Author Archives: leslie

Brief Hiatus

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I took an unplanned and brief hiatus from blogging. I've been doing a lot of stuff just not here on the blog.

Jane and I started the JF365 Challenge over on AJ Ning, go check it out. We're working our way through the Journal Fodder 365 book in a group. It's a tough book on journaling but I'm forcing myself to work with the ideas and styles suggested in it. It's interesting to work in a sort of new to me way. I'm adding a lot more random to my pages than I usually do. Which is fun. I'm also writing a lot more. The monthly questions are great for introspective pondering. Good stuff.

As a result of working differently I've bought a few supplies I hadn't used before, so I'll be doing a few reviews soon. Yay!

I'm wokring on translating some of the experience of working the JF365 into posts here and in the next issue of Put it on Paper.

 

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Stenciled Wrapping Paper

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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. IMAG0242
IMAG0242Mask out unwanted areas.
IMAG0242Spray, spounce or roll.
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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.

Semi Review: 2 Budget Friendly Sketchbooks

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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.
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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.
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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.

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Plastic Laminate with the Provocrap Cricut

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I
picked up a few laminated signs from old sales at the DayJob. Of
course, I grabbed them out of the trash, well, sort of, they were on top
and clean. These are 1ml thick hot lamination material over card stock.
They are thick.

The
cricut did REALLY REALLY well with them, cut the plastic like it was
butter. I was surprised. The only issue I ran into is that I need the
deepcut housing. Even on 6 and the highest pressure setting I could not
cut all the way through the bottom layer of plastic even though I cut it
on a blade setting of 6, high pressure 4 times. It did score the bottom
layer enough that I was able to sort of pop it out.

So
it’s off to Amazon I go to buy a deep cut housing. Though I’m tempted
to see if I can just sand off the bottom of my current housing…

I’m
going to see if I can snag a bunch of these old signs, I know some of
them are much larger, 14×17! That might be cool to play around with… They also have some in lighter weight plastic… Probably the stuff they call 5mil (actually 1/2 ml thick) would be easily cut on the crapcut.

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I’ve got too many ideas and not enough time.

Tomorrow I'll show you what i'm doing with these super simple stencils.

Back to the Past and the usual corporate shenanigans

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Instagram
dropped this little nugget of garbage on us earlier this week. The ToS
were insane. So people left in droves, quite literally overnight
Instagram lost thousands of users. Then in the afternoon they released
this nugget of double speak and whatnot.

Let
me translate that for you, Instagram and Facebook Legalese to real
English, “Dude we thought you wouldn’t notice that we’re taking your
pics and we’re going to turn a profit. How could YOU not know we were
planning on making money on this? Nothing in life is free forever.
Basically we thought we’d send out an update give you some good new
filters plus the ToS and you wouldn’t notice. We didn’t plan for Flickr
to release their app this week.”

I’ve
been expecting something like this since the day they were purchased by
Facebook. These ToS are not so different from the ToS on facebook. The
big difference- not being able to opt out.

The
reality is that things like Instagram need to turn a profit to stay
viable. How do they stay viable- think facebook’s ad system. How many
ads do you see on the sidebar of your facebook feed featuring your
friends? I see plenty of them. I opted out of them.

As
of right now, I can’t opt out of Instagram’s ToS, unless I delete all
my pics and leave. Which is kinda crazy. I don’t plan on deleting
everything yet, I’ll wait until the new ToS come out to see if I still
want to leave them entirely. frankly I’m already using the new updated
flickr app and I’m content with that, it’s a service I’ve used for
years, trust and will continue to use.

You can find me on flickr.

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Cutting Bristol Board on the Crapcut

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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.

More Cutting Stuff

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Occasionally I'll get an idea, an idea that seems so good, I can't help but to follow it down whatever rabbit hole it takes me, and that is what I did X3 this weekend.

Rabbit Hole #1

Bookmarks. I saw these super cool book marks on someone's web page somewhere. Small, about 3 inches by 1.5 inches with a flap to grip the page- genius! I designed a quick piece in Make the Cut, slapped some of my painted bristol on the Crapcut and yeehaw, bookmarks! The came out neato.(I'll write about how well the crapcut did and didn't do in another post.)

