 Hello artists and visitors to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm bringing you something I'm so excited about. It's a do-it-yourself pastel painting storage album. Now before I forget I would love it if you would subscribe to my channel and press the little bell icon to be notified when I post more videos. Now this could work for other mediums as well such as charcoal pencil sketches watercolor but for the pastel artist world we find it often kind of hard to find ways to store our somewhat vulnerable pastel paintings. I've been playing around with a do-it-yourself painting storage album system for a while and I was recently motivated to be able to create this because of something we had in my Patreon group called 12 Days of Healing. Because of our recent situation with the coronavirus a lot of people staying at home we needed a lot of healing so I presented this opportunity and my patrons have blown me away by their beautiful artwork they have submitted. I have done 12 paintings and they have used the videos that I've created to be able to create the paintings themselves and the concept is for healing. It's been a crazy time lately and again this is an album that I have just for my patrons to post their work from the videos and it's just absolutely wonderful. I feel like a mama hen you know I want to show all of them and before you know it I'll be just like spending this whole video showing off their artwork. Amazing work so if you'd like to become a patron you can do so at patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins for lots more fun it's a great group and they will be winning a prize. I'm gonna have some prize winners later this week from their submissions. So again if you'd like to become a patron it's only five dollars a month and you can cancel it anytime. Alright let's get started making our own do-it-yourself I should say painting storage album again you could use it for different mediums but it's really special for pastel artists because of the protection element. Let's do it. Here are the things that you will need to make your own album for original pastel paintings. Now I have not attached this little title that I'm going to put on it title design but basically it's an advantage to have Photoshop because I was able to create this for this particular album and but you could do whatever you need. Now I'm gonna show you everything and then I will be showing you how I adhere this which is the same way that I adhered this paper to the cardboard. So the things that you will need to make your own album will be cardboard for these outer pages here. This is just some cardboard I literally got off of the back of one of my art tablets or pads that I had. I had a pad of like some acrylic paper actually and I noticed it was big the size I needed and so I cut me up two pieces of that. You'll need a front and a back. To cut the cardboard because it's rather thick I use a device that I use often to cut my foam board, matte board. It's called a Logan cutter and I know there are various other tools to do this but the one I use is model 701-1. I also use a paper cutter for cutting the interior pages of this book to keep nice crisp edges. Front and a back and you will size obviously the size of your art album accordingly to whatever paintings you have. Now I had strategically planned for my paintings during this 12 days of healing that we had to all be around five by five. The only painting that wasn't close to those dimensions was the very last one because I did a lesson with a student and it would have been too small. So I have all 11 paintings in this little album and the interior pages because they're pastel paintings and they're a bit more vulnerable than acrylic or oil paints or watercolor is we need protection for it. So you also will need, I'll get to the pages of this first, you also will need pieces of glassine paper. Now I get my glassine from clearbags.com I typically get these 11 by 14 sheets. I don't do a lot of work bigger than 11 by 14 but I have a roll that's bigger in case I need it. That's the that's the number if you need it but I have heard and I'm going to use this technique soon that tracing paper if you get acid-free tracing paper it works the same as this for this purpose okay and it's a little bit cheaper. Alright so obviously we need the glassine, we need the cardboard, we're also going to need the black pages. I like black, you could use regular white drawing paper, anything that's acid-free you can use for your pages and this is the black drawing paper that I used. It's a Kanson black drawing paper 9 by 12 and I actually use it to paint on even though with pastel painting we typically like sanded surfaces. I kind of like this black surface sometimes I like using new pastels and other pastels on it. So I had some of this already but it's a great paper to use for this purpose or any black acid-free drawing paper. Also to tape the edges here you will need I mean if you're using black paper you'll need the black tape. If you're using white paper you'll need the white artist tape so I just have the little half-inch black artist tape I'll show a picture of that to adhere the paintings to this. Now what I do for that is I put a little piece of tape on the back here is the artist tape and what I do is I turn the painting over I'm gonna get one and show you. This is a little pear painting that I did on some watercolor paper and I'm gonna show you as an example or demonstration on this one how I do the artist tape. I wanted to do a quick voice over here to let you know why I'm using the half-inch artist tape rather than some of the wider ones. It's because you only have so much room between your painting and the edge of the paper and the thinner tapes are better. Now I'm laying down a piece of glassing paper here. The reason you use the glassing paper to protect is it kind of helps things from smudging and it protects your work in between the pages. So what I do is I basically just take in a lot of pastel papers watercolor papers can kind of curl so what I do is I take the artist tape about the size I go a little bit shorter about the size of the painting. I like to cut it rather than tear it so it has a clean edge presentation really I'm learning is everything and what I do I kind of go to where the edge of the painting is and I come down about halfway and I tape it and I flatten the painting out when I do that so that it'll lay more flat. Then I do the same thing on the bottom. You get better at this the more you do it about like it eyeing things like that. Then after you do that of course