Zentangle Again

Another day feeling poorly with my ME… just when I thought I was getting better this week! It seems to happen when I don’t actually have to do anything. I’ve obviously been overdoing things a bit “lately and as soon as it gets the chance, by body says “REST!!”

My lack of art has been getting to me recently, so today I got my iPad and Apple Pencil out and got back to tangling! I’ve been adding quite a few Zentangles to my Pinterest album over recent days and it’s got me fired up again to do some.

Rick and Maria, the inventors of the Zentangle method of drawing, recently uploaded a video with two different tangles interwoven, which was a new idea to me.

I was so taken with this that I thought I must give it a go. Rather than being tempted to follow what Rick did too slavishly, I deliberately didn’t watch the video again straight away, but did my own thing to see how I got on.

The two tangles are Paradox and Diva Dance. When I first started, I really struggled with Paradox and it always went wrong – I couldn’t seem to get my head round it! So I abandoned it, but I thought I really should get to grips with it and I think I’ve finally got it! Diva Dance was on my “to do” list, so this was a good opportunity to try my hand at both of them.

Here is my first effort (with only a memory of the video).

I got the basics of Paradox right, but didn’t follow Rick’s instructions to make each one a mirror image of its partner, so it’s a bit random and chaotic. I added quite a bit of shading and a different “front end” to the design and it ended up looking like some weird deep sea creature!

I decided to watch the video again and try and follow Rick’s instructions a bit better. If you go to the end of the video you can see his completed version, and compare it with my take.

This is the black and white version.

Doing the Paradox sections as mirror images does give the “gingko leaf” effect that I was after. Even with the shading, I didn’t think there was quite enough contrast between the two tangles, and the woven effect didn’t show up too well, so I decided to add some colour.

This is the final result. I added some spots to enhance the watery effect of the Diva Dance.

I am quite pleased with this result.

I drew these on my iPad Pro, using the Procreate art app. It’s great because you can work in layers, and save the different stages as separate images – I tend to save the black and white version of my drawings, which I can then colour again and again to get a different effect.

In my first version, I drew the Paradox sections first, and then simply drew the Diva Dance over the top, and went back in with the eraser tool to give the woven effect. This is the lazy way! It could not be used when drawing in the traditional way with pen and paper of course, so for my second attempt, I followed Rick’s directions on the video and built up the two tangles simultaneously to get the woven effect, so that I could learn how to do it properly.

I hope any Zentangle purists out there aren’t throwing their hands up in horror, but there are definitely advantages in using the iPad Pro for Zentangles – working in layers enables you to put the string on the first layer, the actual Zentangle on the next, then the shading, and finally any colour. You can delete the string layer if it shows on the final drawing, and it’s very handy working in layers because if you make a mistake with the shading or colour, you can erase it without damaging the actual Zentangle. You can also zoom in for fine detail, and tidy up any careless pen strokes along the way. Drawing on the iPad takes as much skill as with pen and paper – more, in some ways, because even with a screen protector, the iPad doesn’t have much tooth and the Apple Pencil moves a little more freely on the surface than a pen on paper. It’s also not quite so easy to turn the drawing (or the whole iPad) as it is with a paper tile, as you work. Apart from being able to overlay lines and erase them to produce a woven effect, there aren’t too many shortcuts, and anyway if there were, I wouldn’t use them because the whole point of doing it is to enjoy the repetitive strokes, building up the pattern step by step. I do use the Paintstorm app to start my mandalas, though, because it has a nifty tool for repeating what you have drawn by a selected number of times around the circle, and this gives a nice even result, and takes a lot of the hard slog out of it – you do still have to draw the designs and I always colour each section individually on a separate layer.

I have made a Zentangle tile template on Procreate, and saved this. When I want to do a new drawing, I duplicate this file and work on the copy, so the template is available to use again and again. It is the standard 3.5 x 3.5 inches square and consists of the four layers mentioned above.

Procreate has just undergone a major upgrade and there are all sorts of new features I have yet to discover and try out. As far as I can see, there is now the ability to choose what sort of “paper” background to work on, rather than just a plain background colour – there are various textures etc. I am looking forward to trying some Zentangles on tan paper with a bit of texture.

I particularly like the ability to do Zentangles while I’m out and about (waiting for a doctor’s appointment, etc.) – I always take my iPad with me and I don’t need to take paper and pens.

