Tip and Technique Tuesday: Quick Halloween Craft

Hey everybody, we are live today for our Tip and Technique Tuesday. So today we are going to do something a little bit different. We are going to do a Halloween craft. So I was going to see if I could show you guys my inspiration photo, but I'll kind of walk you through what we're going to do today. Um, before I go any further, let me know that you can hear me okay. I can see you, I just want to make sure you can hear me. And hopefully your text alerts came through a little earlier today. I scheduled ahead of time, or so we should be doing better. I don't know why that is looking over. Okay, sounds good. So before we get going on the craft today, you are probably noticing this painting behind me, or these two paintings, I should say. This is our newest workshop that I am doing at the beginning of October to celebrate the Social Easel turning 10. So we are doing a Sunflowers Galore workshop, you are going to learn not only the acrylic version, which mine is on a 16 by 20— you can do this on whatever size you want to, it doesn't have to be a 16 by 20, um, because here's the thing, I'm actually going to show you how to draw this on. And I know that sounds scary for those of you that love templates, but this is going to be where I ask you to trust me because we are going to use a piece of chalk on black background, and I'm going to show you how to loosely sketch this design on and how to place our flowers and all of the things. So you will have step-by-step instructions on how to do that. So not only are you going to learn this painting step by step, but you're also going to learn a watercolor version, which is just so fun. These are so pretty and look so awesome framed. You're going to learn both paintings over the span of 5 days. So in addition to that, you're going to get a studio technique session on day 1 where I walk you through everything before we get started on the actual painting, where I'm going to teach you some of the techniques that we're going to be using in the week, some basics about supplies, everything that you need to know, color mixing, um, values, all that good stuff, how to use a palette knife, how to treat your acrylics like watercolor if you don't have watercolor. Um, so this workshop is for everyone at all levels. It's only $10 to celebrate our 10th birthday, and you have access to the replays through October 10th. So that is coming up. The link is in the description up above. When you purchase this workshop, you also have the opportunity, when you check out, to go to the thank you page. You're going to be given the opportunity to buy a special workshop kit that is going to include some of the basics that you need for this painting, including a signature brush set that you can't buy anywhere else. You're going to get this 3-piece brush set that is going to be all that you need for both paintings. You're going to get a palette knife. You're going to get a gold paint pen and permanent marker. You're even going to get a piece of chalk to sketch it on with so you don't have to go out and find one. In addition to that, we have some other just fun goodies in that workshop kit. You're going to have a postcard-size reference photo of this print that you can later frame if you want to, and you're also going to get some bonus stickers from us and even a 5x7 watercolor postcard that you can do your watercolor version on. Uh, so let me know if you have any questions about that, um, before we get started. Um, yes, The workshop is included for Tribe members, and if you are already a Painting of the Month Club member, it was actually my gift to you as well. If you were a member from the previous month before we opened doors this month, it is included for Tribe and Painting of the Month Club members, and all the information about that is in your email for Painting of the Month Club, and it's in our Tribe Sister Facebook group in the featured section for Tribe Sisters. Lindsay said, are those brushes in the pack you sell? No, these are different than my 15-piece brush set. So I have a 15-piece that I sell in the store. These are my teal-handled ones. These brushes, the pink ones, are actually a little bit different sizes, but if you already have these, you can definitely use them. We just wanted to make a simple 3-piece set because when I used to teach paint nights locally, I didn't bring a ton of brushes for everyone. We usually had, most of the time, 2 brushes, um, sometimes 3. And so this brush set of what I used to use, um, when I taught in-person paint classes, um, the kit is $27. It is US only, and it only ships in the US, and that includes shipping. So you get that entire package for $27 with shipping included, and you can only purchase that kit after you sign up for the workshop. If you are a Tribe Sister and you want access to that kit, Megan has already posted that link in our Tribe Sister Facebook group. Um, Joanne, just email customer service if you already signed up, but just FYI, anytime I do anything new, if you are a Tribe Sister, always check your Tribe Sister emails and the Facebook group because that is where we tell you what is included for you as a Tribe Sister. So that will save you the headache of having to go and sign up and do a reimbursement, but we will definitely take care of that for you, Joanne. So today We are going— let me pull this up here. Wrong way. I'm going to take myself off and go full screen for you, and then we will zoom in just a little bit. So normally I try to keep these to 20 minutes. We will go a little bit longer today because I kind of just want to walk through you with the choices that I made for the project that I'm getting ready to work on. You'll see I have a mixed media pad underneath here, and then I just went to Michaels. By the way, they're having a huge sale right now, so if you have a Michaels nearby or if you can order online to place an order, I would recommend doing that. Everything is on sale. Except for these guys, but these little wood— I don't even know, I guess panels is what you would call them. They were only like— they were less than $2 apiece. I was looking to see if there was a size on here so I could tell you, but they're very little. I mean, you can see compared to the size of my hand, but what I was looking for was something small to do this little Halloween craft on. I saw these cubes at TJ Maxx the other day. Um, let me see if I can pull my other camera up to show you. Okay, can you guys see this? Try to get it out of the