 really tea room. Hey guys, how are you? I'm running very behind. Hang on. Okay, I've got my water. Got some paint. Well, I've got some water. It's not full. I told you I'm running very behind. I was going to make a cup of tea. I started doing other stuff. All right. Hope everybody's having a good morning. Looks like we need to zoom out just a little bit. Not too much. So I thought we would do a little still life this morning. I've been cleaning and rearranging things in my office. I'll post a picture to social media later, and I totally forgot to do any social media last night because that's just where my brain is right now. All right. I still have to label a couple of things because I move stuff around. Now, if I don't label it, I would never find anything. I thought we would do a little still life. I have these two pictures here that I took a while back last year, a while back. I have a box of like props I keep in my studio, and when I come across something interesting like this bouquet of sunflowers, I will, or one time I did cherries. I came across at the grocery store some really pretty cherries. Then I'll do like a photo shoot of like the miniature still lifes, and I'll save the photos. I'll also alter the photos in some apps, and I usually will put them in some sort of inspiration book side by side for future reference for still lifes. So I thought we would do a little still life this morning. I'm going to use one of these because they're out. These are actually extra that I need to get rid of. I might keep one, but I need to send these out to Happy Mail or something. These are not deco art products, so we won't discuss them this morning. This is just like a giant graphite crayon, and I'm going to use it to sketch. This is a 2B. It's like a giant stick of graphite. I hope you all had a great weekend. I'm just mapping in my shapes. Hey Phoebe, how are you? I was worried I was going to be very much later than I am because I got into cleaning out my pencils and pens, and I totally lost track of time you guys. Because you know that's what happens, right? We start looking at pretty shiny things, and you're like, oh wow, I was supposed to be on the air. Oops, there's another one here. Hey Gatana, how are you? We're going to use the Americana paints this morning. I'm just doing my sketch here. I'm using a graphite crayon, but you can use just any pencil. This is a 2B. It's like a giant stick of graphite. Just kind of do some rough sketching, messy sketching, right? I do lots of messy sketches. You all know that. I don't know if these two pictures are on my website or not. They may be. If they're not, I will post them. There is an inspiration photo page on my website, and if they're there, you can download them and you can do something from them. Oh nice. Surprise dates are always nice. Hey Christine. All right, so we've got some shapes mapped in, and I'm kind of, I'm pretty happy with that. I'm gonna, I am gonna do something here. Now, just because I have both the realistic photo and the altered one side by side doesn't mean I'm going to paint exactly to either one. I am going to do an artistic interpretation from both photos. Well, that's the idea anyway. We'll see how it turns out. I don't know. I need a palette. I'm so far behind. I don't even have that out. Let's see. Where's this palette? No worries. I was totally behind. I started sorting out my pens and pencils and stuff and talking to my daughter about if she wanted some stuff that I didn't want anymore because she does do some doodling and drawing and she did. And anyway, we started talking and yeah, I totally lost track of time. Okay, so now I'm going to pick colors here from my Americana paint. Hey, welcome from Greece. Wow. People are instant messaging me over Facebook, but I can't look right now. I can't do, I can't multitask anymore. I'm not good at it. Let's see. I'm trying to see what other colors I have that I want to use. We have white. Oh yeah, make sure you post that in Gatana. If you're in my Facebook group, A Life of Art and Self Expression, you should post a link to her channel over there. We can all show her some love and check her out. Okay, I think those are good colors, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. I'm winging it here. I will, after the broadcast, I'll post all the specific colors to the video in the description. These are just your Americana craft paints. This is Indian turquoise, foliage green, lemon yellow, paint gray, spiced pumpkin, not because there's a lot of orange in these sunflowers, but because I think I might want to add some of it to the yellow. White wash, which we're going to put right in the middle. And burnt umber. Hey, how are you? I'm glad I'm not the only one who's late this morning. I was, I was worried to be super late. I don't think we're going to need black. I think we're going to do without black. So I think these colors will work. Let's start with um, a filbert brush. Grab my rag. Oh, everybody's welcome. All right. So you, if you've seen me paint before, you know that the way I like to work, let's get the background done first so that then we can paint the focal point and we