Dyeing–Introduction

One of the essential features of my new ARTHaven when I was designing and planning it, was to have a sink with running water, and a microwave. This picture was taken before the work was finished.

I now have a table in front of the balcony door from which to work – this is moveable and can also take up residence in my ARTHaven proper if necessary. My intention is to fix a drying rack above the sink – the previous owner of the house left behind a steel saucepan rack (Ikea, I think), and once I have sawn the rails to length, I shall fix a bracket over the microwave and the rails will enable me to suspend skeins of yarn by hooks so that they can drip into the sink. In the meantime, I can use the airer in the utility room.

Many years ago I did some experiments with acid dyes and woollen yarn, but this remained very inconvenient to pursue until I had a better setup, so it all got set aside and packed away. Ever since I got established in my new ARTHaven I have wanted to revive this activity, and this has now become more urgent because I am running out of the chestnut brown yarn for my knitting project. I am now in frugal/recycling mode and if I can dye some yarn to the required shade rather than buying it, I shall be well pleased. A while back I bought a large cone of unbleached 4-ply machine knitting wool just for this purpose.

I have set out my acid dyeing equipment on the table:

I also have some Procion (reactive) dyes for use with cellulose fibres (vegetable fibres, e.g. cotton) but for the moment I am concentrating on acid dyes which work best for protein fibres such as wool.

You might ask why I am using chemical dyes rather than natural dyes which produce such gorgeous subtle colours. The answer is that chemical dyes are very much more convenient to use, and it is possible to get repeatable results, which are not possible with natural dyes. Also, the process of natural dyeing is more complicated, with the addition of different mordants (dyebath additives that enable the dyes to “bite” into the fibres and become fast) for different materials, and to produce different colours from the same materials. The dye materials have to be sourced and gathered, often in quite large quantities in order to produce sufficient colour, and the whole process is a lot more messy and takes up a lot more room. Chemical dyes are very sophisticated these days, and while the basic unmixed colours can seem very harsh, especially at full strength, with careful blending and at greater dilutions, the most beautiful and subtle shades can be created, every bit as attractive as the colours produced by natural dyes, without the hassle.

When I made my initial foray into dyeing all those years ago, I bought this excellent book which explains how the different types of dye work, and how to use them in the small, non-industrial craft-room setting. As far as I know it is no longer in print, but there are many similar books on the market.

These are the dyes I bought at the time – a good representative selection of colours. It is possible to mix the three primaries (blue, red and yellow) to produce every colour, and with black, to create deeper tones (in this selection, black is called “toner”) but the addition of a turquoise blue, brown, pink (a crimson red with a higher blue content than the basic scarlet red) and violet, it is possible to create the full range of colours more easily and with less risk of “muddiness.”

These dyes come in powder form, and are extremely concentrated. In industrial quantities, they can be accurately measured and added to bulk quantities of fibre, but in the craft room setting, where one is dealing with much smaller quantities of yarn, it becomes impossible to weigh out the small quantities (minute fractions of a gram) that are required, so it is necessary to make up stock solutions of the powder with water – the standard is a 1% solution, which is 1 part dye to 100 parts water, or 1 gram to 100 ml of water. This basic solution of known strength can then be added to the dyebath with much greater accuracy with the use of small measuring cups and syringes, the quantity being governed by the exact weight of yarn being dyed, and the depth of colour required.

Unfortunately some of my original stock solutions have dried up, and I am not sure of the concentration of the ones that have not, so I am going to have to dispose of them and start again. It is not a problem because each stock solution uses such a small quantity of the powder and I have plenty more of each colour.

The amount of water required for the dyebath is known as the liquor ratio and is commonly 20:1, i.e. 20 parts water to 1 part fibre, or 20 ml water per gram of fibre.

The most astonishing thing I discovered when playing with this before was that if you measure everything accurately, however intense the colour may be with the addition of the dye to the dyebath, after the dyeing process has completed, the dyebath ends up absolutely clear, with every molecule of colour having been taken up by the yarn! This is very impressive to witness.

To aid the colour take-up and the fastness of the dye, certain dyebath additives are required. With acid dyes, the acid is acetic acid, or vinegar. Glauber’s salt, or sodium sulphate, is a white powder which can be made up into a stock solution of 10% (100g powder to 1 litre of boiling water), and is added to the dyebath before introducing the fibre. Its purpose is to block the takeup of the dye by the fibres at the initial stage of dyeing; as the temperature is increased, this effect is reduced. This enables the dye to be taken up by the fibre in a more controlled way, resulting in a more even colour.

