WOYWW #369

Well Hello everyone. Here we go again, with another meet-up at LLJ's place, whilst Julia carries on her recovery. Sending lots of love and huge hugs to both of you.The desk, then, as thats what you're here for.

A longer shot this week,as you can see, some blended backgrounds and blending through stencils again.
 If you like using brushes for this sort of thing, please go have a look at the previous post. There are some great bargains to be had in brushes at The Works right now, and they work brilliantly as 'colour duster' type brushes.

These are the brushes, and at 2 for £3, a real bargain compared to most 'crafters' brushes.

You can see in the previous post how well they worked, and here's another example:







The eagle eyed may well spot a Gelli plate, front left. I'd said I would never buy one, as it wasn't really my thing, but this was amongst all the craft stuff I was gifted a while back. I watched a few YouTube videos, by Barbara Gray of Clarity Stamps- where would we be without YouTube now?- and gave it a go. The result was some very nice backgrounds through stencils, using ink rather than paint. I think it was the fact most people were using paint on them at first that put me off. These two below were done with a brayer, rather than brushes, the ones on the right are with the Brushes from The Works.

I have plans for these with some small stamps- I have some Clarity Wee Folk, some Lavinia stamps,and a load of Cardio that should work nicely. I may even see if I can get a Christmas card or two out of this technique.
Reasonably short, and hopefully sweet, this week.
Quick update, saw the Registrar from the Oncology team last Friday for the results of my CT scan. Sort of ok, there is something they wanted a better picture of, so wanted an MRI. I told him my own GP was already sending me for one, due to the sciatica, and got him to refer me back to our local hospital's Oncology team.Travelling to Birmingham and back is a bit of a nightmare for the traffic, it can easily take an hour each way, and a lot more at rush hour. Local hospital is 10 minutes away.
So, I have the MRI date, it's the 13th of July, and will be a couple of weeks after that that I get any results. Hopefully it's nothing, he said it may well just be how the bone is healing.

'Colour Duster' Brushes- A Bargain!

So, heres the thing. I have some Colour duster brushes, the Inkylicious ones, and they work well. They have quite stiff bristles, rather like a mens shaving brush. Which I also have a few of, and use for the same purpose.






 Last weekend, after a bit of a browse at YouTube videos, I took the plunge and bought a set of Clarity brushes. These come in a set of four, differing sizes, and have much softer bristles, very smooth and silky feeling. The only problem with all these brushes- they are not cheap, are they?

I also bought a new stencil, but we'll get to that in a while.

Today, I took myself out for a walk, for some exercise. I only live a 5 minute (10 for me at the moment) walk from our shopping centre, and it has plenty of places to have a sit down and get my breath back.
In our centre is an outlet of The Works, and I freely admit I always drop in on my way past, they have some amazing bargains usually. Today proved to be no exception.

They have a special offer of 2 for £3 on 3 different ranges of paintbrushes. What caught my eye were the range with the Fuschia coloured ends- they have a 1", 3/4" and 1/2", as well as many smaller ones.They felt lovely and soft, and I thought stood a good chance of working well as colour dusters, and being smaller than usual, could provide a great opportunity for some detailed work with stencils. They only had two of the largest left, so I got the two smaller sizes as well.
 So, I hear you ask, did they work? Well, here's what happened when I got home:
 
You remember the Clarity stencil I mentioned? This one is called Double Bubble, and comes with the cut out bits as well, for masks, which I though a great idea.

I got out 5 Adirondack inkpads, Sunshine Yellow, Butterscotch, Sunset Orange, Citrus and Lettuce. The stencil was attached on a couple of sides with some low tack tape, and I'm ready to try out the 1" brush.

 It seems to be working well,I started with Sunshine Yellow, and it's going on really easily.
 Time for the second colour, Butterscotch.
That blends into the Yellow with no problem, no harsh lines.
 Then swap to Sunset Orange, and it's blending in so easily I'm actually really amazed.

 
From Sunset Orange through Citrus and ending with Lettuce, I am really, really impressed.


By the way, off on a side note here- do you find you have problems getting your inkpad to stay in place when you are using colour brushes or a brayer?

Here's my solution:
I bought a roll or two of rubber matting from Poundland- I have one sheet under my craft mat on my desk. This little offcut keeps my inkpads in place for hands free use!





Anyway, back to the ink blending.

The big reveal-look how smooth that blend is. I am really, really very impressed, for brushes that work out at £1.50 apiece, I couldn't be more pleased.They are really nice in your hands too, as they have that lovely softgrip area in the middle.
So much so, I shall be having another walk over later this week, to see if they've had any more delivered! They have some great multi buy deals on many art and craft products too, I noticed.