 Hi everyone. Mary here at Espresso Press Design. Welcome. Happy season. Merry Christmas and happy new year. Today we're gonna do something very different but first I'm gonna do a little show-and-tell that will be leading up to the project and I'm gonna show you a couple things I made and a couple very nice things I got for Christmas. So I guess first I'll do the last of my Christmas projects which I have finally had time to sit down with my glitter glue and I've been making, if you're gonna see that shine or not, probably not. Probably if I turn my lamp over here you might. So anyway these are my last Christmas projects. These are some that I made for gifts that went for my daughter because it looks like our cat and this one was for my husband. Originally I was going to take some family heirloom Christmas cards but I couldn't bring myself to cut them up and that kind of doesn't make any sense because this way you can enjoy them on the tree and other words they're sitting in a box but I don't know I just couldn't bring myself to cut them up you know some of those people are no longer with us and I don't know I just couldn't do it. So I got a new corner chopper, make perfect corners for tags and labels. I got my button dies that were on my wish list like forever and this is the paper that my husband wrapped everything in very nicely and that immediately went to my stash and so I made some buttons on, played with my stuff on Christmas Day. Let me get rid of this. Where can I put it? Just bump it over here. So then I made some paper. I've been wanting to make paper for a long time and I finally got around to doing it but you know what I am not going to do this again in the winter. It took forever. Some of them are still drying but I wanted to dye it. Look at the flecks in there. Hopefully you can see them. Very pretty. I wanted to dye it but once I saw I got gray. I didn't think it would come out as nice as I hoped and I didn't want to get the root stain all over my laundry room so I just left it natural. So that leads me to our project and I hope I'm not taking too much of your time. I used to be a watercolor artist and people always say why did you quit? Why did you quit? Well a number of reasons but I had a child. I was a painter, drawing for 30 years. I sold my paintings, I entered shows, all that stuff and then I had a child and that wasn't the only reason but I just wasn't progressing anymore and it kind of got frustrating. These are for a while I went on to acrylics and it just got frustrating that I wasn't progressing. This is an illustration I did. This is probably my masterpiece so I don't know. Hopefully you can see these I don't know but anyway these are some Christmas cards I did. I used to also do pen and ink and I drew people's houses but and this is just some covers I did another graphic design work. This is a painting that went to my husband's cousin who recently died but anyway the point is I've been liking around sketchbooks since I was 16. We had a flood I lost a lot of paintings that's why I'm showing you well that's easier but a lot of paintings in that book I lost so I just gave it up. Maybe someday my old age I'll go back to it but that leads me to today's project and I was looking around I have tons of in the vast territory that is my basement I have tons of sketchbooks filled with all kinds of things as I was looking around I found these line of cuts line of prints that someone gave me in high school and I can't remember who it was these are over 40 years old so that's my point I've had so much stuff just sitting around and it's time to lessen lessen the clutter and like I said I've been lugging around sketchbooks since I was maybe probably even 14 I took in addition to art school and high school I took at least ten years of classes various classes so I'm sure everyone has stuff like this lying around these in particular are my daughters and I have been walking across walking past them every day so I thought well you know what now's a good time to turn these into some ATC backgrounds so that's what we're gonna do today and I found a great artist I think her name is Ellen Vargas and I we are going to do a technique that she wrote about I'm not gonna cut them up but you will need some kind of background I'm gonna explain what she did since mine are already painted I'm just using this this is stuff I found it was my daughter's just on sketch paper and I'm just going to use that so you'll need some stamps hopefully some permanent ink if you are going to go over it with water and you'll need some collage water and you'll need either acrylic or watercolor I am going to use watercolor because I really didn't feel like messing around with acrylic so what you're gonna do here's a few cutoffs you're gonna choose a few stamps used this one this one today I think I'm going to use something different I might still use this one so what you're gonna do is you're gonna get your first stamp and she had one that was kind of pattern and it had fine lines so that's why it chose that one and what we're gonna do is we're just gonna make a background I'm using black she used black I think I'm gonna use this one today instead of the other one you're just gonna go randomly cross your page make a pattern with your first stamp and as I'm looking at this I probably want to turn it as I go really don't care it's perfect okay that's good for that one and then you're going to choose a second stamp I think a moment what might go well with this I think I'm gonna choose this one again and a second color I chose red and orange oh wait a minute the next set for her was painting over with a brayer and acrylic so I'm just going to add some a little more color with some hopefully not too wet watercolor and I don't even have any water here to clean my brush so hopefully this dries quickly enough so that and I just made you know I just made another pattern actually I think I just did like little squares because I filled in I filled in the frame of that so I just went along and did another little pattern it's a more paint but you do whatever you want she pretty much had a range of colors and then she just braired because that's dry brush move on faster this is totally different but another reason all my Christmas stuff is put away and I just really wanted to do something different and then making another tag or something you gave my daughter her book I made her some pockets and a little bag to put her collars stuff in I'm not going to cut these up but you'll see at the end so then this is the second stamp and the second color I think I will choose orange again it's a color I really use see how these patterns go together and then she did her second pattern with different color I think I also use some red which I love red I rarely get to use it so down here randomly if I had a bright green I'd probably