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Rabbit Hole #2

Secret Santa Gift Exploding Box. A few years ago I found a template online for a box with an attached lid that sort of screwed down on top of the box. I cna't find the one I made years ago. So I searched and searched and searched. I found a template for "wedding boxes" in the Make the Cut archive. It was pretty in accurate. I made 5 copies with tweaks to the file before I made 1 that worked properly. Also it doesn't help that the provocrap crapcut can't make accurate cuts. I ended up making a 3.25×3.25×4 inch box with lid attached. Ilike exploding box better than wedding box. After I made the 4 mock ups I made 2 in colored paper.

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Flickr_2012_12_15_08_37_36_MODE_1_1_SYDNEY_2No,, I'm not going to tell you what's actually IN the box, not that my workplace secret santa reads my blog, but I'll tell you it's local and cute.

Rabbit Hole #3

X's and O's. Or my handmade Christmas Paper. If you've been following me for any period of time you know I make my own Christmas paper. Usually I scrounge up packing paper and what not, butthis year has been pretty thin on the packing paper front. So, I bought a cheap pad of newsprint for about $5. I then started to design a variety of stencils. X's, O's, some cool squares and what i'm calling black eye'd peas. I don't have pics of all of them since I spent 2 days designing them and not cutting them.I certainly didn't have time to use them making paper, go figure. This weekend Christiw and I will clean off the kitchen table, get out the paint and sharpies and attack some newsprint to make our own wrapping paper. (I have to say I've also convinced a bunch of my friends to do this with their kids, or so they claim.)

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Recycled Stickers

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As a compulsive hoarder and trash picker I have many of my coworkers trained to bring me goodies- things they know I'll use in a creative recycled way. I had a coworker who used to send my way out of date and unused marketing stickers. I have rolls and rolls of them. I often use them to secure packages in lue of tape. I mean, after all, tape is expensive. They work well for that purpose.

Those stickers are all paper, meant to be torn and not last a long time. She also gave me 60 small 2×2 inch vinyl stickers, which are meant to last and last. I've been randomly sticking them all over the place- planners etc, as is. Randomly I thought to myself, "Supposedly the provocrap crapcut can cut vinyl with ease, I wonder if I can control it well enough to cut one of my shapes out of these little stickers?"

Lo and behold, hell's yeah, I figured it out, and I have 30 of these little sheep.
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And then and untold amount of these. I'm telling you, making this work has made me unbelieveably happy.

So far I've only stuck these to my sketchbooks and my coworker's computer…

This led me to think, what could I do with those round paper stickers? Since I'm on a sheep kick lately, I cut some sheep out of them…
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Not my most inspired thoguth. BUT! Now I'm thinking what IF I painted those round stickers? I know the crapcut will cut through paint as long as it's dry and a thin coat… So maybe I can paint and spray some stickers and get totally custom sheep. (heh< comment if you get the irony of that statement.) This may or maynot be a plot for me to go to Michael's and use my coupon to buy some liquatex spaypaint…

(Also if you haven't snagged the new flickr app for your phone, DO IT NOW, better than instagram!)

A Cautionary Tale

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If you make a really awesome stencil.

IMAG0241
And you make a lot of really awesome stenciled cut outs.
IMAG0239And you clean the stencil off between copies in your book for just such things.
IMAG0240Make sure you don't forget it when you're done, 'cause your stencil will glue itself to the page and getting it out without damage is impossible. 🙁

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Wheatpaste

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Over
15 years ago I did a stint of wheatpasting at my university.
Wheatpasting is an interesting thing. Messy and yet unlike spray paint,
removable, albeit with some work. All it takes is some hot water, soap,
scrub brush and some elbow grease to get the images off what they’ve
been glued to. In my youth I primarily pasted up feminist slogans.
Posting up “real art” wasn’t on my agenda.

Lately
I’ve been wanting to do some wheatpasting. Unlike what I did when I was
20, I want to paste up my art. I’ve been sitting on the idea of this,
where would I post it? Am I too old to wheatpaste stuff? What would
happen if I got caught?

I’m
taking it as a sign that a friend of mine from Bangor, ME posted about
this guy on facebook. I really enjoy his message and that he makes these
cool little drawings and sticks them up for everyone to see. Of course
the alternative is that it is a total pain in the ass to get these
images off their walls and buildings. Some people see his images as
crass (one of his pigeons sits in front of a bottle of bud.) while
others find them cute and still others see the social commentary in
them. I was surprised to see that there were relatively benign and
intelligent philosophical discussions going on in the comments section
of the local Bangor paper, something I must say isn’t common.

Anyway, I find the idea fascinating, but don’t expect me to become a famous street artist anytime soon.