glare. But I was in TJ Maxx the other day and see this cute little square trio here, and I was like, they're so cute, I could make my own little version of those. So I'm doing something a little bit different. I don't have cubes, I found these little wood panels instead. So that is kind of like my inspiration. And then you can see here I've started sketching on my mixed media pad. And so this is what I recommend to anyone when you're coming up with ideas for compositions. Right now our Tribe Sisters are in the middle of a challenge that we do inside of our group where they are combining a previous— several, they can choose however many they want to, but they are choosing previous fall paintings that we've done in the past years and they are, they're making what we call a mashup. So they're taking ideas from several different paintings and combining them into one. So part of them doing that and coming up with their own composition is sketching in a mixed media pad. And so all I did was just— and this is very messy, this is just for you to play with— but all I do when I'm doing thumbnails is what these are called. If I'm doing a square canvas, I just draw a bunch of little squares. On here. If I'm doing rectangles, obviously I do rectangles. And then inside each one of those, I'm just kind of sketching out my ideas. And then you will see underneath that sometimes I'll put notes on. So like, I know like these different colors are going to be like the base. Um, some thinking about it and I'm like, well, maybe I'll want some like polka dots behind here. I'll come in and I just kind of make those notes, or maybe I'll like add in some little scribbles. These are just ideas. This is where you're coming up with what you want to do. Um, so I just thought I would show you a little bit of my process, and you could take it a step further. Sometimes I even go in if I'm not sure on my colors, I go in with either watercolor or marker and color in just to have a better feel for what I'm doing. Um, and for those of you asking about Tribe and what it means to be a Tribe sister, those are members of my VIP membership, and we only open doors to the public a few times of the year. This is the last time we will be opening doors this fall. So Tribe opens, um, in— how many days do we have left? I'm trying to think now. It opens October 2nd. So we are on a countdown to TRIBE as part of our 10th birthday celebration. We are opening doors to TRIBE again, and we are doing the sunflower workshop that I was sharing with you about at the beginning of this Facebook Live. So if you want to be a part of that, definitely sign up for it, but we'll be doing some fun things from October 2nd through the 10th while doors are open for TRIBE. And I'll be sharing some fun videos on the page as well. But this is your only chance to sign up for that Fall Sunflowers Galore workshop for only $10. So this is just gesso that I'm putting on here right now. I don't use this when I'm prepping canvases because they're pre-gessoed. Most of the panels and canvases that you buy at the store have already been gessoed. There's no need for you to do it again. However, when we're painting on wood, wood can absorb the paint, so this helps create a barrier between the wood and your paint so you're not having to use as much paint. So that is the first thing I'm going to do. We're just going to coat all of these little rectangles in gesso, and I plan on using these as like little shelf sitters mixed in with my Halloween decor. And we're just going to use some craft acrylic paint today, um, some paint markers. I pulled over my gold and my glitter paint just in case I feel like adding some of that on as well. So just let me know in the comments if you have any questions. Let me know if you're a Halloween fan. I know it's not everyone's thing, so I would encourage you, if you are not a Halloween lover and you don't want to do the designs that I'm doing today, I encourage you to come up with some other cute fall designs that you can still use this tutorial that we're doing today to add some fun things into your fall decor. You could do some sunflowers or pumpkins and fall colors. There's so many ideas, but it's fun to paint on different things, not always just canvas. I'm always looking for fun little things to paint. I also got, um, the other day I ordered some wooden bookmarks. So I thought maybe in a couple weeks we'll do some little bookmarks on a Facebook Live as well. Hey Christina, she said the sunflower workshop is an absolute steal for $10. It's so great, super excited. Christina did— she's one of my Tribe Sisters, and, um, Christina, feel free to share in the comments with them as well. But, um, that was, uh, we did a version of this. I've changed it a little since last year, but we did a version of this last year and Christina painted it, and it was like a real game changer. Um, changed the way that she looked at her art and design and how she kind of approached her painting. Hers are absolutely gorgeous. She makes the most beautiful paintings in our tribe. And we have questions all the time about, um, in tribe, do you have to have any experience before coming a member? And you do not at all. We have a mix of lots of different types of ladies in there. Christina has had experience in the past but she hasn't painted in a really long time since— was it high school or college, Christina? Remind me. Um, so years and years, um, similar to what happened to me. I went years without painting, um, in between high school and college and having kids and all the things, and then finally came back to it. And then we have women who, before maybe even doing a Facebook Live or something like this with me, who have never painted before, are now a part of Tribe and learning to paint, even selling their work after they've posted it on their Facebook page. Some are doing paint parties and some are just doing it for the joy of painting and the fun and the camaraderie that we have inside of the group, getting to paint with a group of ladies every single month, seeing what everyone's working on in the group. So it's a lot of fun. The fall workshop that I have coming up is going to be a snapshot of what it is like to be inside of my tribe. We love doing the workshops to kind of give you guys an idea of what you can expect, and we do it all in a private Facebook group, which is the same place we host our Tribe Sister Facebook group. Or community, I should say, is in a Facebook group. And I teach live, um, a couple times a month in