Here is my measuring equipment. The simple set of metric scales is very accurate; you simply slide the black bar along in the stand until the black lines line up with the weight you require on the scale, and when the correct weight of dye or fibre is placed in the white cup, the scales will balance on the stand which has a curved underside. I have several ice cream tub spoons, syringes in various sizes for measuring small quantities of liquid dye, measuring cups and glass and plastic stirrers. I also have a dairy thermometer (not pictured). With microwave dyeing, the temperature is less critical.

The great advantage of microwave dyeing is that it is easy to dye small quantities, which is probably what I shall want for most of my projects. Also, you can dye several batches at once, as they are in separate containers. The heat is very uniform and without the “hot spots” you can get on a conventional hob, which helps keep the colour uniform. The book says that there is no danger doing dyeing in a microwave primarily used for cooking, although the utensils used for dyeing should be separate. In my case, of course, the microwave in my ARTHaven is exclusively for art and craft use and is not used for food preparation anyway, and the equipment never finds its way into the kitchen.

From the beginning I decided to keep an accurate record of my experiments, and I used an A5 ring binder, and created a series of pages made from card with punched holes through which I could inset a small sample of dyed yarn, together with the recipe, and the description – e.g. Single colour, half strength (5% solution), so that all the colours could be accurately reproduced when required. This photo shows some of the darker colours, with the full-strength basic, unmixed colours on the left, and half-strength on the right.

Later on in the book are the results of a much weaker solution of dye, and some of the colours are beautifully subtle, especially when mixed.

With accurate measurement, any colour in the colour library should be easily reproducible. I never got round to finishing the book, but hope to complete the task soon, and also do some experiments with mixing from the colour wheel, which I have learnt more about since those days – for example, it is often better and more subtle to add a little of a colour’s complimentary from the opposite side of the wheel to dull the colour, rather than by adding black. There are instructions in the book for creating a colour wheel from rings of card wound with the different colours of yarn, and it would be fun to create one of these – not only is it a useful reference tool, but it is also highly decorative and beautiful.

When I was exploring the delights of dyeing all those years ago, I created this display board for a craft show I took part in, to show the small sample skeins I made at the time, attached to a cork bath mat with pins and narrow ribbon. Even though it is incomplete, it is still an attractive display! Each skein is labelled with a small tie-on label, giving the colour, intensity, proportions of mix, etc.

Watch this space for progress with my experiments. It will be very useful to be able to produce any colour I want, in the quantity I want, for any given project.

As time goes on, I am looking forward to experimenting with Procion dyes and dyeing some cotton fabric. I have some wooden printing blocks from Colouricious, and I also recently acquired some decolourant, a substance you can paint onto fabric or paper etc., or stamp with rubber stamps or wood blocks, and with the application of heat, the colour disappears. In my dye box is a selection of fabric paints which can also be block printed. Many moons ago, like my 1960s contemporaries, I dabbled with tie-dye and there’s a lot of potential with that, too. I have huge quantities of old white cotton sheets and it will be fun to transform some of this fabric into something creative and more useful. I feel the time has come to expand my mixed media work into fibre and stitch, and I am very much looking forward to getting going on the sewing machine and introducing free motion embroidery into my projects too, especially the teabag art. Combining all this with paper and card, inks and acrylics, gel mediums, metal, melted and fusible textiles, the boundaries are becoming less and less distinct and anything goes!!

Update – I’ve been dyeing all afternoon and have made up new stock solutions in all 8 colours, and after dyeing a test skein with a mixture of brown and red and a touch of yellow, have now dyed two nice skeins of a rich dark chestnut brown for my knitting! It is cooling in the dyebath and I’ll wash it later, and hang it to dry, so photos in the next couple of days, I hope. I have to report that the setup in my ARTHaven with the table by the sink and the microwave above, with light coming in through the balcony door, is absolutely ideal. I can even plug the kettle in nearby!

Multi-Pocket Envelope Pouch Template

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have been awaiting permission to upload the UK version of Laura Denison’s Multi-Pocket Envelope Pouch template – she has now kindly granted me that permission, so here it is. It is a super little pouch with lots of pockets for tags and photo mats etc., and I shall definitely be incorporating it into my Tattered Time mini-album.

