 Alright, guys. Welcome to another episode, albeit a very short one. I've used it or lose it. This month hasn't been a great month for using things up. There has been too much stuff in my personal life with my parents and other things going on for me to do a whole bunch of art. That being said, I am still doing my daily practice art and I did get some paper making in this last month in April. So I was able to use up these were, I think, from Wish or Ali Express. I don't remember. They were full of dried flowers and I used all of them up making paper. This also had, what did this have in it? Originally it had pins in it but I think when I pulled it out of my stash it had dried flowers or something in it and I used all that up too. So I'm going through my stash of nature things and I just filmed a couple of different journal pages in which I used up some of this. Now this is just a homemade folder full of DIY dried flowers and bark and things. I do have a habit of collecting things out on my walks and then I literally just take them home and stick them in between book pages and when they're dry they go in here. Okay. And then I use them in different kinds of artwork, usually journal pages. And so then I have that. So I've been using this although it's still like really full and puffy. I have been going through this and using this up. But also stickers like so many stickers. This is just a teeny tiny fraction. I forget all the time to save like the little sticker backings to like show you guys. I should just for one month try to remind myself maybe even just a week to save every little like sticker backing so I can just show you. But every night I do journaling and every night I go through so many stickers. Sticker books, little sticker books, medium sticker books, sheets of stickers, printed stickers, store bought like all kinds. And so I've gone through a lot of stickers to the point where if I see something interesting that I want to buy or create for myself, I actually feel kind of justified doing that because I've gone through so much of the old stuff and gotten used it up, not gotten rid of, but used it up that I feel OK by buying a few new things from my stash. Now this particular one I did not know washi tape got old. But I guess that is a thing. I read that after I stuck this in here and after I've logged about it. But this tape will not come off cleanly to like save your life. I guess it's really old or bad tape or I just I think it's been like this since I bought it to be honest with you. Although like I said, there are some videos out there that show that tape gets old. But this thing just like that, like all the time. I'm just I've had it for so long. There is kind of a lot of tape on their lap. I'm done with it and just needs to go away. It's going in the round file. I think I had to say so. Hey, guys, I'm going to interject here in my endless rambling about use it or lose it from April and bring you sort of a little tutorial idea that has occurred to me to do. And I've been kind of doing off camera and haven't said anything about it. And I should include it in this video. And for one thing, it'll make the video more interesting because I didn't have a lot to say. It's I've been distracted by life and so haven't had a chance to really focus on trying to use stuff up anyway. I have not too many sprays. I don't have too many of them because I find them fabulous and yet endlessly frustrating with the clogging of the spray nozzle situation that anybody who's used these knows and it doesn't matter the brand. These happen to be Marabu mixed media art sprays. I do like the Marabu one in particular, but they all have the same clogging problem. Some are worse than others. And I find them endlessly frustrating. So I just generally don't have a lot of them in my stash of stuff. So I really want to use up what I have. I may replace them at some point with newer fresh bottles. I'm glad they don't come in a bigger bottle because this big this bottle is hard for me to use up for the nozzle gets clogged as it is. Somebody told me a long time ago, if you do this new spray, I'm upside down and until it stops spraying that empties out the nozzle so then it stays cleaner. Of course, they didn't learn that until half of my stuff was already clogged. So I tend to just save spray bottles from other things and then reuse them for something like this and then I throw it away. Or if I can't, I wash it out. But that generally I just throw it away anyway. So one of the couple ways I am going to be using them up and I did pull a few ink colors out that I think I want to use with these because I want to do rainbow is I have these. So these are this is the Avery label paper. This is Avery label paper scraps. It is from some sticker making I did yesterday. And I think it's this is the full sheet label number. Does that say it's really a little doesn't say 83 64 maybe. But it's the full sheet label. Anyway, after I was done making labels and cutting them up, these were the scraps that were left over and I almost threw them away. But I decided to spray them with some of the ink colors that I have and see what happened and I let them dry. And I got this fabulous sort of stickery washy tape kind of stuff. I've already used it in my journals last night. And I thought I need to make more of that intentionally. And also I wonder if I could dye some cheese cloth to use not only in my journals, but in some slow stitch projects like I these are acrylic. These aren't a water soluble spray, so they should stay really well, even if it did maybe get wet. And so this is just plain white cheese cloth like from the grocery store. I'm going to do it in a couple of layers. These are totally not the scissors to do. Use that because those are not fabric scissors and those do not want to cut this. There we go. See what different scissors make. So I'm going to cut some strips that fit inside my cookie sheet. Now, this is cheese cloth, so it should go all the way through. These cookie cookie sheets are from the Dollar Tree. If you're going to use them for something like this in the art room, again, of course, you don't want to then ever use them for food and don't spend a lot on the cookie sheet. The cheap ones work just fine. I've had these quite a while and some of them I've had for years. They're not rusty or anything, so that's probably a lot. And I don't bother to try to clean them because that'll add its own kind of interest to the piece. I'm going to get this wet in some water because this is a cheesecloth, it's basically a cotton fabric. And if it's wet with water, it should do some wicking through all the way through. And you should be able to use that kind of quite a bit of the inks to really coat the cheesecloth. Now, one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put one of these sheets of label paper at the bottom. So any ink that goes all the way through the cheesecloth should go straight through to the label paper. OK, more water. All right, so we're going to start. I want to do a rainbow. I said that, right? So Roy G. Viv. Red. Oh, I've got these backwards. