 Hey guys, how are you today? We are here with another page for Mission Inspiration for May 2021. I am the mission controller in the group this month and I'm the one who's come up with the mission. Now as has been stated by me in the group and in Mike's video, I chose the colors that I did and the message that I did for a couple of reasons, but one of them being that May is my wedding anniversary month. Bob and I met in 1984, yes 1984, that was a long time ago, we got married in 1991 and our colors were purple and teal and I'm going to put some pictures here but here's one that I printed to put on here. I was going to insert some wedding video footage here. Now we have a VHS videotape of our wedding, I don't have a VHS player anymore, those videos are currently off at a transfer service to turn them into something digital, I actually have a stack of videos I'm going to be doing. I did have them put on DVD years ago but when I haven't had these open since we moved and when we went to pull them out and try to play them, we realized both of them are cracked. So they won't play, I do still have the VHS tape though so at some point I will maybe put a few clips of that on my YouTube channel towards the end of the month but it's going to take about three weeks to get done so it won't be ready in time for this video but I will be putting some shots from the wedding here. Some of these people are no longer with us including all of my grandparents and Bob's father and we miss them all dearly but we were very glad that they were around at the time of our wedding celebration that was very special so that being said our message this month is finding the light even in times of the harshest stress there is always a bit of light, one must just be open to seeing it. Now I did sort of print a copy of and I'm just now finding there's some printing errors on a copy of my original mood board for this that I want to paste over here along with the mission and the photo sort of like this will be artwork on this side. I'm going to reprint that and I also will explain these in just a second. I'll be back in a minute okay reprinted and cut and we're ready to go so the first thing we're going to do is put sort of our reference mood board materials on the left side and then I'm going to create a little piece of art on the right side. Now I do have some paint picked out these are matte acrylics or gouache acrylic gouache which is just matte acrylic. I prefer to use these in my art journal because I don't have to worry about the pages being sticky afterwards or coating them with clear gesso or waxing them or anything else because matte acrylics or matte acrylic gouache don't stick to each other when you close your book if it's dry all the way. I also have some markers because markers are one of our ingredients. I have a clock face because clock this is an actual clock face yes I have a drawer of clock parts I know it's just weird but so this is our clock part that's on our ingredient list. I also have found objects so these literally are found objects so these are dried foliage and floral and fauna from wax or bouquets people have given me or leaves from the tree in our driveway or so these are literal found objects so that's going to be something that's going to go on here and I will if I need to glue things down be using either a matte gel again so it doesn't dry sticky and shiny is shiny equals sticky at least in my book so will you be using a matte gel and we'll be using a glue stick and this little picture is self-adhesive so so let's start off with getting everything attached to this site actually let's start off with putting my reading glasses on shall we because that's a good idea all right so first I'm going to trim I don't know why my printer printed this with that part at the bottom but that's okay we'll just trim it off because that'll fit better on here anyway if it's a square so the first thing we're going to do is glue everything down and generally if it's just paper I use just you who I found it's easy I also have a pencil by the way in case you didn't see that it's eat the you who is easy it isn't too wet so it you can get thin papers on there without it getting too wrinkly or anything just is a very painless process for me to use a glue stick gift card push it down and make sure I got glue everywhere which I didn't sure all the edges are down we go and then we will get our picture down now while I'm doing this these little pieces to my right are scans of vintage office labels so I do have original vintage office labels in my stash of art supplies but they're too big and so they're vintage Avery labels and so I scanned a few of them and then shrunk them down and made them smaller and printed them on label paper so we're going to be using these on our page labels are one of the things on our ingredient list so but the first thing I want to do is I want to get this clock face on here in the middle ish I wasn't sure where I was going to put it and I saw that Mike Deacon put his right in the middle and I like that idea with a little bit of a different twist so this is a little bit thicker than just your standard paper and it's very plasticky so I'm going to use the matte gel for this to get this on here I need to power it nice don't normally talk through these I usually just give you all some kind of a speed through but I just thought this was kind of different okay so that's on there really well so now we're going to take our labels set that aside for a minute and actually I need a black pin now that I'm thinking about it fine point Sharpie this is a really refillable fine point Sharpie I'm gonna zoom in just a little bit there we go so on each one of these labels I don't know if I'm gonna use all these labels but on each one of the labels I put on the page I want to write a positive affirmation word because our focus is finding the light right and I know life in general can be very stressful but especially when you're in the midst of a global crisis and pandemic right so we are going to write down positive affirmation words or word a single word that evokes a bright spot that we have discovered because of current situations lessons that we have learned good things that have happened for those that don't know my mom is sick and it's not a great situation but even in that situation there are good things that have happened and one of those being that for the first time literally I think ever my siblings and I are actually being civil to one another that hasn't I don't think ever to be honest with you we do have our moments where we backtrack on that but for the most part we've been very civil civil to each other and are helping my parents and pulling together for the first time ever as a family so that's a good thing there's always a good thing to be found so I'm gonna speed forward through this process a little bit I'm gonna figure out what my words are and I'll be right back okay I lied I put all I filled them all up the only one I'm not sure I spelled the word right was cooperation but we're gonna