#230

I decided to try copics directly onto the cake wrappers today. It worked wonderfully. The colours went on so well it almost looks airbrushed, and even kept the shimmery glossy texture of the paper.
You’d be able to do this if you were using them on cupcakes, since these wraps have inserts where you put the cake, so it isn’t touching the ink. You could use paint, or make blank ones, taking the pattern yourself, and write, stamp, paint or draw a theme of the party on there. I did this because the first thing I thought was to colour under the cutout, and leave the cupcake wrapper blank. Then I thought to do the opposite, and colour the cutout and punt it on a plain background. I started doing the background in copics, but it didn’t have the effect I wanted, so I’ll get out my watercolours to try another time.
I measured my craft room for a fresh change and plan where my new cupboards are to go. What I do is get some graph paper, and measure each piece of furniture as well as the room itself. I then convert every 10 centimetre into one square on the grid ( using a 5mm grid.) I then cut out the furniture, allowing me to place it on the room, not forgetting doors, windows and power points. This allows me to see if all pieces fit without moving the furniture itself. I took a photo of each idea as reference, and got my partner to check if it looks good and logical. I nearly forgot the power point, and put my table in the corner with no light, and far from the power point for the lamp.
Moving paper is much easier than moving tables, but then again the fan doesn’t blow the furniture away…

#229

I was waiting for a call today, that never came, but while I was waiting, I decided to cut apart one of the cupcake decorations, to see how many I’d get out of it. I thought I’d clip off a few wings trying to get complete butterflies, but with a small amount of effort, I was able to divide all the butterflies cleanly.
I remembered after yesterdays post that I had seen a lady in a video, a while ago, who kept a box on her desk of things that she’d bought but hadn’t used yet. This might be a good idea for me, as I tend to put things away and forget that I have them. Also being on your desk, makes you more likely to use them, in theory. I think I will need two boxes. One for new things to play with and one for current projects. I often get half way through a project and lose pieces, or have to stuff it in a box for inspection… I mean clean up. Perhaps I need a few bags so I can rotate projects and plan new ones, and put things together as I find them. I’ve seen a card maker do this with folders, but I’m not only working in 2D.
The troubles with being a multicrafter are plenty.

#228

So…  I went shopping and got way over my carrying limit. Hope I’m not too sore tomorrow. But I did get all the cubes that I wanted for my book cases. I originally thought I’d get pink, blue and green, but they didn’t have green. I ended up with pink, blue, purple, black and white, which are all nice. They do need to be aired out, as they smell badly.
I also bought a letter die set from kaisercraft, which is nice and versatile. I was tossing up between this and a grass edge punch, but I’ll have more uses for this. I was a bit shocked to find a magnetic sheet within the packaging, without notice of it. If I had rested it on my computer, speakers or phone (anything with memory storage or magnetic parts) that could have been devastating. I know this is a common way to store them, but I’ve never bought dies that come with the magnetic sheets. Some notice would have been nice.
I got more white card. I tried looking for a hundred pack, but they only had them in every other colour. I will continue this quest another day, for now I will battle on with this small pack of 25.
I decided to get a magazine, since I haven’t bought one since before Christmas, and the stamp set that came with it was so diverse and pretty. It had a whole page with sentiments, hearts, babies, bride and groom, keys, a typewriter and more. I’m slowly getting all my stamps into a folder (as told previously) and it might go quicker bow that I have a clean desk…for now.
I found a white paint pen for cheap, which I can use for labeling dark things, or to put highlights and sparklies on images. It says they write on ceramic, so I might have to play with that later on.
As I was hobbling out the shop with my twelve boxes (so heavy!), I came across some lacy paper cupcake sleeve things. I’m not the best at baking, but I didn’t think of these for cakes. I was drawn to the butterfly pattern, but there was two for five dollars, so I found another quickly, a lattice design. Apart from just sticking these to a card, I could cut out the butterflies, or use these as stencils. I try to think of at least two uses before I buy something, and this passed that test.
I’ll just put them in the pile with all the other things to do.