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo violet. I don't have quite the right colors, but we're going to use what we have. That was kind of purple, but that's OK. We're going to go with it. It's too late now. I see that one's already. It's already like let's open it and see if we can pour some out. I do like the idea of the spray inks, but yeah, they drive me crazy on a good day. These are just ink ink. These are this is FW prolescent ink. I also have some Bombay ink. I do have a giant. This one doesn't want to open. I have a giant bin of ink, so they need to get used up. They do dry up in the jar. I do have some. I've had so long that they've dried it in the jar. That one is pearlescent. Not that you would know, because none of the pearls came out there with that first pour, because I forgot to shake it. This is going to be a funny rainbow because that purple color should be at the end. It's OK. I don't care. It's fine. It's just this is a brand new spray nozzle. It's already clogged. And the one that I thought was purple, I bet you, is red. At the end, that's OK. I don't know why I have these two blue colors, because they're nearly identical. Oh, no, that one is more red than this one. This one's dark. OK, I'm going to spray. I'm going to grab some gloves. So I turned the fabric over. Put a little bit on the back side so you can get a good amount of color, hopefully all the way through. And this will be great because I'm going to use up a bunch of stuff. And as long as I have a little bit left over to do paper, that works. That one's empty. Again, I don't know why I have two colors with nearly identical blue, but OK. I'll put some more of the orange because I want to use it up. So that's done. Three bottles of ink, one bottle of spray. And we are going to just then you would just let this soak. Let's see. What is that? Yeah, look at that. OK, so we've used up three bottles of ink, the green spray. We are going to take this tray totally carefully. Lift up the whole shebang and let it drip. But you can't see too much of the camera. I didn't even get it wet first. So just lay it in there and have it soak up a bunch of the extra ink and just distress a bunch of cheesecloth. Because why not? Why not? Now I could grab another bottle of ink. Some of these inks I have had so long, you guys. So long. OK, this one might be almost completely dried out. So let's use that one. This is another one of the FW pearlescent inks. Oh, yeah, there's some clumpy bits at the bottom, but it's empty now. I'm going to grab some of this label paper. I'm going to just put it down here at the bottom to catch some of this stuff. Yeah, and I found with more of this label paper, I end up using the back as well as the paper actual front and gluing it down. The sort of slick back paper actually glues down really well with a glue stick. What number did I see the label paper was before? It's eighty four sixty five. That's every label paper, eighty four sixty five. And it's a full sheet of sticky paper. So this is the paper part, the matte paper finish part. And then this is the back slick slick part that you pull off to reveal the sticky. Now I found again that if you get ink or paint on the back side, of course, it doesn't want to come off now. Even though this is kind of slick and waxy, if you use a good glue or a good glue stick, it sticks down just fine. So for these, I'm going to just do this. We'll see if these spray because I don't think all of these want to spray. I think I think at least one of them is clogged. But we'll find out. I'm going to put two. I'm running out of paper. I'm going to need to get some more. OK, we're going to start with the pink. It's really not doing well. That's just water, by the way. They just they don't want to spray. And then that happens. That's why I had gloves on. Gloves are back on. I also have some card stock, some just plain white office supply store card stock. I think we're going to get out some of those two. And I thought I must have 20 or 30 of these cookie sheets. Again, they're from Dollar Tree, so they were a dollar each. And they're sort of invaluable, to be honest, in the art space. So I'm going to do the same thing. Maybe this is spritzer water. This pink one is kind of clogged. So I'm going to just do that. Throw the top away, because my idea is I just leave it all up. Water. Oops, water. Pink one's gone. I don't know what color this is. Aubergine, which is a red purple. And just make some sort of abstract dyed papers. I mean, you're going to be able to use these in your artwork. That's collage paper. You could make greeting cards out of them. I like the idea of spraying, because it's just that. I don't know, for me, they're just not practical. Probably because I don't use them every day. And I'm really bad about cleaning the nozzles and like all of that stuff. Just kind of makes me crazy. This is the other blue, which is, I guess, more of a blue blue, but they're pretty close. And then this is the last one. So if I do something like this and I just make a point of grabbing a few bottles every now and then and make some stickers with it or some paper, label paper or something, like before I know it, the stash won't be nearly as big and ridiculous the way it is right now. Plus, I have some homemade papers to do fun art stuff with, which I'm really enjoying right now. So I don't know about you, but I know for me this is perfect. So get out a few of those inky type mediums this month that you haven't been using and are just sitting drying up in a basket somewhere and use them, get them out and use them up. Make yourself some interesting paper or stickers and see what you can do. I would love to know what you're doing. Please do share if you're in one of my Facebook groups or tag me in a post, maybe on Instagram, use it or lose it. I know you all have stuff in your stash like I do that you have been hoarding for a long time. Let's get it out, use it up. And if we've decided it no longer speaks to us anymore, it never did speak to us, let it go. Let it go to somebody who will use it. Or if it's just a bad product, just toss it out. All right, I hope that gives you some ideas or encouragement. And I would love if you have ways of using stuff up to start a conversation either here in the comments of the video or if you're a member of one of my Facebook groups over there. Let's start a conversation. New ideas, projects, techniques that we can start or we can do to use up some of what we've been hoarding. Yes. All right. If you want to find said Facebook groups, support the free content here on YouTube or over in the groups. By the Artfomis I've designed for the Artfomis company, become a student in the class of teaching with Bay of Grubb and some other teachers in June. The links for all that stuff are in the video description. Most of them are in the link tree list of links, but it's all down there. Click on a few things, look around. If you have questions, comments or concerns, leave them down below. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. And please stay safe, stay healthy, stay creative and go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll see you later. Bye, guys.