just leave it I am kind of known for not spelling very well so now I'm gonna stick all of these down which is going to be fiddly because I like have no fingernails but we're gonna peel the little backings off and we're gonna stick them all around our clock face picking them up is going to be challenging and then once we have that down I'm gonna do an initial pencil sketch of my design before we get in there with markers and paint and I think I'm gonna add the found objects last so let me get all these words stuck down here and I'll be right back okay so now we're gonna do a picture yeah a sketch pencil sketch I almost said picture sketch but that's not what I meant I'm just gonna do kind of an outline of what I think that I want the design to be the pencil marks for the most part are gonna be covered up so that's fine you just kind of want kind of a guide okay and you probably can't see any of that on camera or very much of it because it's very light alright so now we're gonna go in with markers I think are we gonna go in with markers or paint that's a really good question isn't it let me figure out what I'm doing and I'll be back go in with paint first I think so I have this sort of light gray gray is one of our colors this is a warm gray this is a Blick matte acrylic and I'm gonna start with this as like my base if I can get more of it out than that okay there we go and I think first we're gonna go with a tiny brush I don't want to have this be so opaque that you necessarily can't see the words through it if you're worried about covering up the words too much you can always bring them back or you can do this with sort of a baby wipe in one hand or a rag to wipe some of the paint back now if you seal the stickers or label paper with some kind of like matte clear coat it's easier to do that add some weight I just want a darker gray color I'm gonna put out a little bit of the purple and the teal now for the sake of this page and argument I am going to use the purple as my shadow color to suggest shadow and darkness and this one as my highlight sunlight color you'll understand what I mean in just a minute we're gonna just I'm not gonna clean the brush I'm just gonna kind of do that I'm gonna mix these two together get in here with some markers and do some highlighting mark making refining our figures our marks or shapes a message if you will this is a permapake pigment marker this is a metallic purple this challenge is a good one for me to get out some of these markers that I like never use I have this giant Copic wide marker in black but I don't know I'm gonna do that this is gray gray is one of our colors this happens to be a dark gray I think I'd rather use this one off the permapake in black which is a thinner tip than a super wide Copic and more opaque because it's permapake opaque pigment marker I'm thinking I want to add some of this cross your fingers it I don't hate it okay I want to put some flowers on here I think I'm gonna put there's some babies breath in here these are all flowers I've dried myself from things I found on evening walks or the kids will bring me occasionally bouquets of flowers and I'll enjoy them for a few days and then smash in between some books I did tell them I do that I told them don't be mad but you know I want to tone down that center part just a little bit so I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get out some of the white take a little brush I'm gonna take this little tiny this is like a soy sauce dish take some of the white got tiny bit of the blue that teal-y turquoise color and then some water to thin it and I just want to push this back a little bit exactly what I need this to say will this work even though I wrote next to me alright so let's get our sharpie back out okay step out of the dark and into the light and I think I want it to go there somewhere we need to put our flowers on first I might need to trim it up just a little bit because that might be a bit big yep okay so first we're gonna put the flowers on and I'm gonna use the Matt gel for that I usually use Matt gel or sometimes I use tacky glue to glue foliage down is a bit of a tricky business let's give this a quick try first to make sure that markers dry I'm going to put some Matt gel down on here and then we're gonna lay the flowers in try to gently push them into the gel medium or glue whatever you're using this one doesn't want to stick of course it doesn't want to stick why would it want to stick depending on how flat your foliage is or isn't well tell you how much of said gluing stuff that you need to use make sure all the flower pieces are pushed down into the glue sealed in really well keep in mind this gel I'm using is Matt and it will dry clear I know it looks white right now but it will dry clear I'm going to dry that before I put the words on dry it but we are going to add our words on because of the bumpy texture now with the flowers and stuff I'm gonna use more of the gel medium I don't normally do that with my clothes but I usually use a glue stick but it's kind of bumpy no take our scissors and trim these bits off that are sticking out okay it's not quite dry yet but I will put a still picture here I love the way this turned out better than I thought it was going to every piece of artwork I've ever done at some point I look at it and go oh that's just really not going in a good direction and that's ugly but usually if I work through it I can find something I'm happy with or love and I really like the way this one turned out it definitely conveys the message that I wanted with this month's mission I hope you find it inspirational and challenging but in a good way even if the colors or the message aren't your thing I hope you give it a try please do share it over in the group the my inspiration group the link is down in the video description and if you do a video here on YouTube you know maybe do a hashtag mission inspiration or tag Mike Deakin or myself if it's based on this month's challenge in your video description or something we would love to see what you're doing all right that's it for this month I will see you with a min mission inspiration mid month mini mission or min as I'm calling it for short I don't know anyway that's it for today please leave any questions comments or concerns down below don't forget to check out that video description for relevant links link tree list of links for myself where you can follow me on social media you can support the free content here on YouTube by shopping in my Etsy shop becoming a patron over on patreon joining the YouTube community there's links in the video description for shopping my art foamy designs or joining up for the free the free it's not free joining up for the class I'm teaching with Bea Grobina a few other talented artists here from YouTube in June they're all all of that stuff's in the video description so check it out that's it for today don't forget the most important thing please stay safe stay healthy stay creative go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later bye guys