I now have four, yes four, cats. My newest is Missy. She actually adopted us. We opened the door and she came running in. Needless to say we had kitty chaos for a little while. Tike and JB were protecting their home and Max, well, lets just say he runs from water bugs. She sized him up quickly. Hopefully, I will have pictures of my newest addition soon.
My old man, Max, now likes to sit on my chest at odd times, while I paint, blog and eat usually. I actually had to fight to eat my pizza and hamburger forget it. You would think I don't feed him. Also, open any fish can and you will be lucky to survive. He wants to believe that he is King, but really he is just a drama queen. His favorite past time is chasing JB, because JB runs from him, which in turns gets Tike to chase Max and fight ensues. Most of the time, we live in peace, but if Max is on a tantrum...everyone watch out. He loves to kiss up to the others and then turn and smack them on the head. Sneaky one he is.
Tike is my enforcer and protects his brother JB. JB never did see well from the time he was born, so this is a good thing. JB can jump though. He judges the area twice and then clears it. The highest I have seen is 5 feet 6 inches. I took them as a package deal, which I would do again in a heartbeat. They are my beautiful
boys. Tyke has now taken to protecting Missy, so all is well on the home front and everyone, in this minute, is living peacefully.
Hope you enjoy today's project. The happiness card is made from paper towel art. I used Stampin' Up stamps for the images. I have two different cards pictured. The stamped images are pretty much the same, but the paper towel background will never be the same. Even if you use the same colors, I have never gotten the same results. The paper towel paper works for stamped images and painted images. Scroll below to see a short overview of the process. I have also used this image on a journal in an earlier post, the brown leather-look journal posted last month.
I am currently in the middle of a bid war for a retired SU set Gentler Times, so I am off to wield my bid sword. Enjoy.....
Paper Towel Art
1. Place at least three colors of acrylic paint in plastic cups or bowls and add water to thin. The thinner consistency, the lighter the color will be when done.
2. Cover your work surface with newspaper and then freezer paper (plastic side up).
3. Fold a paper towel (I have found plain Viva works best) in half, then half again, then half again, then half again....keep folding until you have about a 2-inch square (you can fold the towel in any shape, experiment to your heart's content).
4. Dip one corner in one paint color, lightly squeeze excess back into cup. Dip next corner in another color, lightly squeeze excess back into cup. Dip the next corner into another color... keep going until the paper towel is covered with color. Allow the colors to bleed into each other. Only thing is, make sure the towel is completely covered.
5. Unfold the paper towel, working carefully not to tear the towel.
6. Lay the towel either on the freezer paper or on an old clean window screen to dry.
7. Once dried completely, some of the 2-ply towels will pull apart to make two sheets. If this does not work, just use it as one sheet.
8. Mix tacky glue and water (reminds me of thin ranch dressing).
9. At this point you need to decide if you want the towel to be one complete sheet or if you want to tear different sheets into smaller pieces to layer. If you are layering, you will need a sheet of white cardstock to layer the pieces on for stability. Put this cardstock on your freezer paper. If you want just one complete sheet, lay the paper towel on the plastic side of the freezer paper.
10. Paint the glue mix on the towel and cover the towel completely. I use a soft flat brush, the form brush will tear the towel. If you are using pieces, treat them as you would decoupage.
11. When covered, set aside to dry completely on the freezer paper.
12. Once dry, peel the sheet from the freezer paper. It is ready to be painted, stamped (with Staz-on) and written on. Some of my favorite pens are Sharpies, glitter markers and wite-out pens. The texture is ruff, so do not use your good pens. You can cut it to any size and glue it to anything.
13. For a leather look, stop after step 6. You will need to leave the towel whole 2-ply and all. I iron the sheet with a low temp iron using an over-cloth if needed. This flattens out the towel and it becomes softer, almost suede like. To use this for a journal or card, just cut to the desired size and glue it to your project. I use Yes! paste for this which has less water. Once glued, you can stamp and embellish. If you want to paint on it, you will need to spray seal it first with matte spray.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
I love copper tape! I found some more at my local hardware store that is larger (1.25") width than the normal 1/4" tape. So, I am looking at the tape and my pen on my desk....that tape will go around the pen almost perfectly. Now I have a copper pen...what works with copper, alcohol inks of course! Once I was said and done with the nice little pen that never did anything but work correctly for me, it was covered in Mini Micro Beads. I am sure someone, somewhere, somehow has thought about doing this to their pens too, but I had so much fun, so much in fact I never took a picture of the process. So, I guess I will just have to repeat the process to provide a step-by-step with pictures. Oh darn! I did, however, take a picture of all of the beaded pens that I completed. Pictures never do them justice though. The copper tape pen is the Multi Red Pen third from the right. Now, I get to make journals or notebooks to go with them. Woohoo!
