'Water Brushes a.l.a. LuLu!'

by Mary Lou 'LuLu' Haynes


Howdy and welcome,

Have you seen the neat portable water brushes? You can find them in craft stores and online.

Last week, I saw a new water brush by Tim Holtz (Ranger). Looked like it would be a useful addition to my stash of art supplies - or would it???

Elmer's Paintastics!
Paint brush?! - or - water brush?!

At a cost of $10 for one brush, for a couple bucks more, you can buy a set of 10 brushes by Elmer's! I found a set of Elmer's Painsticks in my studio (bought the set at STAPLES office supply 2 years ago).

Just disassemble, empty out the paint (paint a quick backgound page in your art journal until empty) and fill with water. Or in my case, I fill with matte medium, or tinted acrylic glaze. Great tools for painting or embellishing in art journals on the road.

Pam Carriker talks about the water brush tool in her new DVD, too!

Have you ever used water brushes? Do you use them with water, as intended? How many different water brushes do you own? 

How many different solutions do you use in your water brushes? 

Do you fill them with water? Paint? Medium? Glue?

Another view of my main work station -
bright Northern exposure!

Would love for you to comment on this post - or please comment on any of my other posts. 

Shhhhhh! Can you keep a secret? My new Spring 2012 Giveaway is coming later this month!

Thanks for stopping by - come back again soon.
Peace,
LuLu

'Anyone Who's Known...' excerpt from my original poem

Howdy and Welcome,
These images are from another page in my art journal #2.

Digital collage of images below - using MS DIE

Whole page from art journal #2 -

the calligraphy is an excerpt from my one of my original poems

Page portion from art journal #2 -

close-up showing journaling in foreign languages

(German, ancient Greek, French, my take on ancient Cuneiform).

Also I added a little bit of musical notation.

fyi in my dreams I speak French and I often wake up with original music playing in my head!

Page portion from art journal #2 -

close-up showing tile made from a TH clear plastic tile wrapped in a piece of aluminum repair tape (from hardware store) that I embossed (using texture plates and my Big Shot), painted with Ranger acrylic dabbers and a little light sanding when dry.  I prefer to use the acrylic paints rather than alcohol inks. There is also a strip of mesh tape (from the hardware store.)

The edges are bordered in scrapbook paper scraps - I save the strips when I trim scrapbook paper. I also organize and store scraps by length and type. But that's for a whole other blog post!

Note: before working on any of the pages in the sketchbook, I covered each page, front and back, with 2" masking tape - to give the substrate more strength in preparation of all the stuff I was hoping to do. If it had been watercolor paper I would not have used the tape all over, maybe on the sides as a border. Love those 'paper tapes' from 7gypsies and tissue tapes from TH.

P.S. You know in all the art journal magazines and articles, they never mention how MUCH PREP goes into making this type of art. I spend a lot of time organizing and prepping, before I even begin to paint!

What do you think of this page? Have you ever experimented with writing foreign languages or writing music notation in your journals?

Thanks for visiting - please stop by again when you have a moment or 2.

Peace,

LuLu