the group. And that's where all of our tribe sisters can share their work in progress with the fellow ladies. Okay, I'm gonna try to lift these up off my newsprint so they don't stick to it. So we've got those gessoed. I'm just going to lift my camera and scoot it on this piece of paper so it quits pulling. Christina said, yep, it was a huge game changer working on the black background. Mind-blowing. It was since college. It was definitely missing in my life for sure. Okay, I thought I couldn't remember if it was, um, college or high school. Emily said, I don't like Halloween, but I love Thanksgiving. Yes, and you could totally, you know, turn this into something Thanksgiving related. Melissa, that's a good idea, said, I think leaves, pumpkins, owls. I just pulled out my fall owl. I think I left him at home. I was trying to decide if I was going to bring him up to the studio or decorate with him at home. Amanda said, would you use— would you use gesso on fence posts or larger pieces of wood? What would be the most cost-effective for you, Amanda, instead of using gesso? Because this is, this is, you know, it's art supplies. So number one, just because it's art supplies automatically makes it more expensive. If you just got like a house paint or a house primer in white, just cheap. Like, go to Walmart and get a ready-made. I used to do this when I did craft nights. Get ready-made colors. Um, I would get like a gray and a white and a cream, like just some of their basic colors they have in stock, and I would use those to paint the base of door hangers that we would do, or any crafts like this, because it's much cheaper than using gesso. For today I just used the gesso because they're such small little surfaces. Um, Debbie said, what do you have underneath the wooden blocks to protect your surface? So what I'm using today is newsprint. I just had an old, um, it's like, is this a 16 by 12? But anyways, it's just a big, it's a big, um, think of it like craft paper, but it's called newsprint. It would be cheaper for you to just get a roll of craft paper and tear it and put it off underneath. I just had this handy and it's extra that I don't need for something, so I thought it would be fast and easy to throw underneath today. Okay, yes, Carol, the workshop is free for tribe sisters. Details are in the Tribe Sister Facebook group. Okay, so I'm just continually moving these around just to make sure they don't stick. So let's go back to my ideas here. Yes, Alice, that's a great idea. She said I use old newspapers. I don't get newspapers anymore, so I don't have that, but this is— that's exactly what this is like. Um, so I only bought 3. I planned on doing a trio and just in general with like design and when you're setting things up, odd numbers always look better. Um, so, but here's my problem: I can't decide which ones I want to do. So I for sure want to do a pumpkin, I know that. Sure want to do Frankenstein because I just think he's so cute and I love the bright green. I love Halloween colors. Um, the purple, the green, the orange all together. They're just fun festive colors. And then I was trying to decide between a cute little ghost to do on this one, um, which obviously would be white, but we have this little Halloween cat at home. It's a bowl that I got from Hobby Lobby years ago, and it holds our candy corn. And Sophie, my 12-year-old, absolutely loves this cat, so I was thinking about painting a little black cat instead of the ghost. Laura said a cat ghost. I guess you could combine the two, but I was thinking the purple and the black would still look great with the green and the orange. Those are all the Halloween colors, um, that I love. So I don't know, we'll see. We'll see what I decide. You guys let me know. I think Sophie would be pretty excited if I did the cat. She just loves it when I do the cute little stuff like this. Okay, I'm gonna set this aside. And then you could decide how you want to do this part. Um, I am probably not going to sketch anything on ahead of time for my pumpkin or my Frankenstein because those are just going to be solid blocks of color. But for the cat, this is still a little wet, which I don't care, I'll just drag my um, pencil through it. I thought about just like how that was on my sketch, so I'm going to start with like an oval, like a sideways oval, because this is going to be like a funny, silly little cat. We're not trying to be realistic here. With some big old ears, and I think I'm gonna give him a skinny little neck here. Mm, maybe I don't want that much of him to show. Or I could do— oh yeah, let's do this instead of his little hands will be down there anyways. We could have his little tail sticking up over here, or maybe have it curl. So anything that I'm doing on there, all that, like, that's just pencil, but I'm not really worried about it. I'm just kind of sketching my idea out. Um, obviously I'm dragging that through the wet paint. You can tell I like to get messy. It's like a little curled tail off to the side. So I'm thinking something like that. That's my idea. Debbie said, I'm learning so much about gesso. I didn't realize that they have a pour type. The one I bought is very thick. I don't know anything about the pour type, Debbie. Um, the only one I've ever used since I was in art school was the one that I showed you, which is the thicker one. We used to use it to cover our panels before painting. Yes, the witch hat would be super cute on the cat as well, Wendy. What if I did? I could do a cute little— we could do a cute little witch hat off to the side. Almost like a little party hat. We'll see, we'll see what I get through today. This may have to be a two-part session. If you ever have trouble finding, um, the videos when I go live, it's always the Social Easel Facebook page, okay? So it's always going to be on the Facebook page You can refresh it to get the newest feed, or you can go to the videos tab, and the newest video that I'm doing will show up there. Lisa, the sunflower workshop replay is available through the 10th. So this is just a special offer. It is a limited time. Availability type thing. So you have from the 2nd through the 10th that you'll have access for the cost of $10. If you wish to extend and continue access after that, you do have the opportunity to join Tribe at that point, and Tribe sisters get continued access to the workshop after that as well. And I don't do everything like this, but we are doing this specific workshop this way because it is a celebration for the 10th