Dylusions–Promised Update

The pink paint – looked so sad when I was done with it.  This is how it ended up, if you saw the prior post, you’ve seen it already.  So it was kind of wet and mushy and cottage cheesey.  All kinds of funky is what I would actually call that!   I knew that the gel medium would revive it back to what I wanted but there needed to be some room in that jar so it wouldn’t have to grow into another jar like my white Dylusions paint.  Since  needed room, I let it sit out and dry out (yes, intentionally) for 4 days on my dining table.

So then this is how it looked after those four (4) days of my impatience:

So I started by adding just a shmear of gel medium to it and then I would thoroughly mix it – like about 5 minutes for each portion of gel medium.  How much is a shmear?  About this much on a plastic palette knife:

So how did my paint look after the first shmear of paint was added in?  I’m glad you asked.  It started coming along nicely:

You can still tell it’s rather choppy looking and doesn’t look like typical Dylusions paints. It looks rather icky.  The feel of it when stirred gets more and more like it should be as you stir it.  But I persisted and this is what I got after 2 shmears of gel medium mixed in:

Then I quit taking pictures after each shmear and decided I’d count and see how many it took to get my paints gorgeous again.  This was at about 5 or 6 shmears fully mixed into the paint and just about how I liked it:

I believe I put in another shmear after that just for good measure but I was pretty happy with it at that point and gave it the old swipe onto the non-stick craft sheet and it looked fine:

So then I thought that I should play with it and see how it worked.  I used baby wipe to smear it into an art journal and that went on smooth and lovely.  I also used it through a stencil onto some linen-textured precut rectangles and it’s as good as new:

That’s all there is to it!  I’m thinking about having a giveaway.  I have one extra set of Tim Holtz markers and an extra Stampendous clear stamp set that could use new homes.  But since I don’t have anyone following me blog, I’m not sure who I’d give them to!

Yupo Follow-up

So the other day (last week? maybe longer ago?) I posted about using Yupo with Distress Insk to colorize plain old tissue paper.  Showed how to use the ink on the Yupo to preserve the wrinkly inky look and that it would completely lift off the Yupo when dry.  The day that I went to post that I could not find the piece of Yupo that I had been using so had to start with another one to make the photos for my blog post.  I eventually found it under my acrylic blocks.  But by then I had started with the second paper.  The Yupo transfers most of the ink to the tissue paper and just leaves a light stain on the Yupo.  I promised to show that and so here are pix of the 2 pieces of Yupo after being used.  They have a soft muted color but that will probably be inked over or I'll use alcohol inks on them or something.  They are pretty for backgrounds but subtle is not my middle name!!

Same inks used on both papers as they were the only 4 Distress Inkpads that I had out.  When I get more play time I will try other colors as I was inspired to get my box of inkpads out and take it to the table so that it would be within arm's reach the next time I get a play time.  Off to San Diego tomorrow early so don't know when that will be!

Reconstituting Dylusions Paints

My Dylusions paints went on vacation with me this summer --  from the hot temperatures in Texas through the heat (and fires) into New Mexico then onto Arizona (111° at 9 p.m. at night!!) and down into Southern California.  We had temperatures there mostly around the high 70s but a few into the 90s as well.  I played with my paints during my 2-week stay a little bit, they took couple trips to the beach and then they made the return journey back to Texas in my car.  (Taking the northern route which was a bit cooler and the fires had been extinguished.)  I do the drive in one straight shot so they didn’t spend an extended period of time in the car.   I’ve been home about a month and took them out to play recently and they looked dried out.  I know that Dyan has said to give them a spritz or 2 of water before closing them up to keep them fresh.  But I wanted to get them out to play, I wasn’t preparing to store them.  So I thought if a spritz of water is okay, then a bit more water couldn’t hurt.  I mean that’s what we normally do with dried out paint, right?  Wrong.
This is what happens when you add too much water to your Dylusions paint.  It becomes like chunky cottage cheese.  I thought that maybe I just didn’t mix it up well enough and maybe a bit more water would thin it out.  This was the second jar that I tried adding water to – the first one grew so much that I had to put some of the paint into a second container!

