sheesh.

But I thought those of you who emailed me might want to see what I did with my new inks.

I used a 4 x 6 stretched canvas (Dick Blick again, cheap when ordered in quantity),
a script stamp, Stazon pad in black, gesso,  molding paste, three or four colors of our newly made inks in spray form, a small piece of unstretched canvas plus a piece of unstretched to fit the front of the canvas itself,  toothbrush and some India ink in black for splatter. Also, I did sewing machine stitching using black thread around the circles.

I started with the gallery wrapped canvas.  I cut a piece of unstretched plain canvas, gessoed and cut to fit the 4 x 6 front.  I could have worked directly on the canvas instead of doing the collage and then gluing to the front.  But then I couldn't have added the stitching around the circles.

I sprayed the gessoed piece with the spray inks.  I got overzealous to finish and didn't write down the colors that I used.  But I used three blues/teal and a magenta.  My spray bottles are good ones and they will allow me to spray a fine mist or heavy color.  I got them from Discount School Supply online.  You can also get bingo daubers from them.  But, I did think the postage was really high.  On top of that, they charge a fuel surcharge. Huh?  Even when gas was low they charged it.  But, the bottles are great and I bite the bullet for those.

When dry, I stamped over the ink with a Stazon black pad and a script stamp. 

Then I smeared on some Golden light molding paste and dragged a fork through it to make texure marks. Let dry well. I then took a small cosmetic sponge and dragged some more ink over the dried paste.

I cut three circles out of some unstretched canvas, glued them to the front of the collage and machine stitched around them twice.  Lastly, I used an old toothbrush and splattered on some India ink in black.

Glue to the front of the canvas.  Trim around the edges if need be and you can paint the sides black. 

Hey, I love it!!

How to make spray inks....not paint....inks

While reclining in bed for a few days and having lots of fun watching youtube vids and reading blogs, I am amazed at the helpy selfy information that is completely redundant and I thought that I would share how to make those terribly expensive spray inks.  Spray paints are good, but I have become addicted to the tiny bottles of spray inks.  I only found one other gal using powders and she was on the right track but she was using bad spray bottles and reverted to applying the inks with foam brushes.  Not what I was looking for. Inwant sprays, I want great strong colors.

And yes, I am grumpy.  Fighting sinus mess.  That is what I call the sinus problems in Texas that come from one day hot, next day cold front blues.  So, I took a few days to just veg.

Not saying that it isn't fun to pile up in the bed with the dogs, a pile of dvds, my ipad to watch youtube and check out some blogs, but so much of what I saw was the same basic stuff.  Nothing wrong with buying the inexpensive little bottles of acrylics and adding some water and mod podge, but I wanted inks.  Actually I wanted gorgeous, strong color.......cheap.  Cheap cause I wanted lots and lots of colors.

The first thing I experimented with was liquid watercolors.  The kind that come in 8 oz bottles in crayon colors.  I knew the 12 colors would not be enough, but thought I would start there.  Just add more water to smaller bottles. Works fine.  Came in white and also metallics also.  Not waterproof, of course.  But neither are the expensive ones.  I think the 8 oz bottles were 4.00 or so.  But the shipping was outrageous.  I later found kid's watercolors in liquid form at Dick Blick so if I ever need more, I will buy there from now on.

Where to go from here.  Eureka.  I remembered that my daughter got really really excited about screenprinting using cold water Procion dyes and sodium algenate.  Hard as  I did try, that just never caught on with me.  Those dyes were around here somewhere.

The dyes are powdered in little jars.  Lots of product. And, like all powdered pigments, you need to use caution.  But once they are mixed in water, they are perfectly safe.  And beautiful.   And Dick Blick has them.  But, if you want ten thousand colors, Dharma Trading has even more.  Not cheap, but get together with your friends and share.  It takes 1/2 teaspoon to 1 oz of water.  The only other expense is plastic spray bottles.   I am now in spray ink heaven.  I am trying to decide if you added soda ash, a tiny bit, if they would be absolutely bleedproof.  But that is for another day.  I will seal my products with Krylon Preserve It matte till I figure that out.  Which is another product I am in love with.

Coming soon.....more tips and money savers.
G

Sew Somerset summer issue and my sachets

My fabric sachets are yipeeee.....in the current summer 2013 issue of Sew Somerset magazine.  I really enjoyed making these.  Guess that's because aside from my encaustic work, the next thing that really makes me happy is working with fabric.  I have been doing some merchandise bags for a couple of companies for the past two years.  So, there was a ton of waste.  I kept the discards for quite some time.  They kept adding up and up.  Those muslin bags have a lot of runs and all sort of unidentifiable stains on them when I get them from the distributor.  I had to find something to do with them.

So, the bags that I could not use for my customers became sachets.  I love them.  Here are a couple.  Make some.  They are fun and they smell yummy.

Hello again, where have I been

Truly, where have I been?????  Time does indeed fly when you are having fun.  Too fast.  With the advent of pinterest (which I love, love, love), I guess I spent all my extra time perusing over there and once again disappeared from my blog.

So, my daughter, the other half of TwoCoolTexans has flown the proverbial coop and moved to Kansas.  Kansas.  8 hours away by car.  8 hours with husband,  three dogs and me, a person who absolutely hates to travel.  I have been on a plane once in like 20 years.  And worse for the car.  But, one has to do what one has to do.  I mean, it is a big car, truck actually, a Hummer.  But the movie thing doesn't play the dvds so my poor husband has to listen to me drone on.  I can use the Ipad most of the time unless it doesn't get a signal for a time.  So, we manage, but it is not fun. 

Well, part of where I have been.  Since my daughter moved her nest and my grandchildren to Kansas.......you guessed it.  We bought a home in Kansas also.  Right down the street from her.  My grandaughter who is 7, insisted that it be no further than down the same street.  So, it is.  No, we didn't move from Texas.....we just added on so to speak.  Topeka Kansas is a huge culture shock.  Huge.  Really huge.  But, they do have a Michaels, Hobby Lobby and Joann.  So I guess I will live.  We will only be there during the summer months.  We had a taste of Kansas during Christmas.  Snow.  We are warm weather Texans.  Snow isn't really cool for us. Even my dogs looked at me and said "really, huh, you want us to go out there and umm poop and all".  But more about that to come in future posts.  Not the poop, our shock at a slightly slower pace of life that they have there.

For now, I am off.  To actually do some art.  Back soon.



                                                                                        

TwoCoolTexans loves Pinterest

I know, I have said it before.  When I first started using Pinterest.  I loved it then.
Now besides mason jars, it has become my favorite thing. 

I am redoing some pieces of furniture soon, cooking better, cleaning more efficiently, and just flat having a good time. 

Follow me and I will return the favor....

www.pinterest.com/twocooltexans/