it's probably gonna stick to whatever surface you had. Then what I do when I put it in the book if it was on a black page let me get the black paper let's say this was the page of your book is I basically lay it place it where I want it and I do the same thing with the artist tape but what you want to do is you want to make sure on this one that you go just a little bit longer because I'll show you in just a second why because you don't want any of this tape exposed the one that's facing up and the reason for that is because it will stick to your little glassing pages that are that are protecting the painting so I try to come down a little bit over it I didn't do a real good one there but we'll just leave it for this purpose a little bit over again so I don't have any of that sticky stuff showing here because otherwise your little glassing pages are going to stick to that when you try to reveal it so that's really how I I would do the same thing to the bottom of course same thing so that's how I adhere the painting safely to the pages within the book all right so other than your black painting tape and your black pages and or white whatever you choose your sheets of glassing or tracing paper in between each page okay nice and safe again I'll have a video of the presentation of this it's just such a nice presentation oh and if anything gets on the back like here you can use a kneaded eraser this is a kneaded eraser that you can buy at an art supply store it's spelled K-N-E-A-D-E-D and they're really great erasers for pastel for removing pastel in areas that you don't want it see it just took that right up they're neat because you can stretch them when you stretch them you kind of you're cleaning it actually you're moving the dirt around or the residue but they work really great you see that just came right up all right so other than the glassing the paintings the tape the black pages I'm gonna go back to the beginning of the book and the cardboard we also need how did I how did I do this with this cardboard I mean obviously this cardboard didn't look that nice it was just a plain kind of a gray piece of cardboard that I had so what I did again you want to cut it to fit what I did and I'll talk about more of the sizing in a minute what I did is I got some of this French prep designer paper I just got this from Walmart I keep some of these things of paper they're just so pretty sometimes to wrap paintings in before I ship them to a customer presentation is just it means so much to your client when you make it look presentable these I get various different designs I like this one I think this is pretty neat but they only work for my smaller paintings I have to do something different for bigger paintings but I thought this would be neat to cover the cardboard of my little album for my original painting display and I liked this I didn't have enough pages to do this design on all four but I had a companion color that worked well so I decided to do this pattern on the outsides and the other pattern on the insides alright so how did I do that how did I get that to stick on that well I'm gonna show you by the same method I'm gonna use to get my little title to stick on the front of this album what I use is just some self-adhesive spray okay or spray adhesive I should say this is just one that's made by Elmer's company and it's kind of like spray spray paint you know you shake it up and it works really well I am gonna take this outside to spray it but there's multiple different spray adhesives you can get and I like this one because it allows for repositioning if you get it wrong oh it's a little crooked you can peel it up I try to get it right the first time anyway just in case and it's fast tack and it dries clear okay so this is something that works well for adhering things to so what I did and I wish I had had a video of it but I I took my paper I actually cut the paper a little bit larger than the word I was putting it on and I didn't do it on all of them I learned that afterwards a little bit larger because once you just lay it on top and I wanted to make sure I got this pattern lined up right I could turn it over and use an exacto blade to trim the edges that way I know I didn't lay it down and expose anything here so that gives it a nice full coverage cut it a little bit larger spray adhesive on the back go outside to spray it spray it on the back then you can bring it back in and position it on your cardboard I did the same thing obviously for all four sides and now prior to doing that I actually went ahead and had my husband help me drill these holes a hole punch is not going to work on something this thick so I used a drill actually my husband's drill out in the garage just to drill the holes I knew I just wanted to position two holes I went an inch and a half in for two I knew that would be fine and I did that on both boards before I put the paper on and then literally once I had the paper on it I could feel where the hole was I just pushed in to make a little indention and I just took a pen or whatever and and completed the hole on both sides so then you have your boards ready okay and you have your holes punched and you've got your pages and so what I did I'm actually going to take mine apart so that you can see how this is done actually I may not take the whole thing apart because it takes a while to put this together what I did is I took pieces of twine just this twine because I thought it looked really organic and nice and to get easily the twine through the holes of the board and the pages I'm going to mention about the pages to hole punching those I took a piece of scotch tape just matte finish tape and I wrapped it around the edges you can choose to cut this off at the end when you're finished if you'd like if you think this is going to be a book where you're going to read ad pages or take pages out then you can leave it on I'm going to leave mine on because I don't think I'm going to sell the paintings out of this album because it was a special time a special memory and so I may not but again I'm planning on making more of these albums and I want to make an adjustable way an easy way to add and remove paintings because this is a neat way to just sell your artwork you can actually show this to clients you could have these at little shows you know you could sell it online and keep them in books to be nice and compact and but I wanted it removable in the future I plan to use little rings that are easier than the twine again this is a little prototype here but anyway so you basically just thread this through the holes and now let me