 Hi everybody it's Sandy and welcome to my YouTube channel where today I'm going to talk about faith booking. Faith booking is like scrapbooking your art journaling but it's documenting your faith journey. I faith book as a Christian but you can use whatever faith tradition you come from or you can also just document things you've learned in life. It's a great way to write down those lessons that you've learned so you don't have to relearn them again when you've forgotten all the things you've discovered through your years and the wisdom you've gained. So I'm going to be using a 12 by 12 pad of watercolor paper and I'm going to show you a technique that you can use on cards or anything else too so don't tune out just because it's a 12 by 12. This is a pad of paper by a company called Fluid and it's high quality paper so it's good stuff and I've drawn an eagle on it in pencil and the eagle I just downloaded from the internet and traced the outline just the outside edges because I don't need all that detail in the middle and I'm painting with an old yucky brush some incredible white masking fluid. There are several types of masking fluid that you can get. There's some that are orange or green so you can see them better. I just happened to pick this one up. They all seem to work about the same as far as I can tell aside from the color and I'm masking out the head and the tail so that they'll be white and then doing a couple splatters which were not as effective as I was hoping they would be and after you put this on you want to wait for it to dry probably 10 15 20 minutes or so at the most would be fine. You don't want to leave it overnight probably because I hear that the stuff can become eventually permanently a fix to your paper so don't let it go too long. I'm painting water over top of all of that and I'm using this big brush I don't even know who makes it. It's just one that I think my mom gave me years back and it's just a big wide brush and the bristles don't fall out and for something like this that's really all you need is a brush that doesn't lose its bristles on your paper. I'm going to use my three-quarter inch oval wash brush to do my painting it's by the silver brush company in the black velvet line and there is in the description down below lots of links to all the supplies that I'm using for this but I'm just going to paint colors all over this just random I was thinking originally of doing just all kind of stripey colors and I changed my mind kind of halfway through and decided I was going to make a little more a little more texture to it and and just be really loose with it. It's one of those few times when I can be really loose because I'm just covering the background with colors there's no rhyme or reason to why I put one color on one side one color on another just letting them go. I'm using my Holbein watercolor paints and if you saw my videos recently in my getting started with watercolor series I use these they're the most expensive ones that I tried and so I thought I would give them a shot here and see what they do with this particular technique. This is also related to a card that I did the lost and found technique and I'm going to use some similar things that I did in that except I'm also going to show you how to kind of force an image into that lost and found idea and I'll explain more about that as we get there but I'm also going to use salt and I got a lot of grief for that lost and found video when I use salt. I never claimed to invent it and it's just something that was new to me because I hadn't hadn't tried it before it's been around for ages and here I'm going to use regular table salt as well as some sea salt some larger crystals just to see what that does and a lot of you have said in comments that you know if you wait until the paint is halfway dry and then you put the salt on then you don't need the heat set it but the reason that I'm doing it the way I am I wanted the paint to be very wet because it'll absorb the most color it seems when it's really wet if I waited till it was half dry but it didn't absorb very much and I wanted to get this really strong texture and I found that if I put it on right away and then heat set it then it would stop it from moving entirely because what happens after after you put this on there if you don't wait for it to dry completely then those as you move the salt crystals off the page and you wipe them with with a paper towel or whatever you're going to remove them with then paint will drag so I've decided that for the better part of valor I'm drying it with my heat gun so that at least that the paint stops absorbing and I can move those salt crystals and not drag paint around so I heat set it just a little bit I wanted to see how far you need to heat set it I did find out that if you touch hot salt crystals they are hot on your finger but here I'm rubbing off some of the salt and down here in the corner some of those crystals were still wet and you can see where I got some drag now that could also make a really cool technique if you use that drag in your favor so I reheat set it a little bit more and then started brushing off more of the salt and you can get pretty hefty with with how much you rub the paper after you get it good and dry so all the salt is gone and now I got out my rubber cement pickup to get the masking fluid off and you want to be gentle with this as well because you don't want to rip the surface of the paper higher quality papers will react a little bit nicer with this technique and if you're using something with certain kinds of surfaces then it might start to tear the paper so you may want to do some tests on a scrap of whatever you have and see what what kind of abuse it can take before you use a whole sheet like this I wasn't sure if it was going to hold up and I was really glad that this paper did after all of this work to get this page done so now on to the lost and found piece of this and what I did was take the paint and on one part of the image I would color inside that outline that I had drawn on and on other parts draw on the outside and add paint outside the image because what that does is create kind of a push and pull so that the image starts to look as though it's partially within the paper and kind of some parts are going in some parts are going popping out it just creates a really interesting look and it's one of the thoughts that I had when I was doing the lost and found technique and I was thinking of all the different ways that you can get an image to work on something like this I could easily see like cutting out something on your cricket and creating giant flower shapes and overlaying them over top of each other or doing all different kinds of of butterflies on something like this any kind of image that works with whatever you're trying to communicate on your page would be really fun with this kind of technique you can match the colors to whatever the topic is for it and I think it could be really cool could also look very masculine if you use a lot of brown and gray type of colors you can mix in some metallic paints oh my gosh there's just so many things you can do a lot of different mixed media pieces that you could add to it to to just do a lot of fun things to it so I'm going to continue with the other the other wing I'm going to do the same thing painting inside on the top portion of the wing and on the tips and painting outside down the bottom portion of that wing and just let the watercolors be really soft one of the other cool things about watercolor is that they are transparent so as you start painting layers you still see what's underneath of them so you're still going to retain a lot of that texture that's underneath as you paint the shape on the top and that's