 Hi guys, we are here for DecoArt on Monday. Now, this multi-video little series which is going to be a mini part of DecoArt, Mondays of DecoArt is inspired by a few different people. I want to make sure I mention them. So I am inspired to do this by Shannon Greene's Journaling by Fives, which is a timed exercise. And also by the suggestion and or request by a couple of different YouTube friends and fans, one of them being Donna Hanrahan and somebody else who I've forgotten. I can't think of it right now. Holy crap. It's been a little bit of a stressful morning, and I'm having my third cup of coffee. Where is it? Oh Right here. Okay. So but we're gonna, if I think of that other person, I'll mention them but definitely inspired by Shannon Greene's Journaling by Fives, which is a timed exercise. If you don't know about Journaling by Fives, where have you been? Holy cow. Go over to Shannon Greene's channel, and she's got a Journaling by Fives playlist and take a look because it's fun. Okay, so for this Monday with DecoArt project, it's gonna be a timed painted canvas. So each one of these sessions is gonna be 15 minutes and 15 minutes only for the actual painting part, at least not my speaking part. When you're getting ready to do this, you only need a few things. Some brushes and mark making tools. I have my other little bucket here. You can see. These are with the exception of this. These are all from DecoArt. These are their Americana decor brushes, which I just love. I actually have one more, and I must have put it somewhere. I don't know, I couldn't find it. I've got their palette knives, stencil brushes, and little Americana pouncing tools. And then I've also got their Stucco texture tools, these little plastic plates that have these different kind of patterned edges. Okay, and I'm running out of room. Okay, let's see. Move my coffee. All right, that works. I've got an old canvas. It don't get a new one. I want you to use one of the old ones. Maybe you started painting something on it like I had on here, and it just was turning out to be, in this case, crap. I didn't really jesso over the whole thing, but it did have some 3D embellishments on it that when I popped them off kind of damaged the canvas a little bit. So I actually already put down with some gel medium and jesso, some old dryer sheets. That's what these things are here, which added some more texture to it, but also helped kind of strengthen the canvas a little bit. Some of the old paint and things are still showing through. I'm okay with that. I don't want you to start with a clean white canvas. Think about doing this on top of something that you're not super pleased with. I think that would be the best. You're going to need a few thin collage papers. I've got a jelly print, some painted deli paper, some tissue, and a photocopy of one of my drawings. This is my artwork, and so we're going to use that. I've got a palette plate. I've got some my Andy Skinner stencils. I've got DecoArt's Americana DecoPage Matte. I've got a few paints. Pick the colors that speak to you. These are the colors I used that I was attracted to this morning. I want you to pick the colors that speak to you and that make you happy and don't think about it too much. Just grab stuff. This is DecoArt Traditions Artist Acrylic in Indian Yellow, Titanium White, and Aqua Marine. You all know I love my neons, so of course I picked some neons. These are Americana neons in Sizzling Pink, Scorching Yellow, Tord Orange, and Electric Blue. All right, so we are going, and I've already got my timer. It's right here, set to 15 minutes. I don't want you to think about it too much. I want you to just make marks. Go with what feels right. Go with what feels good and just make marks. Keep making marks until the timer goes off. Don't look at the timer. Just keep painting and doing what feels right and makes you happy. I'm going to do two things. Put my apron on because I don't really want to get paint on my clothes again, which I do a lot. I'm not going to speed forward through the process. We're going to do this in real time. And something we're going to start doing in every video, not only to help me remember, but to remind you guys, not all paints are created equally. Some paints, like lots of your craft paints, are non-toxic and I believe the DecoArt Neons are included in that, although I can't read the writing because I don't know how my glass is. And I'm a little bit tired and stressed out this morning. Let's see. It says conforms to something, but I can't read what the something is on the little thing. I do think they're non-toxic, but let's check this one before I give you my butt. That sounded bad. I didn't mean that the way that sounded. This one says conforms to, but I don't know what this symbol means. So that may mean that they're non-toxic. But not all paints are created equally and some of your fine artist paints are half pigments in them that are definitely toxic. So it's a good habit to get into to just use a barrier cream every single time you paint, no matter what kind of paint you're using. So this is Art Guard. This is the kind of barrier cream I use. You can get it in any art supply store and it's just like a white hand cream. And it not only helps the pigment from being absorbed into your skin, but it helps get the paint off your hands easier. And I like the Art Guard because it's not greasy. So we're going to put that on and we're going to set our timer and we're going to get going. I do have a bucket of soapy water off that way to dump my stencils in after I use them. I'm not great about cleaning my stencils, but I do do clean them occasionally. So it's kind of past the time. I've done a few things with the Andy Skinner stencils that kind of need a little bit of a soap now. So we're going to do that today. All right, I'm going to set my timer. You ready? All right, let's go. All right, so I'm going to grab, I'm going to grab my collage stuff first because I really want to do the collage first. I'm going to tear off this white border because I don't necessarily want that on there. I am going to use a palette knife. And right now I am totally not worried about which way the canvas is going to end up being oriented. The original painting was portrait style or portrait direction. This one may end up being landscape. I don't know. Right now we're just concerned about putting marks on the canvas and turning something that was kind of ugly and itchy into something pretty and lovely because I've already got some texture over here. It would be easier, it'll be easier to stick the deli paper into onto the canvas because