don't have to worry about trying to not mess up the focal point after we've gotten painted, gotten it painted by doing the background because that would suck. I do want a little bit of red. There's a little bit of red in the inspiration photo because of where I shot it in my kitchen. So we're going to put a little bit of red on here. This is a lizard crimson. All right. So first we're going to take a little bit of that red and we're going to put it here. Now if we lose some of our pencil lines, you know, we're okay with that. We're not going to treat him too preciously. And I'm using um, my inspiration photo as a guide. And again, somebody, if somebody is available to go look at my website and tell me if these photos are on there or not because I don't remember to be honest with you and it's been one of those mornings anyway. Um, that my website is my name, Gina B. Arons.com for those that don't know. So this is a white wash. I didn't really clean my brush off. I didn't, I didn't do more than, uh, wipe it off on the canvas here on my table. Oh, thank you. It's just a quick, quick pencil sketch. Nothing special. Thank you so much. So now I'm going to, I don't want it to be, Hey, Michelle. Oh, I'm glad you did, Michelle. I saw you and Cindy chatting, but I was doing this and I'm already like distracted because I was cleaning out my pencils and pens. I'll share with you and Cindy later. And no, I don't have anything to give away to you and Cindy because Becca took it. So sorry. Because you know, the one art thing she likes to do is doodle. So Oh good. You know, I ended up buying some for myself and I don't even really like working with napkins in my mixed media and I, they were too cute to turn up, turn down. So we're just working on the background. There's a shadow here because I had the jar sitting on a bamboo mat. So we're gonna, we're gonna just quickly, quickly put some of that in. Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah, I hope so too. I hope everybody's having a great week. Less than two weeks for me to be going to Alaska. I can't wait. Hey, Karen. Hey, Angie. We welcome everybody new and old alike. We're just here to have to share some art and have fun. That's what it should be about. No, it's actually these two photos. These are two photos I took of a still life. I had a still life photo shoot in my kitchen, which I do periodically. I have a collection of props, jars and vases and things. So if they're not on the website, I'll make sure that this afternoon they do get loaded. You guys can download them if you want to paint from them. I couldn't remember. And see, I just got paint on them. That's a right. All right, I'm going to grab some of the turquoise here. There's a little like turquoise right, right there somewhere. The Alaska trip is going to be so much fun and we're taking a cruise. So I've never been on a cruise ship before. So that's going to be fun. It's a little bit of green. I'm just tapping the brush in too. I'm making random marks with my brush. I really like an abstract sort of a look. Those of you who are new and don't know that about me. Those of you who have been watching for a while know that's what I like. So you won't be surprised. Under inspiration photos. Yeah, it should be, if it's there, it should be under inspiration photos. But I just couldn't remember if it was there or not. And I don't know if just one version of the photo is on there or both the original and the altered. I don't I don't remember. So just if just going to, you know, by this one here, we're just kind of mapping out the colors that we see. I've been doing lives for a while, Audrey. Hey, how are you? I've been doing YouTube lives not as long as I've been doing it on other places, but YouTube live is easier. And it benefits my channel, which is always nice. I'm going to make a little bit of a blue gray here. We're going to we're just working on a little still life. I'm working on the background here. I like to do my backgrounds first. And you're taking inspiration from the photo. You're not, you know, we're not looking to copy it because if we want an exact copy, that's what we have cameras for. Oh, good. I'm glad. You know, I was going to give some of these little canvases away and I've ended up keeping every single one of them that I've made. So I'm mixing my Indian turquoise a little bit with the paint gray. Now, if you took a picture like this that you want to try to paint, but you don't want to use the same colors, a tip for you to. Oh, you too, Angie, a tip for you is to print it in black and white. So you get the values of the different colors without the color. And then it's easier to not get distracted by what color the painting was in real life. I'm still using a pretty big brush. I do have other brushes here that will be switching out in just a minute. I'm just kind of getting a base coat on everything. Yeah, and who doesn't like making art together? And little still lives are fun, getting out of the space of like creating faces all the time. I know we all like doing faces, but, you know, do a little still life, paint a flower, you know, something like that. Yeah, it does get lonely