anniversary, and we want as many people there actually during that 9-day span of time as can be, because we are going to be doing special contests throughout the week of painting. I'll be doing giveaways of art and gifts from my store. Throughout our sessions. So this is really about being a part of a live experience. If you are wanting something where you have longer access to it, obviously you can go check out my free content here on the Facebook page, or you can go to YouTube and check out my tutorials there. And then we also have Painting of the Month Club, which is open right now for only $20. And you have lifetime access to those tutorials as well. And this month, inside Painting of the Month Club, you actually get a bonus. You get 2 paintings for the price of 1 month. So it's been over a year since I've done this special. We are doing, we are doing all the things to celebrate the Social Easel turning 10. So let me grab that. Let me get this coat on here, and I'll show you what you get in Painting of the Month Club. And this is if you sign up before the end of September. So in Painting of the Month Club this month— and I can grab the link here in just a minute for you guys You are going to— two completely different styles of paintings. You're going to learn this fall still life with the lantern and the pumpkins. All kinds of amazing techniques you're going to learn in this lesson. Composition, lighting, shading, palette knife work, lots of things. And then, because I love Halloween, you turn him sideways. You will also get the Halloween gnome. I love this little guy. You're going to learn shading and lighting on here as well, and blending techniques. And then of course it has my fun Van Gogh sky in the background as well. So you get both of those for only $20 when you become a Painting of the Month Club member. Um, Tribe Sisters, you already have those, um, in your library. And if you become a Tribe Sister that first week of October, you will also have access to them. So we have two different levels of memberships. The Tribe membership is my VIP and includes everything, everything that the Painting of the Month Club gets. The social— or I mean, I'm sorry, the Tribe Sisters get that as well. But Tribe Sisters also have access to our full vault, which is 5 years worth of content, including those 2 paintings. We have over 175 paintings included in the Tribe Workshop. So I've thrown the link up for Painting of the Month Club. If you love those 2 paintings and you want to get those, that is up for you. Yes, the live is being like glitchy, and I'm really not sure why, because our connection is fine, and it's just something, some issue we are dealing with, with a phone. I've even tried a different phone. Um, Melissa, the color that I use is called Warm Sunset. It's a really good orange. It's one of DecoArt's newer colors. Yes, Sandy, that is the October Painting of the Month Club. Um, yes. Lynn, you will. Okay, so I'm just rinsing that orange out of my brush. Yeah, I've tried different things to deal with the glitching and I can't figure out what's causing it or how to fix it, so it is a little frustrating. And it doesn't do it on my computer, it only does it from a phone, which is how I have a phone holder that records these. This green is called Sour Apple. It is a great, just bright green from DecoArt. See, just like that. Sometimes I just squirt it right on there. It's just easier than adding it to a palette first. Jennifer's asking, how often do I open TRIBE to new members? We only do a public opening usually in the spring and the fall. However, I'm actually going to be doing that less, so this next opening to TRIBE will be the only public opening that we do until fall of 2024. So I'm only going to open it once a year to the public, um, and then sometimes when I do workshops throughout the year, we will offer an opening to people who do those workshops with us. But I'm going to be doing some new things in 2024, so I'm not sure how many workshops like this $10 one that we will have, um, next year. I may be creating a course. There's a couple different ideas that I'm weighing right now for 2024. So if you've been thinking about it, October is definitely the time to get in and become a part of it. Um, Nancy, yes, painting of the month stay in your library so you can go back to them whenever you want to. Christina said you should write a book. Well, funny you mentioned that, Christina. I won't call it a book exactly, but I am working on some ideas for next year and Something that I do want to work on is a devotional, but I want it to be kind of like an inspirational, like, picture book with devotional. So artwork to go with scripture and the devotional. So that is something that I am working on. No idea if it'll actually happen in 2024, but that is one of my goals. So the first thing I'm going to do on my little cat here is just go ahead. So I'm just using a round brush here. If you are newer to painting, You want to make sure that you get plenty of paint on your brush. A lot of times people will see me, you know, do brushstrokes and they're like, why doesn't mine ever look like that? And when I used to teach in person, you know, obviously I could go around and see what was going on. Most of the time it was because people did not have enough paint on their brush. So don't be afraid of your paint. Load it up, and then you can get these nice smooth lines like I'm doing. So when I'm doing that, I have plenty of paint in my brush, and I can— that oval— see, running out of brush there. Or paint there, and you get a nice smooth line. Same thing down here. Ooh, guess what I just thought of to do on the side of this? If you've been with me a while, I bet you can guess. We'll see if anyone comes up with it before I tell you. Thank you, I'm glad you guys would be excited about the devotional. I really hope it is something that comes together. Um, yes, Amanda said in classes or in Tribe, um, our supplies listed with each project. Yes, they are. So every— whether it's a workshop or just a one-off painting, everything always has a supply and color list provided for you. And not everything I paint comes with a template, because sometimes I actually try to teach you guys very basic things, shapes and things that you can make. You'd be surprised what you can actually draw on if you allow yourself to try. But Several of them include templates as well that you can transfer on. Trish said, if we— the fall sunflowers in a vase, can we able to look? You will have, Trish, for