on that note let me talk about this you've obviously just line up your glassine I have the the black pages are cut the same size as the board let's see what the size of my board is again this is going to have to be determined on your paintings and you may want to create some paintings with this idea in mind all right so this is the section on what size do I make my album again I with this idea in mind of presenting them all as one for this 12 days of healing challenge I made all of mine about five by five some are six by six some are a little larger so I knew I needed a notebook larger than the paintings and they needed to be large enough to give me room to tape down okay so I thought hmm if they're five by five I wanted to make it a little wider to give me room on the sides for punching the holes as well for example if I had my paintings so close to the edge over here I'd have to have my hole punched so close to the edge that it would be more vulnerable now in the future I do plan on putting some little supports on the glassing is probably going to be the most vulnerable for tearing if you I don't foresee opening this book over and over and over and over again so it's not like it's going to get used so much that it's that vulnerable but I do think pay whole supports will be good for that but again make your notebook wide enough to allow to put your painting over far enough for the hole punches okay so that is why I made my notebook it's eight by seven again a little wider than it is tall to allow for the hole punch so if you're doing you know whatever size you're doing give it about at least another inch on the side to allow for those hole punches so all of my pages the black drawing paper pages are the same size as the cover I may have done it just a tad lower not really there they're close to the same size but the glassing I have just a little bit smaller okay it's just a little bit shorter this way I didn't want the edges of the glassing sticking out but big enough to cover the painting okay so your drawing paper whether you use black or white will be the same size as your cover board your cover for your book and your glassing will be the same width but perhaps a little shorter in height now with the method that I used to bind the book I guess you could say with my little cute twine method in the future again I'm gonna start using some sort of ring system to make it easy but this was nice it looked nice make sure you don't tie this too tight you are not gonna be able if I tied this this tight you're gonna get you need to have room so that like if you're in the middle of the book so that it'll open up let me pull it real tight you can't really get the book open this way it bind you see how it's crimping and binding so you need to allow I'm just gonna loosen the whole thing up again you need to allow so that you can open it up and lay it flat like this see I actually need to give a little bit more room down here little bit more room on that to be able to really open that book up oh no actually I have it wider I just didn't pull it out so you see my point if you have it bound so tightly you can't open the book up and turn the pages okay oh also I didn't mention for the pages inside I obviously didn't have to use the drill like I did for the thick cardboard I just used a hole punch it was the correct size I did take a my glass scene because it's so thin I put like four or five pages together lined up where the holes needed to be and punched a few of them at a time instead of individually punching every single page each time okay so they're thin enough to do that and I did the drawing paper similarly by I think doing like two pages at a time if I did any more this is the drawing paper I used is a nice thickness it's not quite card stock but it's thicker than printer paper so anyway a hole punch works fine for creating the holes for this all right now let me show you I can't take you outside with me to spray this but I'm gonna spray the back of this and I'm going to adhere it to the front of my little album for a time of healing also I I'd like to mention that when you use the spray adhesive be careful with your hands already you can see I got it little tackiness on my fingers because this glue is sticky and it will stick to your fingers and it kind of makes it hard to work with now because I can't get underneath my camera there I'm gonna turn it a little sideways to adhere this now I'm noticing something here you guys may want to use I used a regular printer paper now I'm actually gonna I'm looking at this I'm gonna use card stock for this you see how the the glue is kind of showing through the paper so thin I was a little concerned about that now I was trying to cut corners and not have to do that but I'm actually gonna go do this with card stock I'm gonna print the same thing out okay so here is the do-over with card stock rather than regular paper you see there's no bleed through with the adhesive spray I'm gonna turn it sideways because I can't get underneath my camera like that and I'm just gonna eye it and it does help that my pattern of these little dots is here it helps me to line it up I like it kind of right there that looks nice once you get it on keep clean hands definitely when you do this and we just adhere it and looky there you've got a nice little album that you can present your book for something special like this moment I had with my patrons during the challenging time in our world in 2020 and how beautiful it is that art is healing and brings us life and joy so I hope you enjoyed this and I really think pastel artist will love this technique of creating a system to keep your painting safe also very quickly I'm gonna share a little bit about that cute little bracelet I had on right there throughout the video and it is a new design in our Monet Cafe bracelet series we have two new designs in a series called Earth colors and you can see why they literally look like soft pastels to me but what's so neat about these is these colorful stones are actually like little lava rocks I think that's the material they're made out of and they are for applying essential oils to them they soak in the essential oils and they smell so good there are two styles one is called hippie chick that's the ones with the beads alternating the colors alternate and the other is called gypsy girl with all of the stones in a row I'll have a link to the Etsy store of the designer that worked with me to create these bracelets in the about section of this video so hope you guys love that again please subscribe come back often and as always happy painting