Trying To Engage Again and My Continuing Fascination with an Pastels

Time marches on and I, inexorably, march along with it. I am feeling somewhat more near normal with the irritating exception that I have NO energy. I seem to do one thing and then want to rest or nap again. I am eager for this malaise to stop. I am still not sure how successful this adventure has been, although one thing is that my hands no longer tingle and go numb - so I know that there are some good results from it !

Anyway the journal page above is the first I have done since going to the ether, and although it is not up to par in my mind it was a fun experiment. Some of you may remember that I am all excited about PanPastels and this was the first time that I had been able  to try them - since they arrived, literally, the day before we left for the hospital. My plan for the remainder of today is to play some more. Yes, I did order a few more that I hope Duck Blick will mail post haste! For this page I just used some of PanPastels for a background.

Things that I have noticed thus far about these little gems: they are NOTHING like any other medium I know of. Yes, they are called Pan Pastels, pastels in pans. They are not like soft pastels that I used to love to play with at home years ago - although I hated the dust and hated always having to remember to use fixative right away to prevent the inevitable smearing (generally on myself!).  These do smear a bit too but nothing like the soft pastels of yesteryear.  I used a workable fixative on the page before I wrote on it and I had no problems with the pens clogging or the background smearing under the 'weight' of he writing. They are surely not like oil pastels either - gummy and not as easily spreadable. PanPastels are creamy, dreamy in texture, spread oh! so beautifully and, I think, have an awful lot of  possibility.  The pans are larger than I thought they were too. From the photographs I saw I was thinking that they resembled an eye shadow container but in reality they are large - 2 inch-ish - and filled to the tippy top with glorious, saturated colors. I balked at buying the foam tools - they have foam covers that remind me of the covers on eye shadow applicators. These covers though, are available in many shapes and sizes and I do have to admit that they work well. I am a big proponent of getting the best tools that you can possibly afford and so I did order some extra foam tools, The foam pads are, I really do think, much like the foam puffs that you would find in pressed face powder (If you used it I mean) and so I did buy a large stock of those in a drug store. PanPantels do offer these larger pads in a variety of shapes and sizes and so, yes, I did get a variety to try - as I can see how a rounded puff will not always produce the best results. I know I will be posting a lot of experiments with these luscious colors

The other thing that has been really fascinating to me is metal/paper embossing. I have not a totally suitable method for this but I keep trying. This is some of that super useful metal tape that you can get in hardware stores - so they use it for cars or something? Whatever. I enjoy playing with it. I embossed a fantasy of curlyques and rounds and they overlaid some color with my favorite Sharpie Poster Paint markers.

I have also been playing around with making more special occasion cards. I was not feeling up to going to a wedding for some friend's off-spring this past weekend but I did want to make a special card for the top of their package. This was about an 8 inch square and I had fun making it! I got to use watercolor, pan pastel, Sakura gelly roll markers and my favorites, Pitt Artist Pens by Faber Castell. So, while I have not been able to do anywhere near as much as I would like I have begun the road back to art enjoyment - which in my book equates with the road to 'recovered'. In the evenings I spend time working on my first lace shawl from the Cheryl Oberle book, "Folk Shawls". So I better get moving or I can see myself spending another day napping and surfing - not the worst thing in the world to "have" to do but I want to play some more and am getting tired of myself saying "tomorrow I am going to play" every evening and then not making the time to do so. Before long I will be back to work and playing will be less of an option so I want to jump on these ast few days whilst I can !