This is page 1, showing how to fold and construct the main pocket from the envelope. US business envelopes are longer and narrower than our UK ones, and this template is based on the type of reply-paid envelope normally enclosed with a business letter, slightly smaller than the regular A4-type envelope, but without a window. We all get plenty of these, and probably most of them end up in the bin.

Pages 2 and 3 show how to cut pieces from two sheets of A4 paper, to construct the inner pocket.

This 3-page template has now been uploaded to my Skydrive for free download as a pdf, or three separate jpgs. Page 2 will probably not print out properly because most printers won’t print right to the ends, and the template only just fits on a sheet of A4, but the pdf can be used as a cutting guide.

I am having a bad day health-wise today, so am unable to make up this pouch for you at the moment, but I will do so asap so you can see what it looks like. Meanwhile, have a look at Laura’s video and you’ll get the idea.

Poppies for Remembrance–Tutorial

I am creating a page in my new art journal entitled “Remembrance” as it is Remembrance Sunday. I am embellishing it with some paper poppies which I have made, and to prevent the blog post on the art journal page being too long, I have decided to post separately about the construction of the poppies.

I designed the poppies and leaves in Inkscape. This is a bitmap image of the svg file which is available for free download from my OneDrive, if you would like to download it and use it on your cutting machine, or alternatively, print out the image at whatever size you want, and use it as a template. I cut two sizes of the poppy and leaf pieces.

I cut the shapes using Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine – you can read about this machine in my sidebar. The two poppy shapes are designed to be laid one on top of the other, at right angles to one another, to create a 3-D flower once the petals are embossed.

Cutting the leaf pieces from green cardstock:

Cutting the poppy pieces from red cardstock:

Unfortunately I didn’t get very satisfactory cuts, but then I have been reliably informed on the Thyme Machines forum (the forum for my cutting machine) that card from that particular supplier doesn’t cut very well! I got there in the end, though, even if some of the pieces needed a bit of trimming with fine scissors afterwards. Here are the pieces cut. I have made far more than I need for this project, so that I can make up some poppies to go in my stash.

The next step was to shade them, and I did this with Distress Inks acting as watercolours, with a fine brush. Inking the leaves, using Forest Moss Distress Ink. I rubbed the ink pad onto my non-stick craft sheet and picked it up with the wet brush.

For the poppies I used Festive Berries Distress Ink.

I thought they needed to be a bit darker and more defined in the centre, so I added some Shaded Lilac Distress Ink to give them more dimension.

Here are all the pieces with the inking completed, ready for embossing.

Each piece was hand-embossed onto a piece of fun foam. Embossing the leaves from behind, so that they would be slightly convex when assembled:

Embossing the poppies, this time from the front, to make the petals cup-shaped. This time I used a larger embossing tool.

All the pieces embossed:

They were then assembled using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive – I would have preferred to have used hot glue but my new cordless glue gun was taking too long to charge. I applied a dab of glue to the centre of one piece, and gently pressed the second one in place, at right angles to it, forming the poppy. This glue is recommended for making boxes, so I think it will be strong enough.

I glued some leaves onto the back.

To make the centres, I drew some circles of two different sizes onto a piece of scrap card, and filled each circle with a good blob of Pinflair gel glue.

Then I stuck flowersoft all over them and dried them with my heat gun.

Unfortunately they don’t do black flowersoft (or at least, I haven’t got any!) so I used the darkest colour I had. Once the glue was dry, I simply painted them with black acrylic paint and cut them out. I finished them by running a black marker pen around the edges to cover the last of the pink.

Then all I had to do was stick them into the centres of the poppies, again using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

In this photo, you can see little spots of white where the glue is showing; this was still wet, but once it was dry, it was colourless and invisible. Here is a detail photo of some of the poppies.

I shall soon be uploading a post about the Remembrance page in my art journal, now that it is completed. Watch this space!

Palette for Alcohol Inks

Today, following on from my Perfect Pearls palette, I made up my second Tim Holtz Ink Palette for alcohol inks, according to Christie’s tutorial on her blog. I don’t have as many alcohol inks as I do Perfect Pearls, so I only made two labels instead of four. If I ever increase my collection, it will be a simple matter to redo the labels.