just, you know, because we just spend a lot of time by ourselves painting, right? Yeah, I agree. Some of my very best friends do not live in the state of California. Do they, Michelle? So without the wonderful world of the internet, we'd never get together and share any artsy vibes. I'm going to switch to a smaller filbert brush. We're just, like I said, we're just putting in our base color right now. I'm going to put in some yellow. Now, yellow pigments, it seems like no matter the brand, no matter how expensive it is, and no matter the media, whether it's watercolor or acrylic, is a very sheer color. So if you don't want the background to show at all, you probably need to put some white on first and let it dry, and then it'll look more yellow. Oh, that's a good thing to do. Yeah, sometimes I have you guys playing one of your videos, playing in the background while I'm editing photos or something like that, or painting. Yeah, I, so this little book here, I keep, I have a lot of reference books in my studio. I have yet to ever throw one away. I still have all of my old idea and reference books from the days when I was making wedding dresses. I never throw anything like that away. And periodically, I take photos. I have photo sessions. So I have, and I can get it actually for you really quick. It's underneath my table. I have this little box here of props that I've picked up, like at the thrift store and things. And periodically when I'm out, maybe at the grocery store, I see a bunch of really pretty fruit, or I see a bunch of beautiful flowers. I'll pick them up and I'll use my small props to do photo shoots. And so that's what I did here with some sunflowers and a blue jar. And then I took the photo and I altered it in some apps that I have and created this version. And when I put them in my little notebooks, I usually put them side by side, and then I can use them as future reference to create paintings from. And I always put them in plastic sheet protectors because I tend to get them nerfed up using one of Shannon Green's words and get paint all over them. And I already did on the other side because I'm a messy artist, you know, I'm lazy and messy. So yeah, so and, you know, maybe I've been at an event and they have, well, for instance, last year we read a friend's wedding and they had this beautiful arrangement of flowers on the table. And of course, me being who I am and all of you out there will be able to get this because you're all creative like I am totally distracted by the flowers on the table totally not listening to the conversation or paying attention to where all the glasses of wine were because I ended up spilling one because I was taking pictures. And so I took these photos of the flower arrangements that I will be using at some point for photo reference totally spilled somebody's glass of wine as I was turning the flower arrangement around trying to get pictures because that's what I do. My middle name is not Grace or Patience. And those people who know me just shake their heads anymore at me when I do things like that. I do stuff like that all the time. So I'm always distracted everywhere I go by the world around me and taking pictures of something I think that can be used later for inspiration for a photo. I do that a lot. And I take almost all my photos before you ask. I know somebody will. I take almost all the photos with my cell phone. I don't often have the video camera with me. Yeah, I print them. So the ones that I really love I print. And I put in it some kind of notebook you can get little small photo albums at like Dollar Tree. You don't have to spend a lot. And I usually like the five this is five by seven. Yeah, and or four by six. I don't print them any smaller than that because it gets to be too small. And I don't print them bigger anymore either because then I have no room in my studio for my art supplies because it's full up of notebooks. But you can get the small like four by six or five by seven little photo albums at Dollar Tree. I've always kept lots of notes and you know like newspaper articles and magazine articles of things that I thought might be interesting to try at some point. I've always done that. I've always kept articles and things. It's it's good to be you know you kind of you build up your own supply of reference material and that's not a bad thing. Then you know you can't possibly be accused of copying somebody if you're using your own photograph. So you see I'm literally just blocking in shapes and I am I'm looking at the where the colors are over here and I'm being suggestive about where I put them in my painting. And you know every painting has an ugly duckling stage so don't get all freaked out because you're thinking ah what is that? I created a mess. It's ugly. They all do that. They're all ugly at some point. I do think we need some other blue here. This is true blue. So I'm not treating anything more preciously than the other thing. I'm just putting my colors on where it feels right. You know that happens to all of us. Don't let it get to you. They all have a point where that you're looking at it going oh I created a hot mess. That's ugly. I got