it'll go into the cracks a little easier. It's thinner paper. This is a catalyst tool. I actually picked up at Dick Blick when Claudia Rossi and Sarah Winnie and I were up in San Francisco. Just try to get all your edges down. I already broke my own rule. I just glanced at the clock. Oops. I love this black polka dot tissue paper. I picked it up at Target a while back. It was on clearance. I think it was like a dollar or $1.40, something like that. I wish I'd gotten more. Hindsight's always 2020. That's one of those things your grandparents tell you when you're growing up and you're like, what? They were right. Don't think about where you're placing things. Just do it. Do what feels right. I don't want you thinking about it too much. Stress yourself out. This should be a fun process. Just make sure you have all your bits and pieces that you think you want to use out and handy before you get started. Oh, see I've got a piece of my hair in there. I'm going to put the lid on this glue because I think that's all of the collage items that I want to put on here. Now we're going to start with some paint. We're going to make sure as we're going, not only right now with the catalyst tool, but as we're painting that we kind of have all the edges stuck down that we want stuck down. All right, where's my rag? I am going to wipe my catalyst tool off so the glue doesn't dry on there. Now we're going to put some paint out on our palette. I'm going to put a little bit of each color. Should have done this before I turned on the timer clock. I would recommend, that's a five minute timer, warning. I would recommend you do this before you turn your timer on. I'm not sure why I picked the white this morning. I just felt right. I don't know. I'm really not surprised by the aquamarine nor should you be. All right, so let's go. So this is, I love this stencil. This one is called Tornado. See it's got a piece of paint dried to it because you know, we use these at the arty party. There we go. All right. And I'm going to use the large stenciling brush. This is the number 12. And I'm going to go right in with the pink. It's the color that feels right. The neon pink. So if you really want to get good stenciling impressions, you want to have a brush that's really dry. I'm, I don't know that I'm necessarily too concerned. I just want to get some texture and pattern on there. If it doesn't come out perfect, I'm not all right with that. I do like to put things in at least three places in the water. I'm not going to clean my brush off. We're going to leave it dirty. And this is one of his alphabet stencils. This is called Have Your Say. And I'm going to go in with a turquoise. See, I'm totally all right with that. Kind of like that actually. You could wait for the glue to dry before you do this. Obviously, I'm not doing that. I'm going to go in with, let's see. You know what? I'm going to go in with this giant brush. I'm going to dip it in a couple of colors. Sort of like your toll painting where you have one color on one side and one color on the other side. Does anybody remember that? Or does that just make me really old? Don't forget your God given painting tools. My favorite ones. My fingers. They're the best ones. Now you do have 15 minutes. So depending on how you're doing, you do have time to sit back and get out your heat tool and dry stuff if you want to. Like really quick. It's already bright and lovely, right? I love that. All right, let's keep going. So I want to use this one now. This is called Code Breaker. Try my stenciling brush off. Now let's go in with the orange. I'm going to turn the canvas around. Gives me a new perspective. I like that. We're going to go in with our pouncing tools and I am going to go in with a blue. Young blue. Love that. And let's go in with our roller. I picked this up at Tuesday morning. It's like a little chevron thing. That's some blushes goodness. I like that yellow color. All right, I want to go in with. Okay, I'm just grabbing really quick. Hopefully I have enough time. I want to go in with some black. That wasn't a color I had planned, but it's a color that feels right. And I'm going to go in with one of my little mark making tools. This is a piece of a silicone plot holder. And I'm just dipping it in the paint. And I'm not really, I want the black mostly, but I'm not caring if some of the other colors get on there. Yeah, I like that. I'm really loving these deco art paints. We're going to go in with a white on my fingers. And it's going to mix and blend with the paint that's on there. But I'm all right with that. I like that. You want interesting marks and layers. Just have fun with it. Don't think about it too much. I think we need some more turquoise. I know you're thinking like really more turquoise, but yeah, if you don't have a canvas to do this on, you could definitely do it on a piece of paper, a journal page that you don't like, anything like that. If you're doing a journaling by fives journal, you could do this in one of your blank pages. Have two minutes left. It's kind of cool. I love starting off my canvases with neon colors. The bright, I love that bright undertone, that little bright pop of color that shows through the finished piece. I love that. I'm grabbing some more of the Indian yellow. Not exactly sure why I'm liking this color this morning. I do like it, but it doesn't really go with everything else I picked. I don't think. I like it. There we go. That's our, that's our, that's it. That's our timer. So I want you to, okay, that's got to stop. That's annoying. I want you to do your canvas that way. Get a nice, bright, happy, interesting, layered background with collage and paint and marks and just have fun with it. Definitely think about using the DecoArt products, Americana paints, their traditions, paints, and the Andy Skinner stencils, or any of the other DecoArt stencils and their tools. Have some fun with it. You notice I didn't use the texture tools. I'm going to keep them out because maybe in the next 15 minute session we will use them, but that surprised me. I thought I was going to use them. Oh, you can find some of my copyright notices and disclaimers in the description below along with my contact information, not just my email address. If you want to send me products to try your test or a happy mail or anything like that, my post office box is in the address below. As always, I'm available for questions, comments, and product reviews. If you have something you'd like me to review, let me know. Don't forget to have a nice day, a nice week, great weekend. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later.