the $10, you get access through October 10th. If you wish to extend your access after that, you have the opportunity to join, um, Tribe. That would give you extended access. I think that's what you were asking. Um, Mary said— this is a good point, Mary— she said, my trouble is then, um, I think you meant to say, I have, um, ridges from too much paint. So it's a happy medium. You don't want it on there super be— you can see I've got a little excess here. Once it starts drying, you can come back and smooth that in. But that amount that I had on there is really— was not enough to make it leave the ridges. But if you have way, way, way a lot of paint on there, you will want to go back with another brush and smooth that in so you don't have the ridges as much. Winner, winner, winner! You guys guessed it, we're gonna do stripes. Dina said checkers, black and white stripes. So I love black and white, I love Mackenzie-Childs. So yes, I'm thinking I'm going to do some black and white stripes along this edge. How cute will that be to decorate our edges? I mean, you could even do that on the other ones. I have not heard of that yet, Debbie. Um, Donna said, will the devotional be a coloring book format? I don't know, Donna. It's all just an idea in my head right now. We'll see what comes. I— and I'm not really thinking of it as something like that. I'm thinking of it more of like an actual devotional book that you would write in. You could write in like devotional prompts, but I don't know if I'll have coloring pages. It's something to consider though. It will be filled with lots of beautiful artwork though. I kind of like my silly little cat. Thank you so much, Claudia. Okay, this guy's still dry. Okay, so while those are drying, he is about dry. Actually, let me do this. So one of the things I wanted to do on this one, instead of just doing bright orange That is really driving me crazy. I want it to look a little antique, so I'm just going a little dot of burnt umber, and I'm gonna grab a dry brush. I'll just grab this filbert. It really doesn't matter what shape it is, and I'm gonna kind of go along these edges. Now I'm gonna work quickly here. Even going to water that down just a little bit. So I'm watering down my brown acrylic paint. Okay, I'm going to go along the edges, but I'm doing this quickly because I don't want it to set just like that. I want to get it on, and then I want to take either— this is just a paper towel. You could also use a baby wipe, kind of do some antiquing around our edges here. I think I scraped a little off with my paper towel in the middle. And I still do have brown in my brush. I'm not worried about that mixing in with the orange. It'll just add to that little antique look there. Piece of paper towel. You can also use your finger if you like to get messy like me. Let's do a little around the edge too. I need a little bit more of my orange. So is this sparking some ideas for you guys? Something you could do with some cute little wood blocks? Look how easy that is just to give that little bit of an antique look. This would be really cute, especially if for those of you that are doing like only a fall version instead of Halloween. And you don't need to be careful about this either. No one's going to be coming and looking on your shelf and critiquing your antiquing of your little board. All right, so I kind of like the way this is finishing up. Add a little bit more. Orange here. And don't forget, anything that you're doing, whether it's a craft or on mixed media pad or on a painting, if you don't like something that you do, let it dry and you can paint right over it and it'll be just fine. For this one, I'm not sure what I want to do. I'm kind of thinking about black antiquing on the side. I'm going to leave that for now. So I'm grabbing purple. This is Purple Iris, and I'm going to use my skinny liner. That would be really cute. Laura said you could connect them vertically and use it as a door hanger. That would be super cute, or like hang in front of the fireplace. I have little things like that too. So purple is a really transparent color, so I'm going to grab a little bit of white with my purple initially for this background. Just to get a little bit more to show up. I don't want it pale, but we're just adding just enough white to it. It makes it a little bit more opaque and less transparent. It's like a little heart here. So again, making sure you have enough paint on your brush, you can make these brush strokes. And most likely with purple, you are gonna have to come back for a second coat, so keep that in mind. And what I don't want you to do— everyone listening— what I don't want you to do when you're doing this is continue to put coats of paint on while it's still wet. That is not going to benefit you in any way whatsoever. All it's going to do is make your paint thick and gloppy. So go around with one coat. Tell your brain to ignore all the lines and streaks that you see. Okay, we're not worried about that. We're going to come back to it later. If you try to just keep loading paint on here, you're just going to be moving wet paint around and it's going to frustrate you. It's not going to help you have better coverage. So the great thing about that too is if you accidentally pull any of your black into the purple, it's not really gonna matter because this is just our base coat. Sour Apple was the green color, yes. And I may or may not put that hat back on there, the little witch's hat, but for now it's going to be much easier to paint this all solid purple. And then if I want to do that, I can come back and add it. So I'm just getting a good base coat on there, making sure I don't see any white little specks coming through where the paint's not covering. Um, the brown is just burnt umber. Any brown is fine. It doesn't need to be a certain brown. Just getting a touch of white to add to that again. You guys got any questions for me while you have me here? It doesn't just have to be about the painting. We can just chitchat a little. Okay, so I'm gonna let that purple dry before adding anything else to it. I think these are going to be super cute next to each other. Don't you love these colors together? Um, someone's asking, can you use paste on the— oh, are you asking like a modeling paste? Yeah, I mean, it's just a wood panel, so you can do whatever. Look at that, I just messed that up. I was trying to get a little purple blip off there, and then I messed up the wet paint. I may have to purposely put his nose there or