plenty of them out in the garage. You guys just don't see them. Every now and then somebody says oh can I buy that one? I'm like really? That one? And you notice I'm not doing a lot of wiping off my brush. I'm getting secondary and you know secondary and third colors just because my brush is blending with other things that are on it and colors that are on the canvas. I'm okay with that. Remember to take artistic license with you know where you put things. Just because you're using a reference photo doesn't mean you have to copy it exactly. Like I said that's why we have cameras. So if I want an exact copy I have my daughter the photographer take a picture. I have a tendency to paint sunflowers very orange so I have to be careful most of the time that I don't do that. I know this from teaching at Michaels because there was a lesson plan that was all about sunflowers. Even with a limited color palette you can make this kind of painting work. You learn from the ugly ones. That's for sure. You definitely learn from the ugly ones. You learn something and that's a good thing. I wholeheartedly agree with that. Yeah you have to just keep working through the ugly part to get to the good part. As long as both products are archival I don't see why not. I mean we are mixed media artists so we're all about layering things together and Windsor Newton does make an acrylic ink. You have to make sure which ink you buy. They also make a calligraphy ink which is water soluble so you might have to experiment with the different kinds of ink that they have. When you're buying ink you want to make sure you buy the right one for what you want to do. The calligraphy inks are water soluble but then there's the acrylic inks that once they are dry or not the acrylic ink will keep moving around. I mean the calligraphy ink will keep moving around. Yeah I agree with you Phoebe and those are the ones everybody else likes and you're like really? I have to stop saying that though because that makes me I have to just say oh sure yeah that one's for sale. I have to not question them. Second guessing the customer is not a good thing. And with this series I want to just show you guys what you can do with simple inexpensive supplies. If you want to experiment more and you know get into using more proper artist grade materials that's great but you don't have to especially when you're just getting started. And right yeah I should know better because you know I spent years in customer service so I really should know better. You shouldn't second guess the customers. It's not good. Now see already look that was ugly a few minutes ago but I'm liking where that's going now. I'm going to pull in a little bit of violet. I know one more color right. So violet is a really good shadow color. Remember what I said about not needing to copy your photograph exactly. Violets a great color for pulling in some shadows especially in sunflower centers. It's one of my favorite colors to use in sunflower centers. Thank you Phoebe. And you'll see me wipe my brush off a lot on my table. At some point the canvas will turn into a journal cover or a bag or something like that. Don't you hate autocorrect? I hate autocorrect. I know what I want to say damn it. Exactly. Gesso is a great fix it. So you know if you really hate what you've done you can always put gesso over it. Okay let's go back down here. I know right. I always Barbie I always think I'm just going to try just doing a couple colors. It's just not in me unless you really make me just do something like black and white like for a lesson. I just like color too much but that's okay. Who doesn't love color? How do how do you not love color? Hey Michelle somebody asked me a long ago about why I use a ceramic plate for a palette because I'm the lazy crafter and it's easier to clean and I don't have to have separate palettes for watercolor and acrylic. There's no other reason. So this is an angle brush. It's a different brush. It'll just give me a different mark. Hey Lisa yeah we all love color right? I can do the occasional piece in you know like black and white but it's definitely not my favorite. So you mean saran wrap? Because that came out ceramic wrap and I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant. Although I could be wrong. I'm frequently wrong. It's a good exercise though Phoebe to keep yourself fresh and you know working with values and tones. It's a good exercise. It's not my favorite thing but it's a good exercise especially if you feel like you are having a moment where you know maybe you feel like your art is not progressing or there's something else about it that you're not happy with at the moment. Maybe you want to try doing blending exercises or doing a piece that's just black and white or you know one of those other kind of basic exercises to just keep you fresh and you know brush up your skills a little bit or remind you know remind yourself of some things. I know for me if I don't use it I forget you know like if you don't draw faces on a regular basis then you're like oh wait what do I do? So you should keep in practice with things. Don't be afraid to get your fingers in there use baby