Give Me a Hand

Just playing around (when I should have been doing other things, of course).

The hand on the left was done while trying out a technique I saw on someone's blog (I've been trying to retrace my steps and find the blog again, but so far no luck). They had taken a class with Tim Holtz, and he had used his "Fragments" pieces this way. His fragments are clear acrylic tiles and shapes in different sizes. The example I saw used square tiles in different sizes, all put into a mosaic when finished. Put alcohol ink on the clear tile, then use Glossy Accents as an adhesive to put patterned paper on the back. You can also stamp something on the front after that.

I didn't have Fragments, so I used a clear hand shape from Coffee Break. I put some alcohol ink on it and let that dry. I didn't have Glossy Accents, so I used Diamond Glaze to glue patterned paper to the hand. After the Diamond Glaze dried, I cut off the excess paper. According to Tim's video, Glossy Accents dries in seconds, so I may have to get some!

After that, I traced the hand onto a page in the little journal I got at St. James earlier this month. The journal's pages are said to be specially made watercolor paper. The paper is so soft, I could not imagine it would hold up to a lot of water and paint, so I have been anxious to try it out. For now, all I did was paint a little color on there. I was trying out some Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. I painted plain water on small sections of the paper, then dipped the paint brush in water and stroked it on the tip of the watercolor pencil.

Neither of these is a masterpiece, but I did get to play a little, and that's something!! (Both the hand and the journal are about four inches tall.) I tried to get a good close up shot of both, but too little flash didn't pick up detail, and too much flash glared on the hand on the left and washed out the watercolor page on the right. (Why yes, I am, in fact, blaming the camera, not the camera operator! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)