Ever
have one of those days where you have a day where you are a complete
and utter space cadet? Mhmm I’ve been there all weekend.

We
had a fabulous day planned with a friend on Saturday and I had one
chore- go buy wood pellets for our main source of heat, and right now,
only source of heat for the house. And I completely and totally forgot
to go. Yeah. We got home from lunch and coffee in the city and I didn’t
even realize that I’d forgotten to go until C mentioned we only had one
bag left. That left me scrambling to find another place that sells them
on a Sunday. Around here the places that sell pellets tend to be small
family run places that aren’t open on Sunday. I called around and found a
place that was open on Sunday and sells them cheaper than the usual
place. The silver lining to this mush brained cloud is that the new
place is on the way to Artist and Craftsman. Which completely gives me
an excuse to go and buy more art supplies… Not that I need
encouragement…

I’m
still working on the JF365 Challenge over on AJ ning. If you haven’t
had a chance to check it out, we’re going into chapter 2 and the pages
from chapter 1 are really nifty. There’s lots of great work and the
group is really supportive. get the book and work through it with us!

If
you’ve been following me for any period of time you know my partner and
I make all of our own wrapping paper. Usually I gather packing paper
and newsprint from work and hoard it from about halloween on. There has
been a serious lack of decent newsprint, brown paper, or other packing
paper. It’s been coming in torn up and a mess, a recycler’s nightmare.
This year I had to resort to buying the largest pad of cheapo newsprint.

This is meant to be a money saving project. I think it still is.

Here is why I made those simple circle stencils. They are a stencil for over another stencil. What?!?

Lay
down an intricate stencil, like this X’s and O’s then lay down a circle
stencil over that.
Mask out unwanted areas.
Spray, spounce or roll.


Remove stencils, press off excess paint into a journal. Repeat as
needed. HIt it with a heat gun, and voila! Nifty stencils on stencils,
which make the most bad ass wrapping paper ever.

You can also do this with crayons- try rubbing over stencils. Or sharpies- use stencils as a guide. There are a million ways to make your own wrapping paper. I've been doing this for years and years. When I first started to do this it was because I forgot to buy paper adn remembered making paper with my Mom one winter. I lvoed it them and I love it now. At first I felt pretty cheesy doing it, but the reaction I get is usually pretty positive. People don't want to tear the paper. Also it's loads of fun.

I
picked up one of the Journal Junkie recommended journals, a Daler
Rowney hardbound and uh, it’s not going to be the one I use for the
JF365. I really want to use some of my fountain pens for the writing and
this paper feathers and bleeds like crazy. I might try a few more pens
before I deem it useful for only my scraped paint techniques… But
dayum really bad.

Update:
Just tested everything I have inked right now and wow, bleeding is so
bad. Not a single fountain pen performed well, nor a single ink. All
feathered and bleed through.

As a result I cannot recommend the Daler and Rowney Simply… series of sketchbooks for anything other than dry media.

Because
of the feathering issue in the D&R sketchbook I made another trip
to artist and craftsman to see if I could find a budget friendly 8.5×11
inch sketchbook. That’s my compromise size for the JF365 challenge. they
recommend a 11×14 but I can’t lug one of those in my bag but I can get a
8.5×11 inch book in there. Normally I carry a 6×9 inch but decided to
stretch myself a little further, after all it is a challenge!

What
I found was the $10 Canson Art Book One series of sketchbooks. They
come in a variety of sizes and are filled with 100gsm or 67lb paper. The
paper is smoother than the D&R but not so sooth as to be slick. I
tested it out with all of my currently inked fountain pens, some spray
ink and a few pitt pens. The results are that I now have a new go to
inexpensive sketchbook. The paper performed really well, no feathering,
no bleed through and the colors look crisp and clean on the paper.

It’s
not as good as a Stillman and Birn Alpha bound journal but it’s also
much lower priced. The binding is good, the cover is stiff but falls short
of the kind of quality that stillman and birn’s journals exhibit. For
sub $10 it’s a great journal.

I wrote about my bookmarks in my last post. The cricut did admirably with the thick bristol board I was using, hardly board weight really, but more heavy weight paper. Canson XL bristol to be exact. I get it in 11×14 inch pads for a decent price and really like how it works with my recent paint scraping and stencil work.

As long as the paint layer was thin enough the cricut did just fine, if the paint was slightly thicker not so much. Also the paint and paper dulled the blade quickly, though the blade was already pretty dull anyway. I had to mess around with the pressure (high) and # of cuts (2) and speed(fast.) It also did okay with medium pressure and 3 cuts on fast speed.

Of course right after doing bristol I tried to cut thin painted paper with the same blade, not my best idea. After cutting bristol and painted bristol i'm pretty sure I'll need to change blades everytime, but I haven't tried it with a brand new blade.