wipes use your marks. I've done whole paintings with just fingers. No brushes. Yeah practice practice practice and you know especially if you're stuck and you're having you know a moment where you know your muse is on vacation that's a good time to get some practice in and just you know practice some basics practice color blending and you know all of our muses decide to you know periodically go on vacation wish they'd tell us when they want to do that. Yeah sometimes the getting things to flow the way you want is a challenge right. So you know add some marks that means I covered up other marks so that means I go back and put more marks in and you just keep bouncing around back and forth until you get something that you like and that you feel is done. Yeah you need to get rid of some of the patience and have more patience because painting is not necessarily a quick process and it probably shouldn't be. Let's just not talk about how behind we all are because I'm the queen of that right now. I have yet to start Lifebook. When did that start January? Yeah we're in week 18 over there. I have yet to start just FYI if you want to talk about being late on stuff but in my defense I was doing a lots of other things. I have downloaded all of the other classes I'm supposed to be doing which I haven't done any of them yet either but I got them downloaded so I'm going to try to get Lifebook downloaded today and tomorrow and thank you it's just practice that's all just at least with classes like Lifebook make sure you download the classes you can always go back to it at a future time and do it then. There's no law that says you have to do it you know right this second. Yeah these little paintings are fun because you can get your painting practice in or satisfy that part of you that wants to do a painting but just do these little ones they're quick they're easy and I wasn't going to give some of these away and so far all of them have ended up hung up in my studio. Yeah I have a terabyte drive so between being a YouTube creator and classes like Lifebook I had to have a terabyte drive. That's looking pretty good we're getting there yeah I hear you I'm trying to figure out how when when my computer dies which you know they don't last forever it will at some point how I can get a new one without getting Windows 10 which I really don't want so I mixed up another shade of green I'm not covering up my other shades I just felt like it needed something here when you're doing these sort of impressionistic sort of semi abstract little paintings it's fun to use like either a brush that's too big or an unusual mark making tool or maybe use your non-dominant hand yeah I'm not I'm not looking forward to having to get Windows 10 I'm gonna I'm gonna delay that as long as humanly possible for one thing I like all the software I'm using and lots of it doesn't work well with Windows 10 yes it will be available for replay I'm going to save it it'll be on my channel unedited it's gonna just go it'll be loaded straight to the channel within a few minutes of the end of the broadcast because I've figured out now how to do that without screwing it up and deleting things by accident because yes I have done that deleted things by accident I'll also within a few minutes of the broadcast I'll go to my website and I'll make sure that these two photos are over on the inspiration photos page for you all so that you can download them but I encourage you the next time you're out thrifting garage sailing you know and you pass by the little table of the smalls the little you know teacups and the small little vases and things like that take a second look at it pick out a few things and just keep them in your studio to do your own sort of photo shoots still a photo shoots yeah my husband in the tech business so thankfully yeah he's always shaking his head at me over something I've done and I think my next computer may be an Apple product because they're just superior when it comes to editing and video kind of creation things so yeah that won't surprise me in fact I've already been chatting with a little young man at the Apple store the nice thing about using craft paints for a project like this is a dry pretty quickly we're almost done I like this painting this is turning out really nice yeah max are best for creative types so yeah at some point I'll be upgrading to one probably to one now don't worry if your sunflower centers aren't perfectly around because in reality they're not perfectly around this is nature nature's not perfect nature's uneven and wonky this is the violet I'm going to come in with a little bit of the brown I mean just dabbing it in with the like pointy end of the brush and it's blending with the purple a little but that's okay because the two of them together would make brown anyway which is already brown so just a little bit darker brown all right Michelle see you later so I put some yellow on there and I'm going to mix it with the brown my daughter's home I guess she must be going out somewhere she just shoved a note under the door it's pretty funny so remember just because you're painting kind of a semi-abstract doesn't mean you don't