Playing with the UV resin once again and here’s the three latest pendants. I’m possibly finding my way with this stuff, though I do have other things I’d like to try out. For the rest of the day, I need to be drawing, however.
Angela Porter
Resin Jewellery 5Aug2018
I mentioned a while ago that I’ve been having a lovely time playing with UV resin.
These are some of the results!
Weird things happened in the long, thin bezels when I cured the resin. Strange, alien, geometric patterns appeared in the coloured layer. A surprise, a strange one, but not unpleasant. However, it wasn’t what I was aiming for! It’s not happened since…odd.
The square glass pieces, currently without bails, were the glass ‘cabochons’ or ‘covers’ that came with the square bezels. I thought I’d try adding resin to the back of them, and they’ve worked out quite nicely!
I think I need to learn wire wrapping. I need a course or several to do that though. Or find someone who’d like to work with me where I make the pretties and they do the wire-wrapping.
I have lots more ‘pretties’ in my finished and happy with stash now, including quite a few pairs of little star earrings.
All I need to do now is to figure out what to do with this lot!
I have odd things happening when I use silicon moulds to make resin pendants. When I cure the resin it often bends/warps. I’ve tried thinner layers, thicker layers, and nothing seems to stop it. I supsect the only way forward for me, at this point in time, is to use bezels, and the glass covers if I can get the bails to adhere to them.
I may play around with resin a bit more later today. I had a load more bezels arrive yesterday. Would be a nice, relaxing way to spend some of a quiet Sunday.
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Coloring Day is tomorrow!
Tomorrow is National Coloring Day in the USA, but I think it should be an International Coloring Day, a day where people are encouraged to do some colouring as a way to find a little peace and calm in their busy lives, as well as to express themselves creatively.
It doesn’t matter if you only colour in one flower or leaf or letter, or if you complete the whole template on the day; all that matters is that you take time out to just relax with your chosen coloring medium.
It matters not how expensive the medium is, or what the brand is. All that matters is that you enjoy and find the process restful, calming, relaxing and your mind is given a bit of a break from the endless self-talk we all experience.
Each year since it started, I’ve created a coloring template, and this is this years!
Here’s a link so you can download the black and white template . Just right click on the image and save it to where you can find it!
You can also find the image on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Not a member? Why not sign-up and join in with others who love coloring, particularly my art/templates.
There are just a couple of terms and conditions; please read and follow them:
- The template is for personal use only. If you want to share the template with others, then please share a link to this blog entry rather than just the template file!
- The template is not for resale or for inclusion in publications of any kind or in any format (physical or digital) with out my express permission.
- If you share your coloured version, then it would be really lovely if you would mention me, Angela Porter, as the artist and my blog or facebook page.
I look forward to seeing your colourations. Happy and peaceful coloring!
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Bookmarks – #makeitmonday
Amongst other things, I’ve had a lovely crafty time over the weekend drawing tall and think designs that make lovely bookmarks, and here they are!
I love black and white line art, but I thought I’d try working in colour too with a mid-blue and a dusky kind of purple. Not too sure about the coloured drawings; I think that’s because I do like high contrast.
The first task was to cut paper (Winsor and Newton Bristol board and Claire Fontaine Paint On mixed media paper) into strips that are 30.1cm x 5cm or 30.1cm x 5.5cm in size. For each, I drew a pencil border around them that is approx 3mm wide.
Then, came the inky drawing. Usually, I start with one motif and let the design grow out from that one. However, with these I scattered large motifs across the space, then slightly smaller ones. Finally I used small patterns and even plain colour, to fill in the gaps.
I tried to keep to just three or four patterns in each design (a self-imposed challenge); some have just two patterns, others have 4 or so.
I really enjoyed doing these!
Now, I have to decide what to do with the originals. Do I scan them and then gift/sell the originals? Do I use them as the focal points for some mixed-media work? Do I use them to created some printable pages for people to make their own book marks? Do I scan and re-colour them in the way I have my recent quotes? Do I scan, print and set small parts into bezels to create my own custom jewellery? Do I turn them into greetings cards? Do I add shadows/shading to them?
