Untried Thing No 1: Perfect Pearls Pearlescent Pigment Powders

As you know, my 7 Days, 7 Untried Things Challenge didn't come to a very good start, and I'm afraid that it's still not ready to take off completely. However, I'm thinking a 3 Days, 3 Untried Things Challenge might work for now, so today I'm presenting Untried Thing No 1: Perfect Pearls pearlescent pigment powders. (Don't you just love the alliteration in that one?)

Perfect Pearls is a mica powder produced by Ranger, which is acid free and non toxic, and it has a built-in binder so you don't have to combine it with any other medium, unless you want to. You can find more information about the product here.

I also have a similar product in my stash, which I'd forgotten about when I bought the Perfect Pearls: Pearl Ex powder by Jacquard. The first question that I wanted an answer to was therefore: is there a difference between the two? The answer is yes. Perfect Pearls has an built-in binder, whereas Pearl Ex needs to be combined with a separate binder. Since this is the case, I decided to use Perfect Pearls on paper with water to activate the built-in binder, but to save Pearl Ex for later experiments with acrylic and fabric mediums on fabric, and possibly paper too. Stay tuned for those later. I need to get more supplies before I can conduct my experiments... (What an excellent reason to go to the art shop.)

I tried Perfect Pearls on both white and black paper and discovered that the metallic shine is much stronger on dark paper than on light. However, if you want to add extra lustre to colours, you are better off with light paper. I used the powder both as a glaze and a paint. The difference is simply in the amount of water you add. Less water creates a more opaque metallic paint. I mixed the powder with both plain water and watercolour. I love the shimmery colours you get when you mix the powder with watercolours. I also mixed a glaze which I applied on top of watercolour pencils, Inktense pencils, Graphitint pencils, ordinary coloured pencils and pastel pencils. All worked well and gave slightly different results. The glaze took on the colour of the watersoluble pencils. I also used wax crayons as a resist for a thin wash of Perfect Pearls, and I loved the effect of black resist on black paper. I also realised that it was time to try another two untried products that I have in my stash: Versa Mark Watermark stamp pad and Versa Marker Watermark pen by Tsukineko. These left an invisible mark on the paper, which was magically revealed when you dusted dry powder over it. One is used with stamps and the other is a pen you can draw with. The dry powder needs to be fixed with a spritz of water.

So these are my findings so far, and here are a couple of pictures from my sketchbook:

Perfect Pearls can also be combined with embossing powder, shrink plastic and polymer clay, but I'll leave those for another time. I'm very pleased with what I've discovered so far.

Thanks for reading and I hope you'll visit my blog again soon! - Annika

The Best-Laid Schemes o' Mice an' Men...

gang aft agley, the Scottish poet Robert Burns famoulsy wrote in his poem 'To a Mouse'. (Read the whole poem here.)

I'm sorry to have to admit that I didn't pick the right week for my 7 Untried Things in 7 Days-challenge. Yesterday I had an awful day at work, and an awfully long one too. When I finally got home I had a long conversation with mum on the phone, discovered that it was awfully late, quickly got out some untried art supplies, did some research and realised that it was bedtime. And it seems that the rest of the week will continue in the same pattern, so I decided not to burden myself further with this challenge right now, but to wait until things calm down a little. I snapped a quick photo, though, to show you that I'm not trying to wriggle myself out of the challenge. Here's a little collection of art supplies waiting for their chance to show what they're made of.

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

7 Days, 7 Untried Things

Like, I guess, many other artsy-craftsy people, I'm World Champion when it comes to buying new art supplies and then forgetting to use them. My shelves are filled with stuff I've bought with good intentions, but that I've somehow managed to forget to explore and use, because another interesting thing came along and grabbed my attention. It's a severe case of AADD, i.e Artist's Attention Deficit Disorder.

Therefore, I decided that my next challenge will be to look through my shelves and try one unexplored material/art supply every day for 7 days. I had a warm up exercise yesterday with a set of pastel pencils that I've have for years and years. I bought them after I'd been to an exhibition of children's book illustrations. I was blown away by some pastel drawings and when the aforesaid pencils were on sale a little later I splashed out. And that was it. Since then they've been part of my standing exhibition of art supplies.

So yesterday I grabbed those pencils and some cool black drawing paper I also bought in a sale a while ago and set to work. Oh my, I enjoyed it! The inner kindergartener in me revelled. I didn't do any planning, I just doodled with coloured shapes. I'm afraid that the fixative darkened the colours a bit, and the scan didn't do much to improve the situation, so the drawing may not look as vibrant as it looked to me while I was working. The result of working pastel pencils over black paper reminds me of batik fabric, and this is something I'd like to explore more.