Most of my alcohol inks are made by Jacquard Pinata – I got these as a set, much cheaper than the Adirondack ones, but on reflection, I think I would have preferred to have got all Adirondack ones, because this is what most people are using, and also the bottles have a much finer nozzle. However, I am stuck with them for now, and they work just as well. On my labels, I have added a “P” and an “A” to indicate whether the colour is a Pinata or an Adirondack ink.

These are the labels. As before, the straight lines are cutting guides. For full details, please see my post on the Perfect Pearls palette.

Here is the palette complete. Some of the inks are still not quite dry – I put quite a bit in and it takes a long time to dry, but they should all be dry by tomorrow.

Before I can use them, I need to get an Adirondack Alcohol Ink Fillable Pen, which I am going to fill with the blending solution, so that I can pick up the colours from the palette. Christie shows how you can do quite detailed work in this way. When I first got my alcohol inks, I didn’t use them that much, because although I like the effect of the traditional method of application – a few drops onto the felt applicator, and then dabbing onto the surface – I have always wanted a more accurate method, so that I could paint individual areas separately. This technique, with the palette and fillable pen, seems to be the answer. Christie shows how to paint onto shrink plastic, and then shrink it down to make delightful little charms etc. My idea is to make some Christmas decorations for sale at our next craft fair in November.

Village Craft Fair

Last Saturday there was a craft fair in our village church to celebrate the creativity of the local people and as a local fund-raiser. I was offered a table and readily agreed, and offered to do demonstrations throughout the day.

Some of the work on display was of a very high standard; for instance, the lady who had the table next to mine had only been painting for about a year, and was producing work such as this:

There was also someone who was exhibiting a wide range of items including miniature embroidered rugs for dolls’ houses, taken from original rug designs:

seen here with some of her exquisite silver spoons. She also worked with enamel on copper, and made silver and bead jewellery. I was particularly taken with her marine life jewellery.

Further acrylic paintings:

This artist also created fairies from hand-made felt, which you can see on the display on the left of her table.

A great display of beautiful quilts.

There are more photos of the show in my Photobucket album.

Here I am at my table, ready to start.

This is my display board. I am so grateful to my hubby for finding some pegboard panels for me – this turned out to be ideal for hanging my mirrors and prints, and it took the rest really well with Blue Tack.

As you can see, I tried to display as much variety as I could – my mixed media mirrors (for further details, click on “Mirrors” in the RH sidebar of my blog – there are several posts), ATCs (likewise), pages from my ongoing mixed media Fine Art Album project, some experimental pieces, small paintings, and prints of my zentangle art – I printed these on semi-gloss photographic paper and am very pleased with the quality, and the intensity of the colour.

As I worked on my demo pieces, lots of people came up to watch and to chat, and ask me about my work. On the far left of my table, beside the zentangle print, are the cards and coasters. As well as offering these black and white zentangle cards for sale, I also managed to make up nearly 2 dozen coloured ones. I shall be doing a separate post about these in due course.

Of all that I had on offer, I only managed to sell nine cards, unfortunately, but at least my work got some exposure, and I had great fun being creative all day, so it was worth it!

Now for some photos of the work I did during the day. Most of these were small in size so that I could demonstrate several different techniques, and as usual I worked on ATC-sized card much of the time, as any successful samples can then be used for actual ATCs, and anything not successful won’t break the bank because hardly anything has been used!

I started with a plain white ATC which I stamped with versamark, and heat-embossed with clear embossing powder. I then inked this with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters, and finished it off with a bit more distressing round the edges with Vintage Photo DI. The stamp was Calligraphic Mat #4 from The Artistic Stamper. The embossing acts as a resist, showing the white card beneath the ink. On the second sample, I inked it first using Weathered Wood DI, then embossed with clear embossing powder, and inked again, this time with Bundled Sage, and finally a touch of Vintage Photo around the edges to distress it. This resulted in the resist showing the initial inking colour, in this case blue. This stamp is the Music background stamp, again from The Artistic Stamper.

You can see how through many layers of stamping and inking, many different and interesting effects can be created.

The next thing I demonstrated was rubbing the ink pad on my non-stick craft sheet, spritzing it with water and smooshing the card in this ink. For the first sample, I used a mixture of Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo DIs. The quality of the card wasn’t that good for this technique, but I didn’t mind in the end that the initial smooshing came out quite blotchy; with the added stamping and extra ink, it just added to the general grunginess of the effect. To get a smoother effect, watercolour paper would be better as it stands up well to a soaking.

