 Hey guys, we're out here in my garage, AKA my old studio space, and I have this plastic bag full of rocks. I know you think I'm joking. What the heck is she doing now? I've also got a hammer and a little container. Where's the camera? There it is. So I have these red rocks, like lava clay rocks. I've got a few of them. I'm going to smash them up into a powder. And there's a receipt in here. I don't need to be there. And then put them in my container because I want to be able to add the smashed up rocks to gel medium and stuff to use in my mixed media. So kind of wrap them up good in the plastic bag. And then I'm going to just whack them with a hammer. There we go. These are pretty soft rocks. So it shouldn't really take too much to get them to like smush. And if I lose a little bit, I'm not too worried about it because there's a lot in here. And it did smush really good. It's coming out all over the place. If you're going to do something like this, you might want to like double bag it or something. Some of the pieces are big. Let's see. I can smash them more. This is like red clay. I was going to come home and go, why is there red dirt on the garage floor? All right. So now we got that all done. We're going to go back in the house with our smashed rocks. And we're going to do some playing. And I think we're going to do a five minute journal page. So I'll be right back. OK. The idea behind the five minute challenge is to loosen you up and create something without overthinking it too much. But if you're going to do a five minute challenge or any time challenge, you should kind of pre-pick a little bit, at least the materials you're going to use so that you're not wasting the whole few minutes, however long you choose to do your time challenge picking materials. So in that respect, we've crushed our rocks. I've mixed them with some glass bead gel. Now I have glass bead gel. I tried to sell it. Nobody wanted it. So I might as well use it. When I first started in mixed media, it would take a class and the teacher would be using a particular product that I then thought I had to have. So I would go buy it and then never use it again. Y'all have been there, right? I'm not the only one out there that's done that. So I have all kinds of texture gels and I don't really care for them. Plus I found out that a lot of times you can take like heavy gel, gold and heavy gel medium, mix a little bit of glitter or something else like our crushed rocks into it and make your own custom texture gel. So that's really fun to do. In this case, instead of using plain gel medium, I used the glass bead gel because I had it. And the glass bead gel has little tiny clear glass microbeads in it. We've add the crushed rock to it and we've gotten this kind of a color. The gel itself, which is basically the binder now, will dry clear, leaving the crushed rock suspended along with the glass beads in the gel on the page when we're done. So that's going to be fun to play with. Using that as an inspiration for colors, I've chosen these four colors of Distress Paint. So we have Lemonade, Wild Honey, going this way, Barn Door and Peacock Feathers. I have a quote already that I want to put on the page and I have some random bits of pieces of paper and things over here off to the side. So we're going to set our timer. We're going to start going. I'm going to do this in real time and we'll see where we go. I'm going to set it to some music and I'll be right back. Really wet, of course. Our five minutes was just up and you see where I accidentally touched the palette knife to some of the wet paint while I was cleaning up before I turned the camera back on. Oops, but that's okay. I like the marks and it's really just about playing and being free and making marks. I will try to post some close-up shots of the Glass Bead Gel with the rock in it after it dries to my Facebook page, my group page. If you're not a member of my Facebook group, the link's in the description below. I can't wait until it dries because it already looks really cool. And I love the sort of desert sunset colors on this page that crushing up that rock inspired. Fabulous. Alright, don't waste any leftover paint you have. Put it on some collage paper or something. That's it for today. I hope it gave you an idea of what you can do in your art journal. It's not about being Picasso or Rembrandt or having a balanced composition or anything else more than just playing and having fun. Pick a supply or two and set the timer and just play. Have some fun and create. That's it for today. Don't forget to support me if you can by shopping in my Etsy shop or hit the little blue support button on my YouTube channel's main page and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later.