 Hi guys, welcome to my creative year for 2018. I am so glad you decided to join us. If you didn't decide to join us yet and you want to, the link for the Facebook group is in the description below, so check it out. We hope to see you there. That being said, the topic for this month of January is budget. Each week we will be having a different prompt for the week within the topic to share with you. This week our prompt is coming up next along with the how-to video of what I did. So I hope you enjoy the prompt, the topics, the process. If you have any questions, let me know. Leave a comment in here on YouTube or tag me over in a post on Facebook. That's it for right now. Let's get started. Hey guys, how are you? All right, this week with my creative year, our prompt is dig in the dark. Now the way I'm going to take the prompt is I want you to dig around in those dark recesses of your creative spaces, closets, and drawers, pull out those supplies that are hidden in the dark corners that don't see the light of day too often, and pull them out and we're going to use them. For me, one of those things is this roll of brown paper. This is actually thin paper that's used to mask off parts of your house when you're getting like your walls painted. This is from the hardware store. I bought it years ago when I was taking a class from Tracy Bautista, I think. Anyway, we were doing some stuff with different kinds of paper and I've had this for like forever. So we're going to use some of it. I also have, not those, I also have this empty box from my K-Cut machine. Now, I love particularly, by the way, this brand of coffee, emeralds, Big Easy Bold by Emeril Lagasse. It's a very dark roast coffee. I love it. Anyway, this is the empty box that comes in and I was looking at it and thinking, hmm, you know, it kind of reminds me of a magazine storage box up for it's got this top on it. And I wondered, will my notebooks fit in there for the year? By Golly, they will. So we're going to make this a storage box for my notebooks. And this spine part is the part that will show on the bookshelf. So we're going to decorate the box. And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to cover it with my brown paper. So I'm going to do that and I'll be right back. OK, our box is covered in paper and still drying right here. And we're going to do some more to it, but it's got to dry completely. In the meantime, I'm looking for what I'm going to put on the box on the spine side that's going to face out of the bookshelf. And I have a few options. I have these spring lock metal labor label holders. They're intended for the spine of a binder. I don't think they made them make them anymore. I want to say I got this box of them on Etsy, but I actually think I found a whole box of them on eBay. You have to kind of search listings of vintage things. And I found a whole entire brand new unused vintage box of them. They're pretty cool and they have these springs. It would just slide over the end of the box. And that might work and I may use them. But again, they're spring lock metal label holders. So if you just search for that, you might find it. I've had them in my stash for a while, but I do still still see them occasionally pop up in Etsy and eBay listings. I also have a drawer, a little drawer pull and a bunch of wood die cut pieces. And I actually think I might want to, again, this is still wet. I might want to put this pull here. And then a couple of these die cuts layered like that and then just the year 2018 on the edge. I actually think I'm going to do that. The label holder would look nice. It's a good alternative, but I don't think it's what I want to put on here. So you can see the label holder would work, too. So it just depends on what you want. And these are all things I have for my stash, so I'm just giving you options. Let's put this back over here so it can dry more. So I like this. This is the wrong color. I do not want this to be this color. So what we're going to do is take this and put these away. And I'm going to get out some alcohol ink of which I have it's another dig in the dark thing because I've got a lot of it, so we might as well use it, right? All right. So I have a bunch of different colors. I want it to be pretty dark. So I think what I'm going to do, this is I'm going to just put a bunch of different colors of alcohol ink on it. A few drops here and there. I want to just darken it up. That was what color was that? Pebble alcohol ink is a really easy way to color metal, and I'm probably going to let it dry and also rub some paint on there or some metallic rub or something. So we're going to distress this little handle a bit. I may do something to the lighter of these wood pieces, too. And I'm going to do that and I'll be right back. OK, guys, good morning, crafting in my pajamas. Sorry. So it's the next morning and our box is dry. All the paper and glue and everything is dry. And it looks pretty good. We're not done yet, of course. Got my morning coffee. How about you need more of that? OK. Again, with the theme, digging in the dark for me, digging in the dark recesses of my art room using up this old bottle of collage, Paj, which is a deco Paj glue, which I'm actually not sure if it's actually collage Paj collage Paj. It could be Elmer's. I'm not actually sure what's in this bottle. I do know I have one of these that I was putting Elmer's in. I don't know if it's this one or not. I don't know. But anyway, it's old glue. Using hardware parts we had and didn't this handle turn out great. I love the color that turned out. The little wooden pieces using up this treasure gold metallic rub. I have two colors here. These are from the dark recesses underneath my table. I have indigo and rose quartz and the paper. Now we're going to do some inking on this box. So I want to just kind of bring out the