#227

Mwahahhaha! With the help of my new printer, I can now make my own gift boxes to decorate!
I AM UNSTOPPABLE!
Ok. Back to cleaning… 😦

#226

Lookie what I got! Actually there’s two of them, but I couldn’t put it up yet. My parents bought them for me. They must have gotten sick of me saying I’ll get them one day. I have to get some cube boxes to put in it, but we only have a couple of days until inspection and my craft room looks like an explosion happened in a craft and box factory.
In other news, we got a printer today, which includes a scanner and copier. This will be very useful for drawings, scanning them for digital use, or copying for colouring trials and printing to colour. I also have some 3d paper modelling projects that I want to make, but I can’t go into that yet. The printer is wireless and I found it can print lined or grid paper at any time, which is pretty awesome. I also would like to make an inspiration wall, which the printer will become handy for and I can keep all my drawings safe on a hard drive.
So many uses so little time.
Now that I think- I’m glad we bought extra ink cartridges!

#225

Today I had the thought to punch or die cut shapes out of white card, then colour them in with copics. I know this isn’t the thought of the century, and everyone must come to realise it on their own, in their lifetime, but now was my time. I thought about colouring he paper before punching, but this way you can put colours specific to the shape, like shading. Also this doesn’t leave the chance of the white core of the paper showing. You could always make it one colour and use it to match coloured images on a card or something. I think I’ve seen people do that, on YouTube, but they didn’t do much blending which was more what I was focussing on here. The colours that I put on the butterfly reminds me of a rainbow ice cream that I love. Now I need ice cream.
I spent a part of today looking up craft room inspiration, as I’m going to buy a nice couple of cube storage shelving units. I drew up a diagram of what to put in each square, and where to put the fabric drawers so I could figure out how many I’d need. Because of my bad health, I need to plan everything out exactly, because I won’t have the energy or strength to change my mind or play around with furniture in the midst of cleaning. I’m hoping there’ll be enough storage. I’ll likely use some large containers for boxes, construction, wool and maybe fabric. I’m excited to the room to be finished. But its going to take a lot of time and effort, but hopefully I can earn the right to use an awesome room, by making it an awesome room.
My craft room is meant to be my sanctuary, but at the moment, I can barely get in there.

#224

City appointment after payday equals art shop! I filled in some gaps in my copic collection, and bought nine new colours and a refill for one of my most used skin colours. I also picked up a pad of A4 bleedproof marker paper when I was there. The guy who served me gave me a free copic colour chart mouse pad, which is pretty nice. I asked him how he knew I liked copics, I must have a vibe about me.
The marker paper I got was the art shop brand, so I thought it’d be better than the cheap brand from the newsagent, but it reacts weirdly to the copics. The cheap version has a wax or plasticy coating on the back, which prevents bleeding through, but still allows blending. The art shop paper seems to have the resistant material mixed into the paper, preventing layering and blending is a bit harder. Plain marker lines and dotting texture works fine, but it seems to pick up the multiliner ink much easier, which was annoying.

#223

Welp. I was right about the seeping issue. Took a while and the only thing that kept me going was the thought of the fun of peeling the masking liquid off- which wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped. It had to be rubbed off and left a big pile of greenish eraser type residue on the desk. It is still quite a nice effect, and shows that my range of copics despitely needs more light colours (which I’m hoping to fix soon :P).
Still there’s plenty of application for this technique. When I saw it done, the artist used one colour, then coloured all the white with a lighter shade to create a fairly subtle pattern.
The colours didn’t in as much in places that I didn’t blend much, regardless of the thickness of the masking fluid.

#222

Playing with masking fluid, also known as liquid frisket. I used it on a page in my copic Bristol book, so I could blend colours. It was meant to be a zentangle doodle type thing but I got bored and just did a bunch of dots and things. I also wrote a quote on some watercolour paper to play with later. I love the look of the crisp white against watercolours, when the mask is removed, so I hope the copics look just as nice. I was unsure if the copics would creep under the frisket as it seeps into the paper to blend, but it didn’t in a video that I watched, so it should be ok. This was also an experiment to how thick the liquid needed to be, as I think a thinner layer would be harder to pull off the paper. One of the thicker dots came off as I was blending over it, so I had to pat the colour in those areas. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried masking fluid, so it all feels like new. The big reveal in any masking exercises is exciting, and you don’t have to cut out fiddly shapes.