Creative Chemistry Day 4

Hello there!  Day 4 is finally here!  They had some technical difficulties, so the class wasn't available until around 10 am!  I was being manic about checking the page to see if it was loaded last night until I gave up and went to bed (thankfully!) and then this morning until I finally saw that beautiful "Day 4" logo.

Today we learned about caring for out stamp pads and Reinkers.  I bought 4 reinkers especially for this class, so I'm new to it all.  My oldest stamp pads are only a year old, so I didn't think I needed them yet...  But now I'm hooked and want more, more, more!

Here are all of my creations from this lesson:

Left is the Custom Stamp Pad, Middle is the Layered Misting, and Right is the Watercolor with Reinkers.

These 2 1/4 inch squares are for a display to put on my wall that I'm making of all the techniques.  g) Layered Misting, h) Custom Stamp Pad, i) Watercolor with Reinkers.

Once again, had some supply issues, which I was very nervous about, but I worked through it!  With the 4 limited colors, I wasn't sure how varied my looks would be, but you can see, each technique does something very different.  I also wasn't sure if they would work well together...  but I need not have worried...  like Tim says...  pretty much all his colors work together.

My biggest issue was that I don't have any Cut N Dry felt.  It's been on my wish list for months (since I saw another video where Tim made a custom stamp pad).  I found a hint on youtube from Stampin' Up demonstrators (don't do any Stampin' Up products, but sometimes I watch their videos to get ideas) to use baby wipes.  So I built up a little pile of about 8 to 12 layers of wipes (just folded and stacked) and followed the directions that Tim gave us.  It worked very well.  I'm sure the Cut N Dry felt would be much more precise, the ink spread out on the wipes a little more, and the felt pad would last much longer...  but as a way to do it cheaply and quickly, the wipes were wonderful!  I even saved them in little baggies and will try to use them another day and see how it goes.  Here's a picture (taken about 5 hours after I made them:

I didn't have nearly enough mini-misters, (only 3 and 2 are in use already) so I used travel sized squirt bottles from the dollar store.  They did the job, but man-oh-man, now I see why the mini-misters are so much better.  I used a mini-mister to measure out my water and pour it into the squirt bottle.  It only went about a 1/4 of an inch up the side of the bottle, but I wanted to keep the same measurements that Tim used.  Then I sprayed it on the tag...  and it covered almost everything else on my work station, too...  It was WAY more liquid than a mini-mister and less precise.  I used paper towels to build a little wall on all my subsequent squirts.

I loved the watercoloring with reinkers!  I've never been big on watercolor before, but it was a lot of fun and I loved the varied tones that I could get without much effort.  I bought the pallet and waterbrushes ahead of time and enjoyed working with them a lot.  [edit:  just realized that I was supposed to use watercolor paper and I just watercolored right on the manilla tag...  worked great anyway, but now I'll try some watercolor paper, too!  ooops]

Alright, well, that wraps things up for today!  See you tomorrow for Stains!