something to cover that up. Yeah, you can use modeling paste. You just want to— you would want to be careful because these are really tiny and they're super lightweight. So if you put a bunch of modeling paste on this and made it too heavy, it wouldn't stand up. For those of you not sure what she is referring to, I'll show you. This is the sunflower painting, the impasto sunflower painting I just did inside of my tribe. Um, I went back and played with it a little bit more and edited it. I'll be sharing more of those photos too. So this was done with modeling paste and gel medium. But on something this small like this, I could kind of lean it against the wall and it could be like a shelf sitter. But I'll be hanging this one. Um, Pamela's Pamela's asking, find the Tribe Sister page on Facebook. So it's not a page, Pamela. If you are a Tribe Sister, in your welcome email there was a link to join the Tribe Sister Facebook group. So it is a private group that you can't— not everyone on Facebook can see it, only if you're a member. Yes, Debbie, it is, it is very 3D. Let's touch up a couple. This one, I still haven't decided what I want to do on my sides here. My fingernails are just catching the paint as I was turning it around and making little spots in it. Okay, so the first thing I'm gonna do on my little Frankenstein is his hair, and we're just gonna make some little zigzaggies up here. Yeah, I guess I didn't really need to paint that green over top of that, did I? I think I'm going to carry this around the side. And if you want to protect these and so they don't get scuffed up, you can put a sealant on when you're all the way done. There are several different options for that. You can use a spray sealer, you can use a brush-on sealer. DecoArt has several different Mod Podge. So there's lots of things you can do to seal these to protect them when you're done. So I'm literally just scooping up a bunch of paint so I can spread it on here faster. I can already picture him. Debbie, like I said, there's a whole bunch of different ones you can use. I mean, any of them work. So it's really just preference as to whether you want a spray-on or a brush-on. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Okay, I'm still going to leave that one for now. I think I want to go ahead, kind of draw my eyes on here, maybe give them little eyebrows. And this is still wet, so it's scratching through the paint a little bit. I don't even think you guys can see that. Yes, I got these little wood blocks at Michaels. So now there's two options you could do here. You could use black paint and fill this in, but I have another tip for you. We'll do one like this. You can also do a paint pen. Let me make sure I have some good prime ones. Um, Debbie, also up to you. She said matte or shiny finish, what do you prefer? Do you want these to be shiny or do you want them to be matte? So those are— it's all preference. There's no right or wrong on that. So anywhere this is dry, I can go ahead and do this. How much faster is that? The other thing I thought would be really cute, if you like mixed media and you have scrapbook paper, to do a base on the front of this. So, um, this was one I started on On our last Facebook Live, that's— this is a mixed media piece with scrapbook paper under the painting. That would be really cute under on these wood blocks as well. I forgot I had that wet there from touching that up. I'm going to leave that little section right now. We're going to leave him for just a moment. He's not done yet, but we're going to take a break with him. Actually, I think that's dry right there. All right, we'll leave him for the time being. He's not done yet, but he's getting closer. Yeah, I love Posca pens, um, Amanda's asking, but I use a lot of different brands. Um, I'm always trying new ones too and looking for different affordable options for you guys. Posca is definitely one of my favorite. I also have Arteza, and then I have a bunch of like waterproof, um, black pens. As well. So I think we're going to do similar here. Actually, you know what, so this is, um, this is a PC5M, so this is a little bit thicker. My skinny one that I wanted to use is dried up. I gotta order another one of those. So my other See, let's see if this one's working. This is a Sharpie brand paint pen, so this works fine too. I wanted something skinnier to do his little scar across his forehead. So remember how I talked about we're going to use chalk in that fall workshop. I'm just going to kind of sketch out with chalk kind of an idea where my placement's going to be so I can visualize it a little bit better. I know you can't see this very well, but I can see it just enough for my marks. Now for these skinny lines, you could also just use a waterproof black pen. That's not wanting to work. Y'all, I'm gonna have to order some new paint pens. Where's my new black one? Okay, hopefully this one will work. This is the Faber-Castell Soft Brush Pen. This is waterproof. Much better. So you can get those dainty little lines. I hear you, Patricia. She said they're so cute. I have so many things I see that I want to do, and there's not enough hours in my day. I'm right there with you. So back to the question about paint pens. I don't think there's just one. I think when— if you're going to have your own little space where you're creating art doing this, I would recommend getting a variety of different paint pens because just like for this project, depending on what you're working on, you may want bigger, bolder brush strokes with a thicker paint pen, or you may want skinnier. Let's make his eyes a little bigger. He's just a cute little bashful. Frankenstein. Okay, now I get to show you something else that's fun, and we are adding these to my store. They're not in there yet, but we are adding them. So again, I'm always looking for new fun things to use in my art. This is recommended for nail art, and I thought, well, why wouldn't I want to use it in regular art too? For little dots and designs. So we're going to give them some little freckles, and I can just tap the end of that in my paint, and now I have perfect little dots for his freckles. And then I'll be able to do the same thing once those eyes are dry, a little white dot on the inside inside of his eye. And then I added, um, to the bottom of mine— we could leave him like this, but I kind of pictured him with like a little suit on and maybe a bow tie, so I was just gonna draw that on here. Let's just carry that over to our sides. Maybe paint like the