texture of the crumpled paper that's on the box. Also, continue to disguise the box itself. I don't mind if a little bit of this shows, but, you know, add some more layers so it's less obvious before we're done. And to do that, we're going to ink it. Now, I'm really into right now inking with these or makeup brushes from Wish. I've got a bunch of them and I try to use like one for each color family, you know, one for brown, one for blues, one for greens, that kind of thing. So I have a bunch of these. I have some other ones I've tried over the last year that are from different places. These are from the Target Clearance Isle. I don't remember where these are from. These might be from Daiso, these gold ones. What I've discovered is I really like the brushes with the short bristles for this. Makeup brushes work great. These were like a dollar a piece. They were really cheap. This one is the only one of these long handled ones that I really like. So, but I really like these short handled ones. They're my favorite. So we're going to keep all the pink ones. As I'm doing this, I'm purging. Last week's prompt was use it or lose it. So I'm taking this opportunity of digging in the dark to get rid of stuff I'm not using. Put that on the other table. I also purged some stamp pads because I had a lot in the drawer, some of which I haven't used in literally in two or three years. They're still juicy, but I don't use them. So they're going away. I do have a whole set of delusions, the little stamping spots. They work great for me when I want to add color. Mostly I just use black and brown and I have a few different ones that I love. I'm keeping the rest of the pads are going away, including some color ones, because really when I want color, I just go for these distress ink ones. So that all being said, we're going to use our altered hardware as a inspiration for what we're going to do on here. So I'm going to speed through the process and I'll be right back. Okay guys, as you saw, more digging in the dark recesses of my art room, I have loads of golden fluid acrylics. Let's use them. They're not going to last forever. So I took a little bit of each one of these colors. I have Titan Buff and Raw Umber and I watered them down a little bit so I could do some splatters. So this is how our box looks. I didn't do the bottom because nobody's ever going to see the bottom. Yeah? So I love that. What I want to do next because the collage page glue leaves things a bit on the sticky side. So what we're going to do is take some wax and a paper towel and we're going to wax the whole thing with a little bit of coating of wax. Some of the ink in paint may not be completely dry, but that's okay. So it may smear a little bit, but that's okay because we want kind of a distress book anyway. And this is going to be shiny at first until the wax dries. This is Daddy Van's Bees Wax. It's a furniture polish. Most of us who do mixed media use it for this sort of thing. It's fairly inexpensive. You can get it at Amazon. It is Bees Wax. It doesn't have any chemicals in it. Slippery. That's what you could tell. Let's do the bottom because I don't want it to stick to the bookshelf. That would be bad. And I'm kind of doing this on this little piece of paper because I'm at the same time just stressing this piece of paper and I can use that for collage fodder or journal pages or something later. Okay. So that's that. So that takes the sticky off. So whether you're working with journal pages or something like this, if you've used some kind of collage glue or some of the gloss mediums or heavy gel mediums, they dry well and they stick anything down but they stay sticky. So you want to put some wax on there. It works great in your journal pages. Okay. So now we have that. So now the first thing, next thing we want to do is I want to put the handle on first. I do think I'm going to put a little bit of glue down there. So I'm going to grab some E6000. Should have done it before I stuck that brad in, but you know, my insight's always 2020, right? Brads are not really holding the handle in place, the E6000 is, because these brads are cute, but they're real short, but you know, we have to use them because they're cute. Okay, got it on. Woo-hoo. Okay. So the next thing I'm going to do before I do anything else, I'm going to take a piece of masking tape and I'm going to just put it over the little ends of the brads inside the box to just keep them sort of covered in first. Hey guys, all righty. So this week our prompt was dig in the dark and whether you're taking it literally as I did and digging into the dark recesses of your art room to use products, pieces and parts, maybe half finished products to create something new and unique or you're taking it less literally and maybe you're mentally digging in the dark recesses of your mind, your soul, your spiritual being and letting go of those things that are not serving you anymore. Whatever it is, I want you to think about it. Don't be afraid to take your own unique spin on it. We would love to see what you do and if you have any questions, comments or concerns, let us know in the Facebook group. This is part of the Facebook group my creative year. If you're not a member of that group and you would like to be, the link is in, and you're watching this on YouTube, the link's in the description below. But the most important thing is to do what feels right to you. Cindy and Ann will be following in the weeks to come with their own unique take on the prompt and occasionally you'll see videos from our other teachers, Lisa and Ian and even when we all have the same idea we have completely different ways of doing things. So I look forward to seeing what they and you come up with. The most important thing of course is to go out and have a great day, do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.