Art from Tuesday and Friday and a great giveaway

I want to begin with a giveaway that is going on at Terri's at Pringle Hill Studio. Those of you familiar with my blog know I only announce giveaways with no strings and no hoops. Several times this week I've seen giveaways that begin "all you have to do," then follow with a string of REQUIREMENTS. Well, Terri's got a lovely gift for anyone to enjoy and "all you have to do" is LEAVE a comment on the giveaway post or ANY DaY this coming week. Now what could be simpler, easier, or less stress free? So hop on over and it would be awesome if you tell her I sent you.

I started Tuesday (yep, these photos got replaced by the fire I showed on Thursday) by deciding I wasn't going to let the heat get me down. We set a record high on Monday, and even though I didn't know it at the time, again on Tuesday. Both days the temps were 108F with a heat index on Tuesday recorded at 121F. For those of you who use the Celsius scale, that is almost 50C.

OK, back to art. Note the two materials: acrylic glaze and Latex. I've never worked with Latex paint in art before, but the color was close to teal, so I felt I had to give it a shot.

Of course I did as much as possible inside. I painted the card stock and stuck it on plastic trash bags which I used instead of cling wrap. I have the tutorial for this background in case you want to make some.

When I was inside, I grabbed the PVC pipe I had wrapped a few days ago and proceeded to use a bunch of distress inks to color the strip of cotton. Instead, I dropped and spilled an entire just-newly-opened bottle of brick distress ink. You can see I tried to wipe it up using another piece of cotton. Let me warn you before you go grabbing your distress ink. IT DOESN'T WORK. The distress ink never completely dried, created a sticky residue, and bled onto everything, and I mean everything. I finally got discouraged and washed it out of the fabric I mopped the spilled bottle with. It was a disaster on top of a disaster.

Bleubeard crawled under the table and proceeded to nap. He could have cared less about the disaster.

Before I washed it out, I tried all kinds of things to use the fabric and spilled distress ink. It was beautiful until it dried. But dry and sticky are not the same. So don't bother using your distress ink. Can't reiterate that enough. You'll hate me and use all your pricey ink to no avail.

By this time, I had all that mess the distress ink cleaned up in my craft room and had made a mess on the fabric I used to clean it up, I was hot and discouraged. I thought the day was shot, so left the projects outside and took off with Sally who had a few errands to run before leaving for her vacation. We went over hill and dale (what in the world is a dale?) to our first stop, a place to vote. Tuesday was our primary elections.

Sally looks really hot as we crossed the parking lot. You can see I was standing in the "shade," a misnomer in my opinion.

At least the plants around this church were still thriving and

lots of people were voting, always a good sign.

Then it was off on the highway (no dale in site in this photo)

to parts unknown.

Places I had never seen in my "little" town.

I also had a chance to get a shot of this place I learned was the Masonic Hall. It only took a short time in the cool car and the errands were done.

Back home,the only thing that had moved was the sun. Although I tried to get Bleubeard to come inside, he refused, and when I tried to get him to come in, he promptly let me know he was not going to budge.

So I sat for a long time in the afternoon heat in my very cool office, which has a small window air conditioner, in addition to my central air. Needless to say, I stayed very cool while I made these shaving cream papers. I have a tutorial for making them, too. Be forewarned. They are addictive and I got a bit carried away.

I knew the time would come when I needed to check on my art outside. I thought the paint had surely dried by now. However, as you can see, the Latex, combined with the burnt umber glaze, was not dry, even after hours in the sun. What happened was the writing from the plastic bag came off with the paint,

leaving a rather cool effect. It was great as long as the writing was black,

but red writing wasn't nearly as much fun.

And finally, I unwrapped the dry, but sticky distress ink-laden fabric. Wouldn't this be gorgeous if it was actually fabric I could use? Not sure how to seal fabric, so I now have it where it can't touch anything else.

Lessons learned on Tuesday:
1. DO NOT USE distress ink when dyeing fabric. It leaves a sticky residue and will only waste your ink.
2. Repeat mentioning Number 1 above often in case someone didn't get the message.
3. Latex house paint is not intended to replace acrylic paint on paper. It will probably work fine on wood, but it isn't good for making backgrounds.
4. Latex house paint doesn't mix all that well with acrylic glaze. I know you can mix any and every type of acrylic, but I suspect Latex and acrylic aren't that friendly, even though both are water based.

Remember way back in the mid to late 80s when we printed our labels out using a daisy wheel printer? I sure do. It's hard to believe that technology is over 20 years old. I found a large batch of these the other day and decided to color them using my Twinkling H2Os. I love the H2Os more than any other mica based product. They leave the most lovely shimmer and look like watercolors on steroid glimmer. I went overboard, tore the stack in manageable strips, and went to town. I also colored some backgrounds while I was at it. I spent most of my day, except for the hour or so I spent sewing pages, making these. Talk about addictive. I now have a ton of stickers I can use in my journals.

And this guy won't leave my side. Although I couldn't get him to come in on Tuesday, now that the temperatures have cooled below 100F (but only until Sunday), he simply won't leave my side. Where I go, so does he, which means he's also been soaking up cool air in my office under the window AC, or hanging out in the craft room sometimes sitting on the vent. Now if I could just get him to vacuum the anti-static mats, I would really love him.

And even though I haven't participated nearly enough, I thought this week's wrap-up post would be good to link to Creative Every Day where Leah keeps the links and has some pretty spectacular creativity going, too. The theme this week is FIRE, so I'm sure those record breaking temperatures and lack of moisture could have started one if I'd tried. Of course, my backgrounds and my creativity has been on fire this week, too. Maybe I should have shown the Firefighter post from Thursday instead.

Today's blog is off the beaten path. Not an art blog, but fun none-the-less, The Jalopy Journal has some pretty impressive photos of old cars and some fun stories to go with them. Enjoy.