Wow, lookit me go!  It’s still January and here’s another post!  I hope it won’t be too much of a shock for you.

I’ve been pottering, and the silver lining to the no-show summer is (Ta-da!!) the tiny house has now been entirely decluttered.  I mean ENTIRELY!  There is nothing in this house now that is not useful or beautiful and probably both.  The laundry was the last space holding onto ‘someday’ things.  The last drawer has been sorted and tidied and there is nothing left to do now but keep it all ticking over nicely.  Can you see my halo, isn’t it bright and sparkly  ……..

I rocked up to my local stationers a couple of days ago and had them scan all twenty of the pieces in the art journal I worked on for the last three months of 2016.  Plus print out copies of all the yupo paper/alcohol ink pages I had made.  I’d decided to copy the ink spreads and then doodle so that I have lots of options to play.

Did those last two sentences sound like a foreign language to you? Read on my friend, read on.

Yupo paper isn’t paper, it’s a synthetic, a plastic pretending to be paper. It is therefore classed as a non-porous surface and things can be done to this stuff that can’t be done on paper, no matter how many gsm’s it is.

It’s also, at this end of the world, horribly expensive and something I intend to try only once in this life.   Hence the photocopying before doodling remark.  I treated myself to fifteen sheets and waved a fond farewell to $25.00.

One of the really fun things we can play with is alcohol inks, dripping drops of different colours onto the page and watching what happens. The ink spreads out and ‘blooms’, changing colour somewhat at the edges, more with some colours than others.  Mixing different colours together results in different spreadings, different blooms, and sometimes even no blooms.  It’s like taking part in some mysterious class  in alchemy and is totally fascinating to observe.

When the dripping and watching and wondering is done and the inks are dry (which doesn’t take long at all provided you don’t over drop in the first place) you doodle.  Doodling is also fun!  It can be done in front of the TV if you are so inclined, or can just be a quiet, meditative activity that steals hours from your life  🙂

Here’s some examples of the ink drops

Here’s one I have started to doodle on

And here is the only spread that is finished so far.

And here is that last spread cut into four pieces and note cards made using different coloured card and with writing paper inserts.  The following two photos taken at the desk, under lamp light, in the middle of a dreary, wet day:

Notecards 1

Notecards 2

I’m not complaining though, we had three lovely sunny, warm days on the trot.  It was quite exciting!

I have to say I really like these notecards, and in the interests of encouraging the renewed interest in letter writing, I’m going to package some up and put them in my shop.  And do a giveaway.  Stay tuned for that.

‘Believe’ is finished.

This is a texture rich piece and there’s also a ton of gold metallic paint in there so it looks entirely different in different lights.  This is a slightly skewed scan, which is entirely unexciting as far as mood lighting goes.  You must therefore use your imagination to see all the gold glimmery bits.  Sorry about that.

I’m quite pleased with this one.

I hope you like it too.

So what do you think, are you tempted to play with yupo paper and alcohol inks?  Have you done so already?  How did it go for you?  And what do you think of those notecards?

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did!