Welcome! I’m Carolyn Dube – This colorful journey is all about the freedom of play!
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The Fine Print
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What are Scribble Sticks? Inquiring minds want to know! Are they like a crayon or a colored pencil or a watercolor or an oil pastel? Will they work on dark colors? Will they react to water? Will they bleed through paint? This is what I set out to learn as I played around with Scribble Sticks in my art journal.
Can they work with stencils? Yes indeed they can! There is a trick to making sure words are lined up on the edge, start at the end and work backwards, as I did here with my Ransom Alphabet stencil.
The color reacts to water so a cup of plain water and brush easily turned what looked like colored pencil into vibrant watercolors, even on a regular art journal page. No gesso involved. The Scribble Sticks also could do a crisp lines and details.
What about over dark colors? This clean up print from gel printing with my Wall of Words stencil was just the right scrap to test this out. All the colors stood out on black, including white. Something white that writes over paint…be still my heart. But this paint was very matte, would these write on a glossier paint?
So I had to try that out on another gel printing scrap. They wrote just as well on the slicker, more glossy paint. But what about bleeding? A thick coat of white paint was added on top of some of the colors. The pink bled through big time but the other colors not much.
All the white space on this art journal page couldn’t stay totally white. A touch of scribble journaling finished it off. Since Scribble Sticks don’t smear unless wet, my hand did not smear what I had written, which a great feature for art journalers!
Here’s what I learned from my play with Scribble Sticks:
They write easily over paint.
All the colors write over black, including white.
They react quickly and completely with water to be a vibrant watercolor.
They write like a colored pencil and won’t smear if you keep them dry.
Some of the colors bleed through paint.
They work nicely with stencils.
Here are the supplies I used. Some of these links are affiliate links which means I get a small percentage. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and it helps keep the free tutorials coming!
What happens when a few colors are added to an Impressable Gel Press plate? FUN! Jen Starr Studio’s design, Repeat Circles, with Dylusions paints created a stack of rainbowed circle prints! And yes, rainbow should be a verb!
The Impressables Gel Press plate has a raised pattern on it. Since it is entirely made of that magical gel it has all the properties and characteristics of a gel plate.
I used an 8×10 plate as my palette and from here applied Dylusions paints to the Impressable plate. Poor orange, it thought it was going to be used in the play but at the last minute, I decided it would be sidelined. Loved these 4 colors all by themselves. I promise I’ll make it up to you later orange!
In the video, you see how I made a careful and precise print or a color blended rainbow print. Bet you know which is my favorite kind to make!
There are other patterns of the Impressables too. Below is a video of the Rose Mandala in action.
O.O.P.S…This just wasn’t coming together. The no fail plan I had in my head to use up the scraps from die cutting in my art journal flopped. It failed big time compared to what was in my head. But did it really fail?
When things don’t come together, it is just an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly. So even “failures” are not failures, however, they can use more layers.
The stenciled word, fearless, guided the next step to completely change the direction of this page. There is a sort of rush that comes over me when I do something there is no taking back like painting it all white. Not a solid back-to-the-beginning all white, but the kind where the previous layers peek out.
All those earlier layers, and yes, even my no-fail-plan-that-failed, were all doorways to the next step. Or should I say stamp. Usually I don’t like cutting rubber stamped images out, but a shape like this isn’t fussy cutting at all. Easy enough to make a full rainbow of doors.
Stenciling across the bottom of the page with my Vintage Typewriter alphabet stencil added the title. The trick to getting it lined up? Start in the middle. I stenciled the letters r and w first, then worked my way out from there. It looks like there was perhaps measuring or precision about it but nope, just eyeballing.
Was my original plan, that “couldn’t fail”, a failure since I couldn’t create what was in my head or was it to just a ruse to get me started and let the OOPSies take me where it was meant to go?
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