So many possibilities and I feel quite overwhelmed.
I do know I need to turn my attention to my next coloring book for the Creative Haven series from Dover Publications Inc; I need to get a few templates done in the next couple of weeks, with one to be coloured as the cover illustration.
All #makeitmonday projects!
Talking of #makeitmonday; I uploaded a bonus colouring template to the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group yesterday. It is a group exclusive, so if you’d like to print and colour it and share it with the group, pop along and join in with the lovely group of people over there.
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Dangle Day Friday – new BuJo spreads for August
August BuJo Spreads
The last days of July are upon us, which means it’s time for new BuJo pages.
I’ve settled into a kind of pattern for myself as far as a BuJo/Planner goes. It’s really minimalistic in terms of what I keep track of, but not so minimal in terms of artsy-ness!
I have two designs for the monthly cover page. One, a dangle design, the other one of my zentangly, entangled style drawings. Yes, I hand lettered these ones, not like the quotes where I am printing out the words before drawing on the paper.
Like my dangle designs? You can pre-order ‘A Dangle A Day’, my book where I take you through how to draw your own dangle designs!
I like both of my monthly cover spreads, but I know the more complex one may never get completely coloured in – it would need a lot of time invested in it.
I like to have a monthly overview page for my events and appointments, and I’ve added dangle elements to that, though I do like a simple layout for the days.
The final planned-out page I like to have is a mood tracker. As you may be aware if you’ve been following my blog for a while, I have CPTSD and keeping track of my mood is useful. For August, I’ve decided on some bunting. The spaces are large enough that I can, if I wish, record different moods throughout the day. Also, I like to keep the key for my moods simple, with just five different ones.
Hearts and stars are the theme for this month, which are common with me. They are two motifs that I really, really like.
The stars this month represent the Perseid meteor shower which happens around my birthday each year, natures own fireworks. Hopefully the skies will be clear this year so there can be a good view of them.
A little about the materials used
- A Leuchtturm 1918 A5 dot grid notebook
- Unipin pens from Uniball and a mechanical pencil to sketch out the letters and so on.
- Chameleon duotone pencils for colouring
- A metallic gold Sakura Gelly Roll pen for some metallic highlights on the cover page.
Furbaby Friday and a new facebook group
Today it’s #furbabyfriday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. The members love to show their beautiful furbabies, especially when they’re ‘helping’ with their colouring! You’d be most welcome to join the group and share your beautiful furbabies.
One of the admins of this group has started a new facebook group called Pet Love, Care & Happiness. If you love pets and animals you’d be more than welcome to join in. I believe they have a competition at the moment to win some Amazon gift vouchers.
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Angela’s Adventures with Resin – part 1
I’ve spent a couple of hours this morning experimenting with UV resin, and these are the results.
First off, I thought I’d try Yupo paper with various pens – Sharpies, Posca Paint pen and alcohol markers (Chameleon Duotones). You can see the results of these on the top three experiments, left to right.
The Posca pen gives lovely dark lines which I like. The Sharpie is more grey.
For some reason I expected the alcohol markers and Sharpie to bleed with the resin; they didn’t. Neither did the Posca pen.
The flower on the bottom left I drew on Yupo paper with Chameleon pencils. They gave a lovely, soft colour, but all the imperfections were magnified with the resin.
The last experiment, on the bottom middle, was a flower I drew on some paper I’d coloured with Distress Inks. I drew the flower with a UniPin pen. I was pleased that the pen didn’t bleed and the colour of the Distress Ink didn’t seem to bleed into the resin either. I had to try a layer with some glitter in it (that inner raven of mine just loves glitter and shimmer!), which works nicely, but did obscure the drawing a little. You live and learn, and that’s why I’m experimenting!