This is the white paint that I added more and  more water, too.  It just wasn’t sinking in that I wasn’t treating my paint properly until I also did the same to the pink paint.  Then I finally had my “a ha” moment.  (This was an empty Truvia jar so it’s quite large, about twice the size of the Dylusions jar.)  I did this to the white and then put the ruinous water into the pink paint.

This just wasn’t right.  So I headed off to the craft store to look at what mediums were available to see what I could use to rescue my Dylusions paints.  This is what I found – Golden regular gel (semi-gloss).  It looked right, seemed to have the right feel and consistency.

So I got home and added some to my black Dylusions paints - just a shmear -- don't glop it in there.  All it needed was a bit to get it smoothed out and it looked like this:

I was pretty happy with that so I did the same thing with the white to see if I could “fix” it from the mess I’d made.  This was the result:

Hurray!  Rescued my Dylusions paints.  Will do follow-up post on what I did with the chunky pink and how the paint worked after the Gel was added.  Now I don’t know how the gel medium may change the properties of the paint but it did what I wanted – which was to get back the right feel of the paint.

Yupo, Tissue Paper, Yaaaassss...........TUTORIAL

Recently bought some Yupo paper to play with - intended to get out the alcohol inks but instead just played with what I had out - Ranger Distress Inks.   I don't know if anyone else has used this technique but it creates gorgeous, gorgeous papers - which can vary depending on the color you choose.  So let's get started.   Here's what you need:

Supplies

Supplies used:  White tissue paper, Yupo watercolor paper, Tim Holtz Distress Inks and water in spray bottle and that desktop/tabletop essential, the non-stick craft sheet.

Yupo paper - all ready!

Tear out a sheet of Yupo paper and put it on your non-stick craft sheet.

Smoosh that Distress Ink onto the Yupo paper in any form or pattern that pleases your eye.  Overlap, blend or leave white space.  Choose colors that you like - play!  After all, this is what art and crafting is about, experimentation!

DTP with ink

Now you're going to take your sprayer and wet the inks on the Yupo - I pulled the trigger 4 or 5 times until the ink starts to move:

Spray away!

 I tear the tissue paper so it's a little larger than the piece of Yupo that I'm using - or don't tear it at all and just lay it over the Yupo.  I like getting all kinds of wrinkles and creases in there because the color will concentrate on them and be darker there and more muted in the flatter pieces of the tissue paper.

Lay down the tissue - for once in your life, embrace the wrinkles!!!!

 Here is the Yupo standing up with the wetted tissue paper attached.  I figured that I would just leave it to dry overnight and then find something, maybe a solid image and stamp it in black over the top of the tissue paper, find a sentiment to add, glue it to a card and be done with it.  But, here's the tip, I was in for a surprise.  You can see the tissue paper is stuck tight to the Yupo.  You can lift it when it's wet but you'll lose that spray of color, the wrinkly veining and the tissue will just go flat again.  Don't touch it! Leave it alone!  (I know that's the hard part).  But that's NOT ALL.  My first piece I glued the edges of the paper to the Yupo as it was drying because I kept fussing with it impatientily, inadvertently moving the tissue paper and I wanted to keep those veined lines. But even with glue on the piece, once it was dry, voila!  It lifted right off the Yupo.  I was like "what??!!!"  The Yupo had a faint hint of color on it, so I had to try it again.  So I inked that puppy right back up, sprayed the ink, laid down another piece of tissue paper, let it dry (no glue this time) and it pulled clean off.  But oh, the textured colors that you get --- and it's soooo sooo easy.

2nd paper - one side

2nd paper - other side

1st paper - with glue over color

So that's it, that's all there is to the tutorial. I eventually must have stamped on the Yupo because I couldn't find the original piece for tutorial pics.   I apologize for my blog, I'm not good with formatting or figuring out how to line up the pictures nicely but I was so excited to write this and share what I was doing that I just didn't fuss with figuring it out, I left it be.

I have carved out a place to play on the dining room table that looks like this today:

Space? to craft

But I had to find somewhere to put WIP (work in progress) while we used the table for its normal activities, you know, like, dinner with the family.  So this became my solution.  I could keep my stuff out but close at hand. It also means I  have a place to put things when done or to dry where I wouldn't ruin them.  Yeah it's messy but when I'm done, I can close the boxes and nicely stack it and make it more presentable - but this is real life.  I enjoy creating in chaos.

Plop Place