the whole you know beautiful idea about this lost and found look that things look like they're they're just part of that textured background and I really love that about them when I started this I literally only had this far of an idea in my head was just to to paint something where the the image looked like it was partially inside and partially outside the image or the texture and I didn't really know exactly where else to go with it and whether or not I was supposed to go any further with it and when I say supposed to go I I will fess up to the fact that I am not the author of half of my ideas and that the the real author is God and that is why this page is going to be the first one in my my scrapbook my my 12 by 12 brand new Facebook that I'm starting and that is because I you know like I said when I asked what is it that I'm supposed to do with this God told me to start painting more realistically in the center and I don't know that he actually said those words so those of you who are wondering just do I hear voices not really all the time but I got a vision for this it was like I saw the piece completed and it has you know this dark rich realistic looking eagle portion in the center and it fades out and blends out to the wing tips and that is in a lot of times a lot of people ask where I get these ideas how they develop how they how they come to be and that's really what happens most of the time and as crazy as it may sound to those who don't believe in God I do and this is why because I know that there's something out there telling me what to do there is someone that is instructing me and guiding me my creativity and I wouldn't be the artist that I am without God in my life and I'll just put that out there hopefully it won't cause a lot of dislikes on this video but that is the honest truth about how my art happens so this page is going to have the Bible verse from Isaiah 40 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint and one of the reasons that that verse means so much to me especially right now is that over the past number of years I have learned this lesson again and again that needs to be documented and cemented in my brain forever that this verse has a promise in it those who wait for the Lord shall have all those things those who wait on God will not be tired those are the ones who will walk and not faint those are the ones who will renew their strength and mount up on wings like eagles and through the last couple years I've had Operation Right Home in my life I've been running a charity for since 2007 I guess it is and ever since then I've always had two jobs I've had my day job mostly outside of the home for most of those years and then I quit that job and started working full-time at home on Operation Right Home as well as running my own business and that means that I'm always doing something I'm always like crazy busy always always always running and what I have found that those times when I I really get to the point where I want to punch a wall and say I quit I can't do it anymore I just can't keep it up those are the moments when I realize I've been relying on me and my strength and I've stopped asking God for advice and that is never a wise thing for me to do I need to constantly be asking God what I'm supposed to do next and what I'm supposed to be focusing on because he's the one who knows the best ideas he's the one who knows what's going to bear the most fruit for my for me in my life for Operation Right Home and for my business and now that Operation Right Home is coming to an end so if you didn't know that we're accepting our last cards by August 1st and that means after August 1st I'm going to start the wrap-up period for the charity and then I'm going to move into a whole new phase in my life and I want to make sure that I don't forget the lesson I've learned that I need to wait on the Lord in order to not be weary and feel faint I need to remember that because I have so many ideas in my head right now I have notebooks that I have started to fill with ideas for things I want to do and things I want to try and things I want to paint and directions I want to take and I don't know how much of that is me and how much of that is God directing me and I know that what I really want to focus on is asking him for his advice on a regular ongoing every day moment by moment basis because if I start relying on me I'm going to be in serious trouble and I don't want to be in serious trouble so this is going to be the first page in my new 12 by 12 scrapbook Facebook that I'm starting and I'm going to be able to see that every single time I open it up and remind myself of why it is that I am where I am and what I need to do to keep moving forward in good and positive directions without being tired and so that is my hope now I wanted to create a section down here in the bottom right for my journaling and my title and I wanted it to be a little more solid of an area and here again is another lesson I started by thinking well what if I did something drippy and you know this is again me in my head thinking I should do something drippy because that's what people tell me watercolor you know it moves on its own it does this drippy thing you should let it do what it wants to do and not try to make it look like what you want it to look like because I do tend to do that I try to make one medium look like another that that's just one of my fun things I like to play with but what I realized about halfway through doing this section was what am I doing I am trying to be like someone else I'm trying to do drippy watercolor like I see other people do and I love drippy watercolor I love how it looks I could look at it all day long it doesn't mean I'm good at it and it doesn't mean that I like to actually do it myself so what I started to do that you'll see me change here is blending some of that out so I get a little softer edges on things I'll still retain some of that texture but I started adding more water and a little more richness of color to try to I don't know make it feel more like me because the the drippy wasn't working for me and that is another lesson that I'm going to have to have another page on I think about how not to try to be someone else I get a lot of comments on my blog and on YouTube about how I don't watercolor the way watercolors are meant to be painted and why are you doing this and I'm doing it because there are many styles for many mediums and I'm so glad that there are so many different styles that are okay to do. Michelangelo when I went to the Sistine Chapel I saw how many styles he had I did not realize by looking in books that every section of that was painted in all these different styles and it blew my mind thinking wow I could have multiple styles just like Michelangelo if he can do it I can do it and I don't have to mimic everybody else's watercolor style just because I like their watercolor style I need to paint the way I am built to paint and that is what I'm hoping to continue to learn how to do because I don't know what my style is right now and I'm learning that right here on YouTube in front of all of you guys so here is my finished page that's going in my Facebook and I added my my traditional elements of scrapping and stuff to it in order to finish it off and and add the words to it but I thought this would be a really great great and auspicious beginning for my Facebooking journey now I hope that you learned something from this about watercolor or faith or who knows what maybe just about the masking fluid might be all you got from it but I hope it was helpful in some way here's a couple more videos if you're interested in seeing more of my work and I will see you guys another time have a great weekend we'll see you later bye bye