 Hey guys, welcome to May for my creative year, the online free class and art group over on Facebook. The videos are aired here on YouTube every month. If you want to join the group for some art inspiration and community, you can join the group. The link is in the description below. The topic for this month for May is passion and the prompt for this first week is what are you passionate about? Now, I really like the idea the more I think about it of working on a pair of pages over the coming weeks and adding and building on to the page over the month over the coming weeks this month. We have a few people in the Facebook group who do that. They don't have YouTube channels before you ask. They don't share on social media, at least not all of them. Some of them only share in the Facebook group. One of them's name is Sarah Branson. So if you guys are in the Facebook group, look her up. If you're on a desktop on a browser, you should be able to use the search feature in Facebook. It's not available that I know of in the app, but it is in the browser version. And you can look up her name and she does some fabulous work and she just builds on her page over the month. Really inspired by that and I think that's what we're going to do today. Now, this is the pair of pages we're going to work on. You can see a ghosted image here that's bleeding through the back of the page from explorations of me that I did last month. And this is, before you ask, this is a Moleskine 2017. What is it called again? A weekly notebook. And I love the sort of background texture that you get from these pages that have the days and numbers and the lines and stuff on it. I don't use it as a notebook. I don't intend on using it, you know, as a planner type book ever. I just like doing art in it. I don't mind this in paper, but this may not be for you. But anyway, I think it's a challenge. So the first thing we have to do this week is we need to cover or not cover, disguise this ghosted image. So it's not as prominent. It may still show. I'm okay with that, but I want to I want to do something with that. So the first thing I'm going to do is I grab some tissues out of my bin of tissue papers. I like most of you if you're doing mixed media tissue paper. These are pattern tissue, gift tissue. I bought something that came wrapped in this tissue. And so I save all this stuff and it's a great collage fodder for mixed media. So I am going to put some of this on here. I'm going to use fluid matte medium. I'm going to use a gift card to scrape it down really well so it's as flat as possible. And I'm going to speed through that process. And then once it's dry, I'll be back and we'll continue. Okay, so next on our page for this week, I am going to actually write the topic word for the month, which is passion and its definition or a definition of it that I found online that I like. I'm going to write that on the page. I'm going to use some of my lettering stencils to create the word passion in a larger font. And then underneath it, I'm going to write the definition. I found the definition on a website, but you could do this from any website. You could write what the definition to you means. If you have a dictionary in your art room that you use for collage purposes, you could tear out the page that has the word passion on it and tear out that word and put it on your page, whichever way works for you. I'm going to fast forward through my process and I'll be right back. So so far I am loving where the page is going. We do have one more step this week that we're going to do. I'm going to show you how to do that right now. I have my own design line of rubber stamps for those that don't know. There's 15 different sets. This happens to be number 15. So for this week, we're going to use this heart stamp. So I'm going to pull this out of here and we are going to make a stencil of this heart and I'll show you what I mean in a minute. I have a piece of just this is actually a plastic binder tab divider. Just so I'm going to first stamp on here with the stamp. Just grab a stamping block and some ink. Any kind of ink doesn't matter. I'm going to just grab this brown stays on because it is at the top of the ink pad pile. It doesn't have to be a perfect impression. I'm going to stamp one corner of the plastic. It looks to you like I'm stamping my table, but I'm not really. Okay. And I just want to get the impression of the, can you see that? So that's all I want. I'm going to get out my small spare piece of cut of, it's actually the old one of these from my table. It's an old one. I saved a piece when I had to replace it when I use it for a cutting pad. And I'm going to take my exacto knife and I'm going to make a heart shaped stencil that's the same size as the stamp. And there's a reason for that to stick with me. So I'm going to just do this the old fashioned way, which is with a exacto knife. You have to draw or stamp your shape on there. I would stick to simple shapes, especially if you've never done this before. Keep your fingers out of the way. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I want it about the same size as the stamp. The heart shape is pretty easy to cut out or it should be anyways. If I do it correctly, it should be. It's been a while since I cut one of these by hand. There we go. It's not perfect, but it's good enough. So now we have, I don't know if you're going to be able to see this, but now we have a stencil that's about the same size as the stamp. I'm going to cover up my ink pad and we're going to need the journal back again. So I'm going to take my new heart stencil and we're going to stencil some hearts on here. I'm going to pick a color that I'm inspired by our topic and our prompt. Passion is a word of strong emotion, not only loving emotions, but also negative emotions. Passion can be positive or negative. So whatever color signals that for you, usually it's a red or pink. Pink, in my opinion, is more loving and bright red is fiery and angry. That's how I think about it. So I'm going to grab my Dina Wakeley paints and I think I want to use a combination of blushing and there's another pink here. Yep, here it is. And magenta, little palette plate. I just want a little drop. I don't want too much. Put a drop of the other one. One's more red blue and one's more, you know, on the orangey. One's more peachy. I'm going to grab a, I was going to grab a cosmic sponge, but you know what? I'm going to grab a stencil brush. I'm going to do it with a stencil brush. My brush loaded, but not too wet. I like to do things in odd numbers. I think it's more interesting. And we're also, again, remember wanting to build a page. So we're not wanting to cover the page up completely. We want to build on it over the month. The other thing that we're going to do is I have a prototype stencil that goes with that stamp set. It's a brand new prototype. It's not available yet as a filming in the Etsy shop, but it will be over the next few weeks, sometime when I get the inventory in. And in this stencil, you of course have two hands, two of the hands, a peace sign, and then the heart. So I think we're going to take more of the darker color, not cleaning the brush off at all. And we're going to take this stencil here. I want to offset it just a little bit. That worked out well. This is the first time using the prototype. So I wasn't exactly sure if it would work the way I thought it might. And it did work out great. Yay. Okay. Now I'm going to dry that. And then I'm going to stamp on that also with the stamp. I do like a layered heart thing. All right. I'm going to dry that and I'll be right back. So I have Distress Ink in picked raspberry. So we're going to ink up our stamp here. And I'm not looking to line it up perfectly. If it's not, it's fine. And then one more thing that we're going to do this week. I'm going to take a pink gel pen. I want to use this one. Sorry, that's my husband texting me. So I'm going to use my pink gel pen in each one of your hearts. If you choose to use a heart shape like I did, I want to write, want you to write this week what you're passionate about. Let's focus on the positive this week and what are you most passionate about in your life and in your work. It doesn't have to be legible. It can be messy. I'm choosing pink to go with the heart so that it blends into the background. And I know it's there, but it's not as obvious and it's not the focal point. That's my idea of the page. And I want, again, there to be movement in the page as sort of a dancing movement in the page. And I want this definition to sort of be the focal point this month, at least for the moment. So I'm going to write what I'm passionate about and that's our page for this week. Ready to be built on, ready to add things to, but lovely on its own if you choose to stop here. I hope this gives you some ideas of what you can do this week. What are you passionate about? Think about it. Make a page, do some art. If you choose to share it in the Facebook group, I would love to see how you can join us in the description below. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please leave them here on the video on YouTube, or you can tag me in a post over in the Facebook group. That's it for today. Everybody go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye, guys.