One thing that happened with some of the experiments the Yupo or paper warped as the resin cured under the UV lamp. I think that’s because the resin contracts as it cures; it was more noticeable with the smaller pieces of Yupo and the paper .
So, I had fun, learned a bit more about resin, and have more ideas to try out another day.
One thing I did find very useful were some of my colour shaper silicone ‘brushes’ with tapered ends. They are perfect for adding resin to the pieces and helping it to spread out to the edge. I had used toothpicks on the hearts I did the other day, but they were so fiddly and a bit of a pain to use. So, my colour shaper silicone tools are the way to go!
Now, I need to go source some bezels I can use to set little drawings into. I do have some silicone moulds that I can play with too, but not today. Time to turn my attention to other matters I think.
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Another Terry Pratchett Quote…
I am enjoying doing these quotes, as I’ve said before.
I enjoy the intricacy of the drawing/design/illustration.
I quite like taking a black and white line drawing and turning into a rainbow line drawing too.
Today is WIP over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group – you’d be made very welcome if you pop over and join in!
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Decorated Terry Pratchett Quote and Chameleon Pencils first impressions
Another quote from Terry Pratchett. This one from one of my favourite characters – Death. Death tries so hard to understand humanity, yet he gets it both very wrong and quite right at the same time.
I like the way I’ve added colour to my black and white line art in this example, but one day I hope to get around to colouring in the black and white version.
Maybe I’ll print the art out and then colour it in using Chamelon Pen’s ColorTone Pencils, which arrived yesterday.
I have spent some time colouring with them and so far I quite like them.
They are softer than Polychromos and others, but not quite as soft as Prismacolours. They blend quite nicely, and a little help from a blending pencil results in really nice blends.
I like the colour palette; the colours are nice and bright and just the colours I love to use in my art, which is a huge, huge bonus! As I often struggle to choose and use colours in a sensible manner when I have a huge choice, the limited palette of 50 colours is really useful for me, as are the double ended pencils. Being able to flip to add shadow or light is a nice touch, though I would like a bit more contrast between some of the colours as some are a bit too similar.
The leads are a bit thicker than other pencils, such as Prismacolours. However, this makes the barrels of the pencils a bit too thick for a standard pencil sharpener. My Staedtler pencil sharpener – the ones with the handles that you turn around – should cope well with them though.
At a price point of £45 on Amazon.co.uk with free prime delivery I think they’re good value for money, even though you essentially have 50 half-sized pencils. However, the thicker colour leads make up for that to some degree.
I’ve not been able to find out if you can buy individual pencils when some wear down. However, I can’t see that being a big issue as I suspect that I’ll use most of the pencils fairly equally.
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#Weekendvibes
As you may have guessed, I love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. I’ve used a few quotes from them of late, and there’s more to come.
After printing out the quote, I drew the designs around it with Uniball Unipin pens. After scanning and printing again I added colour with Chameleon marker pens.
Drawing and colouring is definitely something that brings me #weekendvibes, which means I have those all week! I am so grateful that my job is doing something that doesn’t feel like work.
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A Dangle A Day – #freebiefriday
Here’s a little teaser of a #freebiefriday dangle design I’m giving away for personal use in celebration of my soon to be released book ‘A Dangle A Day’.
To get the free black and white template, visit angela-porter.com.
You’re free to use the template for your own personal use, but it is not for re-sale in any format.
Feel free to share the link to angela-porter.com in your social media posts.
I’d love to see how you colour it in – you can post your images in the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group, or tag me in your posts on other social media platforms.
It would be lovely if you could also use the @quartocreates tag so the publishers can see your glorious colourations!
A Dangle A Day is available for pre-order and it’s release date is 11 October 2018 in the UK and 4 September in the USA. In the book, I give lots of designs, advice and instructions on how you can draw your own dangle designs for use in many different projects such as greetings cards, bookmarks, pictures, keepsakes, and bullet journals.
Art is the Adventure 