want to give it the impression of depth right so like your sunflower centers would be around so the edges would be darker than the center would be lighter and one part of this is in shadow more than the other like this part is in shadow more than this although the photo is pretty dark that's okay you can put your sun anywhere you can you know give it shadow or highlight where it doesn't have any just make sure that you do it to both flowers in a way that makes sense that's pretty good I'm kind of wanting not to do too much more to it like right here it's like I don't know there's something wrong there thank you I'm surprised I made it this far without taking a baby wipe out how many of the rest of you are surprised yeah that's better let's do this some of this I've done whole paintings with baby wipes too they're another fun art tool there's always one place on a painting every painting I've ever done that takes me the longest to fix right sometimes on a face it's the nose sometimes it's the lips there's always one place always that you fuss with back and forth that takes you a while to get it right until you're happy with it don't feel like there's something wrong with you because of that because it happens the best of us for me right now it's this table bottom and while I'm not looking to paint to copy the inspiration photo exactly I'm using it for inspiration and I'm trying to have it be in a way that makes sense to me and that is actually a lot better I think yeah there's always going to be one one spot in your painting that's going to just drive you up the freaking wall because you can't get it right sometimes it's so bad that you just need to walk away just walk away and come back go have lunch go have coffee with your friends something like that but it is because it's going to still be there when you get back but if you look at it with fresh eyes a fresh perspective then um a lot of times you'll know exactly how to fix it I should have left that alone I liked it better without the white up there now I've got to fix it see sometimes taking a photo of the painting with my cell phone I don't know what it is about that um but sometimes taking a picture of it with my phone and then looking at add it through the photo and again it's probably just because you're getting a different perspective um that solves my issue with the painting because then I can see aha that's what it is I need to fix that again it comes back to pictures that was a lot of red right there now I'll also too something I tell new students no digging any holes to China with your paintbrush you just need a light touch yeah converting photos to black and white not only helps with the contrast but if you're going to use completely different colors than what is in the original photograph you see the value without being distracted by the original color so I think that printing them in black and white and sometimes depending on the painting that I'm working on I have the original and altered one and then I have both printed in black and white and if I'm working on my easel all of those all of those versions are all on my easel and I use them all for reference also taking photos Phoebe if you get to a stage in the painting where you know the painting is not done but that would would be a good maybe art journal background or something um it's you know you won't maybe remember what you did without the photo because I've done that where I've created something that I like the original but I also like um you know it at a certain stage and so I'll take a photo I'm glad I have taken photos can put cats to sleep now is that a good thing so we're just adding the final touches to our I think our flowers I'm really liking how this little painting is turning out that's the problem is I make these little paintings thinking oh you know I'll give it away or I'll sell it on Etsy and that never happens you guys are going to have to come like to my house and drag paintings out of my hand the ones I want to sell don't sell the ones I don't want to sell are the ones people want yeah when I'm at my easel I usually have photos taped to the easel and I also usually have some kind of a post-it note that says sun so that I know where I intended to have all of the you know highlights and stuff coming from what direction otherwise I have a tendency to forget and I just get involved in the painting and I forget where I wanted all of those things to be and I'm glad I'm not the only one see I've had people want to buy my journals and I'm like uh no I'm sorry that's not for sale okay I'm gonna leave that before I mess it up because I like the way that looks so there you go um yeah right I have lots of paintings believe me I need to sell a few so one thing I do with these little paintings and those of you who are youtubers or um um bloggers um that I do especially if I've done something like this from Monday with DecoArt is after it's dry I'll turn it over and I'll write all the paint the paint brand and the colors on the back so that I always have a reference of what colors I used in this painting um I also will once it's dry I will give it a coat of DecoPage usually I