add that but I don't I kind of want to say bright purple I'm just not I love lilac a lot of purple person so go with red and you can do whatever you want for your background you can bring in some gesso I plan on I plan on reducing all these random drawings and things to either collage father or bases backgrounds pages junk because it's just like I said I've been walking this has been sitting on top the pile of my sketch books and I have another whole box of little drawings and things she did when she was little and they're also I couldn't find it or I would have gone in there today because as I wanted to okay I think that looks good now on to the next step which I'll explain the next step is adding some collage and what happened was I went to print some of my jelly print digital and I don't have enough ink apparent yellow apparently that my printer is not working and that happened I ordered some I knew I would be ordering some and and then the next time I printed it didn't work so I think I don't have enough yellow so I had to dig around looking for collage material because the next step is pasting so I got a bunch of stuff some I made my own this is the only one that and it didn't print right this is all supposed to be red you can see the streaks but I used some of it anyway I got in my paper and started looking for papers that might work so that's the next this is probably too busy that might actually work I think I'm gonna stick with I might have to take some of these dots but I think I'm gonna stick with this smaller stuff so let me just choose I think I kind of like these two it's too much maybe some of this one and of course I couldn't I couldn't avoid doing some letters maybe I'll add a little of this okay let me get this first I get a ruler here this is my tear ruler I mean it works usually works great once you get it firmly down made from an aluminum foil package and this is way out of my usual zone that's for sure it's using white and these bright colors I think a touch of that and there might not be too bad squares 27 since I'm not going to cut these I think we'll be okay so that reminds me I was really surprised that my printer ink is half the price of when I first bought my printer I have an echo tank and I used glue because I want to make sure these are really stuck when I go through the cutter by the way I got a guillotine a small one I still have to get a large one but I'm very happy to not be using not having to be using the paper trimmer so much I've been practicing and it cuts very precise self-sharpening very happy about because they go through blades like crazy and I've wanted a guillotine for a long time it was just you know finding one that people a lot of good reviews so anyway my ink for four bottles it's only $55 this is the first time I've actually had to buy ink for a year and eight months and I have printed hundreds if not thousands of pages and I'm very happy with my echo tank I said it many times I don't really like the presentation paper but if I want something a little nicer I just print on cardstock bright white cardstock and I find if you can get as a bright the brightest paper you can find the quality isn't like an Epson professional printer because it's echo tank is meant to be a workhorse color printer so I've seen a lot of people comment that it doesn't live up to Epson quality but on presentation paper really don't I mean for a home printer it's pretty good I like the quality of laser printers but I do not like the I don't like the paper I don't like that glossy finish I don't know if they have a mat but I used to just to save money I used to send my print I used to send my print jobs out kind of dying to use these dots a little strip here and I think what I'm going to do is make some circles I just want to go with it a little jagged squares and then when she after she collage she went in with a marker and she did marks and things like that thick black marker here at this table so I'm not going to do that of course you can add whatever you want I'll go with five when I got when I began cutting these apart I began to see that I didn't have enough I just thought that's okay because well when she cut hers up they were kind of finished ATC cards but I plan on or just using these for backgrounds so I can do more on top and they'll also need backed by the way this is two then one two three four six I should do another strip of glue seven of that another strip of glue somewhere three three seven I'm trying to stick with odd numbers here put one of these off the page so I hope everyone had a very nice Christmas we had a blizzard and then it got extremely cold but today is down right balmy I think it's 18 degrees but I'm very grateful that we didn't lose power like a lot of people did that would have been oh boy that would have just cacked off my ear with a bang we took our little kitty in and he had been he went for his well after the first phone call checkup he was walking all week you know I thought for sure when he went in she was going to say he's good and now he got two more weeks of antibiotics and he might have to get more incisions because apparently according to her there's not supposed to be a bump there even though to me it just looked like it looked like if you were looking at your own knee no that's not exactly flat according to her it's supposed to be flat so ordered this stuff called eczema which supposedly it's safe for cats and they use it on horses and everything and dogs and supposedly it's a drawing self and I honestly do not see why it is still building up fluid and why he just doesn't absorb it so that's pretty much it I think I'm gonna do five of these just because I want to make sure I have some collage everywhere when I cut it and I will flip through these so you can see for yourself where my stat go okay there it is but I think this is gonna be a lot of fun and if my ink doesn't come maybe next week maybe next week we'll just be doing some ATC ATC making here okay so ATC two and a half by three and a half I'm gonna chop this up but not while you're here so all that was nice it has a circle that would have some that one has some that would have some that would have some this one barely has any so that one is definitely going to need some decorating that one has some that was nice so you can see these kind of are resembling what she did so I wanted to point that out and I will put a link to the blog article so you can see what she did as well and then you can try it for yourself okay we are at 42 oh my okay I hope you stick around that for that long but just have a play this is my well this was supposed to be a day off but this was fun so it's like a day off I'll see you next time everyone and we'll do something Merry Christmas again happy new year thank you for stopping by and thank you for your time have a great week bye