I stamped with gold embossing powder onto the background of the first piece, and in the second, used the stamp as a resist, as before. The stamp in the first sample is a flower head stamp from The Stamp Barn, and that in the second is from the Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge Collection by Stampers Anonymous. This sample was first inked all over with Spiced Marmalade DI, stamped with clear embossing powder and then smooshed into Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo. To finish each of these samples, I spritzed them with a DIY glimmer mist made from Wild Honey Distress Re-inker, water and Perfect Pearls (Perfect Pearl colour), which has given an iridescent finish, and some nice blotches of a more intense effect.

The next sample was somewhat similar, but smooshed, stamped and inked repeatedly, building up the layers until I got the effect I wanted. In this case I used the Personal Impressions Pebbles background stamp with Versamark and clear embossing powder, and the Crafty Individuals large swirl stamp, also with Versamark and clear embossing powder, and finally with gold. This one was then sprinkled with water and blotted with some kitchen paper.

I did a quickie demo showing the effect of sanding Core’dinations paper – I had prepared a piece of Whitewash Core’dinations at home, embossing it with the Tim Holtz Texture Fades embossing folder “Cracked.” After sanding, I inked it with Dusty Concord DI, showing how the ink is intensified by the roughness of the sanded surface. To finish this one off, I rubbed on a little Treasure Gold in the central part, but it doesn’t show up too well on the photo.

I did a few examples with one of the stamps from the Stamp Attack JoZart Design fans collection, using Versamark onto black card and then adding dry Perfect Pearls in various colours with a soft brush. Once I had brushed off the excess I spritzed them lightly with water to activate the binding agent in the mica powder. These will be cut out and used as small tags, with the addition of some ribbon and a bit of bling.

My final sample was done with acrylics and stencils. I had intended to do several of these, but time was marching on, and I had other things to do as well.

For this, I laid my Increasing Circles stencil onto some heavy watercolour paper and painted on some gesso with a foam brush. After drying this with my heat gun, I proceeded to paint the surface roughly with alizarin crimson acrylic paint, placed the stencil back and rubbed with a baby wipe. This removed quite a bit of the paint from the gesso which acted as a resist, giving some interesting overlapping partial circles. I repeated the process with some ultramarine blue, and then stamped with scraps of extra large and extra small bubble wrap, using gesso. The effect was altogether too bright at this stage, so I made my favourite dulling-down acrylic glaze from a touch of Payne’s grey acrylic paint mixed with acrylic polymer, and after drying this, stamped with archival black ink using the ink-spatter stamp from the Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge collection from Stampers Anonymous, and finally stamped with copper metallic acrylic paint using the circles stamp from the Bitty Grunge collection also from Stampers Anonymous. As always, using gesso and acrylics, I had to try and remember to clean the stencil, brushes and stamps immediately or it dries on very quickly and becomes impossible to remove. This is a bit of a bore, especially when one is on a creative roll and is desperate to get on to the next stage! (How nice it would be to have a flunky to do it for me, like the artists of old, who had apprentices to grind their paint for them!!)

This is a technique that you can just go on adding to, layer by layer, colour by colour, shape by shape, whatever you want, until you like it! The possibilities are endless. Here’s a detail shot.

I really like how the texture of the watercolour paper works with this background.

My second demonstration was making some paper flowers with Penny Duncan’s rose design cut file, somewhat adapted to give a more frilly edge to the petals. I deliberately made these quite large so that people could see what was going on. Here are the materials I used.

The pieces were drawn in Inkscape and cut out using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. Distress Stains are the best method of colouring the petals and leaves, in my opinion. They are easy to apply, and you can build up the layers of colour to the intensity you desire. Once coloured and dried with the heat gun, each petal and leaf is hand-embossed onto a piece of fun foam, and then assembled using the hot glue gun. I ran a nib across the surface of a distress ink pad and drew the veins on the leaves. Here is the final result.

My final demo was intended to be zentangle drawing, and although I did do a bit, it was not enough to photograph – I will upload the finished drawing when I have done it. By the time I got started on that, the numbers of visitors to the show had thinned out considerably, and then people started clearing up, so I had to call it a day, as it took a very long time taking down my display and packing it all up ready to take home.