use the DecoPage I think it's TNT um hang on yeah here it is okay so it has to be completely dry but then you want to protect the paint always whether it's art is great or craft grade you really should give it some kind of a protection even they say sometimes with watercolor you should give there's um there are spray sealers for watercolor I don't usually do that to my watercolor but they say you should anyway we digress um with any painting especially if it's painted with um craft paint um this is not meant to be necessarily archival so I want to protect it for as long as possible so I'm going to let it dry completely then I'm going to take DecoPage in antique which has a little bit of a tint in it just a teeny tiny bit and so I like the way that looks you could use clear of course and this is um this just says DecoPage antique it doesn't say that it's matte or glossy it's kind of a satin finish I let this dry completely and then I give it a little a buff with some of the Americana Decor Cream Wax and that prevents any any of your DecoPage glues can dry a little bit sticky and this is a little bit matte I want it to be a little bit shinier and not sticky especially if I'm sending it to somebody I don't want the painting to stick to like the you know bubble wrap that's wrapped in so I will give it a coat of Cream Wax and I'll buff that in really well and then let that dry now the Cream Wax has a chemically smell but it does dry really hard it's water-based so it cleans up easy but it's not you know it's not like Daddy Vans it's not beeswax and I don't know exactly what it is I don't think it's toxic but it definitely has a chemically smell but yeah I would definitely you can use the clear DecoPage of course I like the antique I like it a lot in fact it's the one I've used the most because I do use it on all my canvases now and then I use the Cream Wax and then I would probably like if I was going to send this to somebody I would probably once I did these two things I would still probably wrap it in wax paper and then put it in its bubble wrap container just to be extra cautious that things don't stick to anything but you have to let it dry completely like I'll probably let it dry overnight and then do it and it and I'm I really like the way this turned out I'm not going to be able to get rid of it I can tell you right now it's going to end up on my wall with the other ones I'm going to have to get the stepladder out so I can hang it over the doorway because I'm running out of room does anybody have any questions and I don't I won't get you know I won't waste this paint where's my scratch paper book so I have this book this is thin paper like Bible paper or dictionary paper this is a financial statement so those of you who have stocks and bonds trust not trust mutual funds you get these financial craziness in the mail I saved them to do these painting papers with the papers nice and thin I'm not a huge napkin fan I do have some and I did buy those egg napkins because I couldn't resist but I prefer like tissue paper and thin papers over napkins but that being said this is really nice thin paper for doing this kind of thing we get a lot of these in the mail so what I would do is take my baby wipe and yeah so and I just you know make some painting papers it makes good painting papers so after the deco page that other one is Americana decor cream wax no and my husband just says we get so many of these books in the mail now he says do you need this one or can I throw this one away and I've actually started sending them to my friends so if I have to send one of my friends something if they've you know bought stamps or something from me or I'm sending out happy mail sometimes I'll put one of these books in there because we have a lot of them we get them you know on a regular basis so I just make some painting paper out of the leftover paint and this makes a good collage paper yeah it's hard to throw shit away when you're a mixed media artist right it gets really hard to throw anything away especially you know we're all fans of Shannon green right she's a garbage saver enabler hi you watch one of Shannon's video the next thing you know there's something else you can't throw away love her dearly Shannon if you're watching love you love you but it's pretty funny every time I watch one of her videos there's something else I can't throw away so there now I have some painting paper oh who doesn't love Shannon she is hilarious I agree with that wholeheartedly so there we go Monday with Deco art a little still life right she said we had to honey Shannon told me I had to save this garbage it's not garbage it's art supplies all right that's it for today everybody I hope that you had fun I hope that you try painting some still lives and if you do I'd love to see if you're not part of my Facebook group you can join a life of art and self-expression the link should be in the description of the below the video and that's it for today I think you're welcome don't forget the most important thing you all know what that is right do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later okay it's some still lives all right bye guys