inside of that bottom part white. I'm going to go ahead and use paint for this outer section. All right, so we're just almost at an hour, so I've already added extra time to this one today. You guys let me know in the comments, do you want— I have a little extra time today, I can continue to hang out and finish my cat with you, or we can jump off and I'll finish it on my own and then I can post pictures of it later. What do you guys want to do? I'm kind of anxious to see these little things come to life here. I got a resounding keep going. Now obviously this bottom part really doesn't matter. I'm still going to go ahead and paint it black just to have it done. I just think he is so cute. All right, you guys want to see my little kitty cat finished here? Let's dry that off. I'm gonna grab some white. Oops, that's okay. That's going to be coat number 1, and it pulled some black into it, so Now it's kind of gray, but that's okay because it's just coat number 1. Yes, this would be great to do with kids, and yes, the bow tie is going to be purple. You guessed it. I'm just mixing my white and purple together a little bit over here on my palette to get a little bit lighter color. So did you guys know— I'll give you a little color lesson here as well. The reason these colors go so well together is because they are spaced equally apart from each other on the color wheel, so they are naturally pleasing to our eye because of that. I do think I am going to take a little bit of black. I'm just going to use my finger. And just kind of add in a little bit of— that looks cute. I kind of like the rough look of that. I don't want them to be so clean and perfect. Don't you kind of like it scuffed up? I do. I think it gives it a little bit more character. This kind of looks like a sideburn, and I'm probably still going to come back and add some white Posca pen and maybe even gold, possibly. Possibly some glitter to these guys. Um, Jean, I actually did not use a pen for the freckles. I used this little tool that is meant like nail art, and I just dipped that little tip in black paint and just did a quick little dot for his freckles. Oh, awesome, Debbie! She said, I was learning about the color wheel from one of your video series that I purchased. I love talking about color, color theory, mixing colors, all of it. Okay, time for our keycap. I gotta pull up the picture that I took today. So on this— did I show you guys this? On this little cat that I— I wish I had a picture of the one that we have at home that my candy bowl is, but I'm gonna do these lime green eyes and similar color. I think I am going to do orange for the nose and the ears. So for the eyes, I'm going to paint those on, and I'm white first to give me a little bit of a separation between the black and my color. It's going to help the green show up better. I'm going to do the same thing where I'm putting orange, that little base of white first. Looks like a little burglar now. Helps with your color showing up better. This kind of got boogered up where that paint was not dry all the way when I went over that with a paint pen, so I'm just going and smoothing this out right now. If something like that happened to you, worst case scenario is you could just sand it down and repaint it, but I think I caught it soon enough that I could just smooth it out. You may see— okay, let's scoot this in just a little. Look like little glow-in-the-dark eyes. And here's the thing, if you mess up kind of like I did there on that eye, it's not a big deal. So try to practice not being so hard on yourself or expecting it to be perfect. It's not going— but if you do little oopses like that, you can come back and easily fix them. This is just water. On my brush, I can get up some of the excess there, and then I can just come back with black, or even a black paint pen if you wanted. And I'll probably be adding a second coat of green to that as well, so I'm going to let that dry and move on to my ears. Yeah, I know. I'm going to use a paint pen for the little smile and the whiskers. What do you guys think so far? Let's go in with some of our purple for a second coat while we're letting that dry a little bit. So you can see how much that second coat makes a difference. So you go from like streaky to smooth, and that is the benefit of you waiting and not trying to rush it by glopping two heavy coats of wet paint on top of each other. You want to let your paint dry in between coats. I'm not going to worry too much about my edges here because I know I can just come back with a black paint pen and tighten anything up. My biggest concern right now is just getting that second coat of purple on here. Amanda said, do you ever use a little hair dryer? Yes, I keep a hair dryer at my workstation, both at home and here at the studio. I use a blow dryer quite a bit, especially because I tend to be a little impatient and don't want things to take as long as they do to dry. But when you're working on— it depends on what I'm working on. If you're working on several different pieces like this, it's easy to just let it dry on its own and come back to it. Or if you're working on a larger painting, a lot of times when I'm teaching paintings like the sunflower workshop that we're going to be doing in October, we will move around a lot on that canvas and wait for our layers to dry and just move to a different section instead of having to blow dry or wait. And then just a little bit more purple up here. All right, let's do a quick look at our little buddies here. We're almost done. I'm gonna put a second coat of white on here. If you liked this, be sure to hit the share button. Share it with your friends so they can come and do a fun craft with us. My team will be on later this week or next week to make a share post. So if you do this and you want to share your work with us, you'll have an opportunity to share that here on the Social Easel page underneath that post. Okay, so now we're, we're down to the finishing touches. I do think I'm gonna test this. I'm gonna do a quick blow dry on these two guys so I can do some paint pen work on them. What do you guys think about him? Does he need anything else, or should we just leave him simple. Let me know while I'm blow drying. Yes, I like the pumpkin as is too. I need to fix up my little mistakes from my nails grabbing it while it's wet, but otherwise I think he's ready to go. So cute. Okay, for the cat eyes, I'm going to use my pen for the interior part of that. Nice and easy. This is my first cat face I have