 Well, good morning, my friends in Monet Cafe. At least it's morning here where I am. I wanted to give you a quick little video on something that I searched forever to try to find a solution to this. There's a wonderful pastel paper called UART paper, like this UART paper. And if you're not familiar with sanded surfaces for pastel painting, it's best to use sanded papers when you are doing pastel artwork. It's literally like sandpaper in a hardware store, but it's prepared more specifically for pastel papers and for longevity and for just so that your art will last for years and years. So this is a wonderful paper, but there happens to be a little challenge with it. It comes in packs like this in different grades. This is the 400 grade. It comes in different grits, I should say. And it also comes, sometimes I buy it in very large sheets and I cut it up to my sizes that I prefer, which are standard sizes. Well, one challenge with UART paper is that it does this. Look at that. It curls up with humidity and I am in Florida and it gets quite humid. And I also had a very humid situation because some of you may know my family went through Hurricane Irma and it flooded our home and my art studio. So some of the things that I had put upstairs to save them during the flood, literally it was just so humid in the house that all of my UART paper did this. And so I have searched for probably years now trying to find a way to fix this little problem. It is best, I believe UART has said it's best to take it out of the package and lay it flat, even if you just lay it flat between some things. I'll have to double check on that, but I do know that this can happen occasionally. So I found out from a wonderful member on our Monet Café, Monet Café is our Facebook art group, and this is our wonderful Monet Café coffee cup, a wonderful member in our Monet Café art group, a little hack for fixing this, a little tip or trick to make your UART paper back to normal or close to normal anyway. So today that's what I'm going to show you, is I'm going to do a few pieces of this curled up UART paper and hopefully get it back to where it's easier to paint with. Because this, I've tried painting with it like this, I'll tape it down on my easel and still it never fails, the little corners are still curled up. So if you try to get a pastel in that little corner, it's just, it doesn't work right. So that's why I'm going to try to give you a little solution to that. And thank you, I wish I could remember that member's name. I was like, oh, praise the Lord, that is such a great suggestion. But I thought I'd just go ahead and show you that there's other papers that you can get for sanded surfaces for pastel art. And I've never had the curling up problem with these. This is Art Spectrum Color Fix. It comes in various colors, and I believe you can get packs in various sizes too. All kinds of colors here. Wow. So anyway, that I've never experienced curling. It might have a little bit here, but it's not too bad. This is Ampersand Pastel Board. Obviously, that's not going to curl up on you. OK, so these are really great boards for doing pastel work that's just more sturdy. And this is a favorite paper of mine. I know some artists don't like it because it's very gritty. It's very coarse. It's called La Carte Pastel made by Sennelier. And this is a pastel card that is a little more substantial. Oh, I have a different one in there. A little more substantial. And it also comes in various colors. But like I said, the grit is very coarse. This is another one I have stuck in this particular package. And I'm never saying this right. It's a French name. I was saying it like Spanish. I was saying Métis and taste touch. But there's a way you can say it in French. Some of you guys who know French could do a much better job than I will butcher it with my southern accent. I like this paper, though. It's not as gritty or as sanded as some of the other papers. And I thought I'd show you my little system now for how I'm going to rectify making the UART paper back straight again. All right. So here we go with our project to flatten out our UART paper. I'm just going to start with a piece like this that I believe is a what is that like a six by eight that I've cut here. And afterwards, I'm going to show you the result. This is the before and after I use this iron method. And I put it in a kind of a thicker book. This is just a beautiful landscape book, actually. And it's a little more sturdy and thick. You could probably even get one that's bigger or thicker to do this with. And this is a piece of the UART paper. I have already ironed out and put in the book. And notice, look at that. What a difference. That's really nice. I'm so, so happy about this because I just I literally couldn't have painted on all this very expensive UART paper. All right. So this is a wonderful, wonderful tip for anybody who's ever had this problem. All right. Now let's get started. I'm going to show you how we do this. I'm going to stick this one back in the book for now. OK, so what you need is you need an iron. You need a spritzer. Your iron may have a little spritzer on it already, but I have a little bit more control with this. This is just a little spritzer I use for sometimes applying water. When I do an underpainting, that's either going to be water color and I want to coat the whole paper or just various things I would use the water for in painting. I love these little sprayers because they make a fine mist. This is just a Victoria's Secret Body Splash sprayer. So this has worked for me for years. So this is a great little spritzer for that. And then I also need, of course, my paper and I need a flat surface. And I'm actually just working on my art table here. Or it's actually an easel. I have folded down, but I have a cloth that I've put on it. Just an old rag and then you need another old rag or whatever to put on top of it as you do it. I actually have ironed right on it on the back of it and it didn't hurt it. But just to be safe, you know, we're going to use the cloth. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this piece of warped U art paper, we're going to lay it down face down so that you see the numbers, the grade of the paper. And then we're just going to spritz it with some water. And I've found that sometimes I have to I give it a pretty good dose of water and sometimes I have to do it a couple of times, but we're going to see if it works this time. All right, you're going to flatten it out because it was pretty bowed up there. Now I have my iron on a pretty hot temperature, but it's OK because I have this cloth that's, you know, in between the paper and the iron. All right, so I'm just going to iron over it, make sure you get all of the edges. And let's see the result of this one. Pretty good, but there's still a little bowing to it. Now I have found sometimes if it's still bowing too much, I can just do kind of like an edge to it if it's one side. I may have to wet it a little more, but this is the basic procedure. You just keep working with it until you get it straightened out, still curling a little bit, but that's why I do the book trick. After I get it pretty much ironed out, I just put it in the book, keep it there for a few minutes until it kind of dries out and straightens out. And then, like I said, it, voila, it results in a flattened out piece of UART paper like this one that I did. OK, so that's the general idea. I'm going to do a couple more. And I thought I'd suggest also trying this black UART paper. I have not tried this yet. Once again, my life's been a little crazy. It's still a little crazy after our home flooding, but I'm trying to sneak in a little painting time still. And this new house that we're in for now, where I have made an art studio, another art studio, which is great. So here we go. We're going to do the black UART paper. I'm going to spray it on the back. I think with one of them, I actually turned it around and and ironed the front as well. So let's see. This is still a little experimental for me, too. All right, again, ironing right over the back of it. I'm going to leave this one a little longer. All right, let's see what happens here. Still curling up a little bit, but I bet you if I put that in that book and let it stay for a little while. And I try not to put it in the crease of the book because that's kind of curled also. So put it like where it's right in the center of the pages. All right, let's give that a few minutes and come back and see what has happened. OK, let's see our results. And I've literally only waited about, you know, four minutes in between starting the video up again. So I thought I'd just show you the results. I have a few of them in here. Here is one of the ones that I just did. And you can see there's still a little curl to it, but it actually happens to be the opposite way. So that's going to work out well. If I keep this in the book long enough, it's really getting pretty flat here. And I'm just going to keep that one back in there. And then we've got the black one that I did. Pretty good. Looks pretty good. It's not curled up on the edges anymore. And the longer I leave these in here, the more I think it's going to work out. This one's still a little curled up on the edges. I might hit that one again. But once again, leave it in the book. It's much better than it was, if you recall. Here is how bad it was before. These are 8 by 10 sheets. So big improvement, definitely. And I thought I'd go ahead and show you quickly how I also tried it without using the cloth in between. Grab one more piece. So like I said, I was just using the cloth to protect it, but I actually have tried using it right on the paper without a protective cloth in between. So I'm just going to spray this good with my water. And I'm going to work a little more quickly here. You hear that bubbling up because I don't want to burn my paper or anything. But I'm just kind of moving it back and forth, back and forth. And until it starts to look like it's curling up the opposite way. Like it's doing now. Then I throw it in the book and we'll have some flat. You art paper. Yay. Oh my goodness. I can't tell you how excited I am about this little art tip. So anyway, guys, I hope you really got a little help out of this video and that it will help you in straightening out a situation that would make it very hard to paint. So anyway, guys, thanks so much for joining me in my little quick video in Monet Café. Please join us in our Facebook group and please subscribe to this channel if you like it. All right, guys, happy painting.