Second Thursday Tutorial: Paintstiks

Today we are playing with Paintstiks.

I have accumulated a few supplies beginning at the far back, then clockwise:

Hand dyed fabric (old bed sheet dyed with black beans)
Potato peeler
Rubber stamp, your choice (mine was deeply etched, purchased at River City Rubber)
Painter's tape
Paintstiks in container
Raised items to be used for rubbings (your choice)
Stencils (your choice)

With the lid off the container, you can see the Paintstiks.

These Paintstiks were purchased on the internet.  My artist friend Kathy purchased two sets and I paid her for my share.

In the U.S. these are known as Shiva brand, while in Europe and parts of the U.S. they are known as Markal brand.   They are real oil paint in solid stick form.  Kathy got more colors than I got, but it was only fair, since she was the one who ordered them because I don't order anything on the internet.

The first thing you have to decide is what Paintstik(s) you want to use.  Then I suggest you decide if you want to use stencils or not.  If you are talented like some of my artist friends, you might want to draw something freehand.  Me? I need all the help I can get.

One thing you need to know is the Paintstik dries after about an hour of non-use and forms a hard skin over the top.  This skin must be removed before you can use the product.  The last time I tried to cut the skin using a craft knife.  I'm so afraid of those things and lost nearly ALL the top round part (see rounded part as they come in package).  So this time I tried to use a paper towel as suggested by the site that sells them.  When that didn't work, I tried using the hand dyed fabric.  That didn't work, either.  Not wanting to get out my X-acto knife again, I decided to see if I could shave the skin.   YES!!

Next, I laid down some paint on my really ugly craft mat and used my stencil brush to pick up the paint.

I also shaved the gray, another Paintstik I botched with my X-acto the first time I used them.  You can tell when the skin has been removed, as you can see here.

Here I've used a stencil to create lines on this piece I am making for a friend.

I did the same using the gray with a different stencil.  I blended the first two colors together, but wasn't sure I liked how they turned out, so used my hand dyed fabric to remove any final bits of Paintstik from the stencil brush before going to the next color.  These paints are SO expensive, even a tiny amount should be used and not wasted.

Here are the results of the four book covers I stenciled.  I plan to turn these into gifts.  Be careful to keep the excess paint bits off the surface of the substrate, though.  Instead of blowing the excess paint away, I rubbed it as seen in the top left book cover.

Now it was time to see if I got good results from rubbings.  Apparently, this is what they are most used for.

For this, I needed to tape the card stock to the piece I would be rubbing.

What a disaster.  This was NOT working well at all.

Would the deeply etched rubber stamp

work any better?

You can't even tell what it is.  So that part of my experiment has failed.

Although I was quite pleased with the stenciling, the rubbing was not successful at all.  However, I remembered to place the potato peeler in the container with the Paintstiks so it would be handy and not get mixed up with my other peeler in the kitchen.  I wouldn't want anyone to ever accidentally use it to peel food ever again.

To make these permanent, you must wait at least 24 hours, then iron the Paintstik under your craft sheet or parchment paper.

What I learned and what I inferred.

1.  Use a potato peeler to remover the Paintstik skin if you are not skilled with an X-acto knife.  NEVER use the potato peeler to peel anything food related again.

2.  Removing the paint from stencils was as easy as wiping it away.  It was so easy, I thought I was dreaming.  I used my hand dyed fabric to wipe and remove the excess paint from both stencils.

3.  I believe the reason the rubbings weren't successful was because the surface of the paints weren't flat, but were concave (dipped inward) and didn't provide good coverage.

4.  After awhile, instead of placing the paint on my craft mat, I simply dipped my stencil brush into the paint and rotated the brush to achieve good coverage.  That made the paints concave and didn't allow adequate coverage for the rubbings.

5.  Don't forget you must wait a minimum of 24 hours, then iron the product under parchment paper or your craft sheet to permanently set the paint.  In fact, the longer you allow this paint to dry, the more vivid it will be.  After that, especially if you are painting on fabric, which should be ironed on both sides, it can be washed in your washing machine.  It is also fade resistant.

I sincerely hope you learned a bit about these Paintstiks today.  If you have them and use them, please let me know in your comments.

Once this has gone live, you'll be able to find this post on my Tutorials page.  Thanks for joining me today.  I really appreciate it.  If you would like me to continue these monthly tutorials in 2018, please let me know in comments.

A visit to my friend's studio

Late last week I drove to a town about 50 miles from where I live and visited my friend Kathy, who you have seen on my blog. She's the one who likes to shop at the craft stores! You can tell she's a crafter when you walk into her home and her studio. I'm always blown away by her creative storage solutions, as well as all the art she has on her walls.


She also has louvered doors around two walls of the room. The storage inside those areas is vast. Much of her fabric, lace, and ribbons are kept in those cabinets, along with supplies and many tools.


And then there is the storage you can see. Of course, you might just be overwhelmed by the dress form she got as an early birthday gift.