done like this. I actually quite love him. He's so cute. Let's do a quick little outline around these eyes. I know it doesn't look very noticeable right now, that little, little bit of definition. It's going to show up there. We add some little lines inside. Okay, white paint pen. Where did you go? Is this my messed up one? So this is, um, just an Arteza gel pen instead of a paint pen. Great for little accent marks. And then let's see, I don't know if I have a skinny enough orange. This and all of this is in my Amazon store, by the way. Um, I'm gonna throw this banner up really quick. If you text the word Amazon to that number on the screen, it will give you a link to like some of my favorite art supplies. Oh, I could have used that white one. Um, this is the brand, is Art Owl, but I love them because they're super skinny, so they're great for this detailing. Oh, I love that, that little accent mark. Look how bright that orange is on the nose. I don't know if that's showing up on camera. Paint pens are just so fun. You can do so much with them so quickly. I think he's looking pretty cute. So the other color I just, uh, grabbed is like a pink. I might throw a little pink in here too. Give her a little collar. Cute little accent marks inside his little bow tie here. Just gonna prime this. Everyone get that number? I'm gonna take that off there. Okay. Got my white primed here. Go a little bit heavier on our white there. Maybe a couple little accent marks here. A lot of times I like to do the accent marks outside of the actual shape too, kind of gives a little bit of movement. And you could do polka dots or whatever you wanted to in the background of the cat too, if you wanted. All right, let's do some quick little detail work on this guy. Again, I try to be fast with my movements so it doesn't look too overworked or too perfect. It looks better when it's not. We don't want this to look like some computer made it. We want it to look handmade. The name of these skinny paint pens is Art Owl, is the brand of them. Maybe we'll add a little bit of white to this guy. Makes them stand out just a little bit more. The other thing I thought about doing with him— we'll see if I like this or not— I thought about adding— on shop, Patricia was asking about the paint pens. I think I might do a couple little lines. Yeah, I think I like that. What do you think? He looks a little more finished now. So these Art Owl pens, all the colors that I'm using right now, they have a black, they have a white in there. They have all these different colors, so that's a really good set. Okay, last but not least is, do we want to add any gold or glitter? And then I'm gonna have to jump off here. I got a little carried away, but it was fun. I think I might do a tiny bit of gold. Sometimes I like to use the gold as almost like a glaze. Debbie said, how do you prevent your paint lines from being heavy? Do you mean like with the paint pens or like the paint brushes. With pens, I mean, really with both of them, honestly, it's quick, light movements and you're not putting down a lot of pressure. So this is Extreme Sheen 24-karat gold by DecoArt. And I'm almost kind of like— dry piece there— dry brushing that on just in the orange. I'm gonna even water that down just a little. That's gonna look really cute sitting on the shelf. Now you get an extreme shine like that on the camera, that's just from the ring light shining right on it, so it won't be quite that shiny. So again, I've watered that gold paint down pretty decently so that it's acting like more of a glaze than really thick paint. Of course, all this is optional. I'm going to be adding glitter to this as well. I can already tell that I want to. Where are my glitter fans at? Glitter or no glitter? It's always a debate. Oh, a lot of you said glitter on the cat collar. That's a good idea. I feel like I want a little bit more pink there. It kind of faded. All right, so I'm just going to use the Craft Twinkles. This is brush-on glitter again from DecoArt. I want to do a little glitter in the background too on the cat. I love glitter over top of purple. So pretty. Oh, almost dropped it. You can see the glitter and the gold. Hopefully it's a little bit more noticeable the drier it gets. We're just going to do a little bit inside the black on the pumpkin. That way, if you're doing like a collection like this, you want to somewhat tie them together. They should have some similarities between all of them so that they coordinate. Those just turned out way cuter than I even thought they would. What do you guys think? The only thing I have left to do is add the black and white stripes on the side of my cat, and I'm done. So this is your last chance for any questions. I'm going to finish this up, and then I'm gonna jump off for the day. If you want to do more painting with me, make sure you sign up for the fall workshop. It's only $10 to join us, and it is going to be from October 2nd through the 6th are the live classes, and then you will have access through the 10th. The color green for Frankenstein was called Sour Apple by DecoArt. So I'm using the large flat out of my 15-piece brush set. This is my custom brush set that you can get in the store. Me type this in real quick. So I actually designed these brushes. It's 15 brushes that I use when I'm teaching my paintings inside the membership. So I threw up the link to our store. That's also where you'll find our new products— aprons, sweatshirts. But this is the perfect width, I feel like, for stripes. And of course I'm just eyeballing because we don't want it to be perfect, right? That's gonna be so cute. And then after that dries, I think I'll put some glitter on it too. Running out of my black paint and I'm being stingy. I don't want to put more on there. All right, so that kind of shows you— I'm not going to finish that here on the live, but shows you what the sides of that are going to look like. Um, the glitter, I always get clear. It's usually called crystal. This is Craft Twinkles. Any— you don't need this brand, you don't have to get this kind. Any brush-on glitter that comes in a paint tube like this works great. Okay, so here is our little Halloween duo. Once I get them home, I will show you guys. Sophie and I are gonna decorate for Halloween tonight, so I'll be sure and show you the, um, photos after we get done putting them all on our shelves. So hope you guys had fun with that. Make sure you share with your friends and, um, Come and join us for the $10 workshop. Starts October 2nd. Bye.