Or you might be taken in by the book cover she is making (hanging on the side of her paper storage unit).


I was blown away by the ribbon holder she made. She admits she has to get on a step stool to return the ribbon to the holder. She found instructions for this on Pinterest, a place I have refused to visit because I've been told it's a real time killer.


Another project she saw on Pinterest was this faux chandelier. She makes things she has instructions for.


Much of the art she has on this wall, she has made or purchased.


Now her latest "thing" is bird cages. She can't get enough of them. I fear the ones in my back yard are not safe (grin).


A few fat quarters are mixed in with fancy fibers and yarn. I spied her gesso, which is the same as mine was before I got rid of that horrible bucket for more user friendly containers.


On this wall are gifts she has received from friends like Dana and me. And this is where she keeps her die cutting machine and her dies. Of course, she has dies housed in towers under her table and dies in the floral container, too.


Did I mention, she has also become obsessed with zebras after she saw the ones Dana collects? Well, this collection is less than a year old, and it is already starting to consume her craft room.


AHH! Another bird cage,


this time with a bird in it.


More black and white, this time on the knobs she now has


on her doors. I had now reached the end of my tour of the craft room. I somehow felt overwhelmed. After catching my breath for a few minutes, it was now time to play!


The first thing we did was make die cuts. Kathy wanted to set all the dies on the table and I had to slow her down because I didn't want to have to put everything away that we would really not use. However, in this shot, taken right before we broke for lunch, we have already cut and put many of the dies away. You can see some of my hand painted paper, as well as colored printer papers and card stock. All the paper on the table came from my house. Now why do I have so much paper when I don't scrap or make cards?


You can see there are still plenty of dies, plates, embossing plates, and those stackable metal dies I can't remember what they are called on the table. I just know they cut, emboss, and are very expensive!

After a lengthy lunch, we went back to cutting and embossing. It was fun, but I would only want to do it perhaps once a month or so. After we got all the dies returned to their proper places, we took out our Paintstiks and tried to use the embossing plates (the purple plates partly hidden in the photo above) like collographic plates. Of course, I brought my homemade collographic plates and used them on my fabric when I had trouble getting the Sizzex embossing plates to work with the Paintstiks. Since these have to be ironed, I'll show the finished Paintstik project next week.

By this time, it was nearly midnight and the lightening was lighting up the area I had to drive into. I later learned there was hard rain and golf ball sized hail with that lightening, too. I am just glad Bleubeard was safe, had been asleep, and was glad to see me when I got home. What better way to spend a day? Hope yours are all just as memorable.

Using a collographic plate with Shiva/Markel Paint Stik

Because it is so hot, I decided the first tutorial using a collographic plate will be using the Shiva or Markel Paint Stik, a wonderful oil paint in a stick. For this technique, I won't have any clean-up to worry about, since I won't be spreading any paint on the plate. In fact, if I had been thinking clearly, I could have done this technique inside.


Supplies (from left):
Paint Stiks (various colors-Rose used in this tutorial)
Cotton fabric, hand washed and dried
Low tack masking tape
Paper towel
Collographic plate, handmade


Instructions:

1. Using a low tack tape, affix the fabric to a surface. For this project, I taped it directly to the metal table.

2. Grab an Artist's Paint Stik. These are made by Markel and came from the internet. They are exactly the same as Shiva brand, but sold under the Markel brand name, which is better known in Europe than America.

To make them "usable," you must remove the skin that covers the exterior of the oil stick. There are several ways you can remove the skin, one of which is to peel the skin back using an exacto knife. Those who know me, realize this is more dangerous than walking across a 12 lane Los Angeles freeway. So that option will always be my last. Instead, I will be using a paper towel and rubbing away at the oil stick.


Maybe I should have used the exacto knife after all, because I made a terrible mess getting the skin off. It looks SO SIMPLE when you see it being shown on TV, but in reality it is quite difficult. And the mess I made took up way longer than I thought it would and wasted way more oil stick than I anticipated. But now I was ready to go, at least.


3. Insert the collographic plate under your fabric. Check that the fabric is still tacked in place.


4. Run the oil stick over the fabric in one direction, picking up the places where the keys are. This is like making a gravestone rubbing without the gravestone. In fact, you may have done this same technique as a child using crayons.


5. Continue until you have covered the complete area.

6. Hang the fabric by the tape or on your design wall, or lay it flat where it won't be disturbed for three to five days. The longer you allow this paint to dry, the more vivid it will be.

7. After three to five days, heat set the paint into the fabric using your iron and a pressing sheet.

Ruminations:
I used way too much oil stick in the beginning, and you can see it's a bit of a mess on the left side where I began. Hopefully, I'll be able to either make it work or remove that part of the fabric.


I got better toward the end, even though I used more oil paint than I should have. It was a fun experiment and I loved using the collographic plate because there was no clean-up involved.

I suggest using dark or metallic Paint Stiks when working with light fabric and light Paint Stiks when working with dark fabric.