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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 I Learned Painting My Stairs

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At long last, this year, I finally updated my painted stairs. These are the stairs I walk on every day to get to the studio and now that they’re colorful, I wonder why it took me so long to make time to do this! What I learned and the OOPS or two along the way are all in the video.

Use a floor paint. Stairs get a lot of wear and tear and need a very durable paint to look good over the long haul. I used Valspar Porch, Floor, and Patio paint.

To save myself some brush cleaning, I wrapped the brushes in plastic wrap so I could skip cleaning them at the end of the day. The whole process took 2- 3 days and it was a real time saver to not have to wash so many brushes out after each coat.

It’s wise to prime the stairs. I was painting over a faux brick pattern and was too impatient to prime it. I wish I had taken that time early on to save me the extra coats it took to cover it up.

If there are gaps between your boards you can fill them in with a flexible caulk. Be sure that it is a caulk for indoor use and it’s paintable. There were plenty of gaps on these stairs since I think these were originally intended to be carpeted.

Start, even if you don’t have a clear or exact plan. Just get paint in colors you love and start. It’s only paint, so if you change your mind you can paint right over it.

There wasn’t a clear plan for me when I started. I wanted a quote and color and once I got started, then the idea of the scallops came to me. But that only happened because I got started.

You might not be able to see the entire quote or pattern from the bottom. When you get to the bottom of my stairs, you have to take a quick turn. So there isn’t much room to stand back which means I couldn’t read the first line of the quote at all if I started on the top step.

You can see the ghost of the Let Go that I started up on the red step. After I stenciled I went to the bottom of the stairs, and totally couldn’t see it. A baby wipe removed 95% of the paint but you could still see it.

Was that a mistake? Nope. It’s An O.O.P.S., an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly. It’s a bonus reminder to let go of trying to make something perfect.

Embrace who you are. If you’re an engineer who likes things mathematically straight, then do that. If your lines are never straight or even no matter what you do, then don’t line anything up! Bet you can guess which one I am.

To make it easy to stencil the words, I cut apart the Vintage Typewriter Alphabet Jumbo stencils (A-P & Q-Z) that I designed for StencilGirl. Then I taped them on with painters tape.

The risers won’t be walked on so use whatever you have on there. I didn’t buy black floor paint so what could I do? I used what I had, which was black acrylic paint that I use in my mixed media art. The finishing touches on the scallops were so much easier to do with ink than paint. Nobody will be walking on the black so it isn’t a big deal.

Make it safe to walk on. Fancy patterns can look cool but can be an adventure to walk on. I’m no spring kitten so I chose to avoid optical illusions that make it hard to see where I’m stepping.

Solid areas of light colors show dirt faster than a darker color or a pattern.

Have an escape plan if you paint the entire staircase at once, otherwise, you’re stuck there until the stairs dry. If you don’t have another way out of the room or area, then paint every other stair so you can step over any wet paint.

Choose a quote that is meaningful to you. Every time you go up the stairs, you’ll be seeing these words. Even if you don’t read them aloud, your subconscious will noticing them.

Let go of who you think you are supposed to be embrace who you are- Brené Brown

I chose this quote because it is about accepting who you are, not worrying about all the shoulds and musts that come as part of the baggage of growing up.

Whenever I get my art supplies out, when I am creating, I feel like the true me. So when I leave my art studio I now have a reminder to bring that feeling with me and keep me grounded in who I truly am.

Want that

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No Measuring Way to Mount Your Favorite Gel Prints on a Wood Panel

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What can you do with that gel print that you loved the instant you lifted it off your plate? Put it on your wall! I’m not a huge fan of frames, or I should say that I love big expensive frames that are out of my budget. So I prefer to mount prints on wood panels.

I’m using an 8 x 10 wood panel and an 8 x 10 gel plate, so no need to measure. But how do I get it to match up perfectly? Measuring is out because no matter how many times or ways I measure, it never comes out right. But there is a way to get the edges all lined up, without any measuring!

How did I create the print? Using the techniques from my online workshop, Gel Printing with PanPastels. The patterns that I used for the clouds is one of the included downloads – along with 3 bonus videos and more- you can get all the details here.

Step 1: Get the wood panel ready by gessoing and or painting the sides. I painted the sides white and then added some stenciled text on the side that matched the feeling of the print. This idea was sparked by a photos Kim Geiser shared on her Instagram account.

Step 2: Trim 2 sides of the print. You don’t need to measure, just be sure to get straight cuts. Only one corner will be trimmed, the other 3 will be cut after it is glued to the wood panel.

Step 3: Attach the print to the wood panel with gel medium. Spread it evenly on the wood panel and to the back of the print. The print only needs a thin layer but be sure to get it all the way to the edges.

You have a moment or two of wiggle room once you put the print on the panel, so be sure that the corner you trimmed and the 2 sides you trimmed are lined up as flush as possible.

Then put a protective piece of paper on top and brayer over it. This will push the paper flat to the wood and squeeze out any excess gel medium. Wipe off any gel medium that squirts out.

Step 4: Put a protective something on the print, like freezer paper, then stack something flat and heavy on it. This will keep it from getting any bubbles or warping while it dried. Then the hard part- wait overnight for it to completely dry.

Step 5: Trim off the excess paper. It must be completely dry for the blade to cut it smoothly. Also, a fresh blade is extremely helpful for getting a clean cut. Hold the blade flat against the wood and then use a sawing motion to cut the the paper.

Step 6: Put the mounting hardware on it. By mounting hardware, I mean a Command Adhesive Picture Hanging strip.

If you’ve got any prints that you love, mount a few on wood panels

Here are the supplies 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!


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Ripped, Torn, and Layered

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This all started with 2 gel prints. Then the ripping. The tearing. And that’s when I realized the plan I had wasn’t going to work. And that was a good thing because where it ended up was far better than what I had planned!

These 2 gel prints sparked the idea for this art journal page. They’re made with PanPastels on a gel plate using 2 stencils, Venetian Buildings and Uplifting Words.

How do you use PanPastels on a gel plate to get grungy layers in one pull? My process is broken down step-by-step in Gel Printing with PanPastels online workshop. Plus, there’s a bonus video in there of how the techniques were combined to create these exact pages.

The “plan” was to use the entire print and a couple of the words. But I didn’t want to cover up a thing on the print and no matter what I did, the words just didn’t feel right.

Then it finally dawned on me that maybe the plan I had needed to change. So I went through a box of leftovers and scraps to see where that took the play.

What was found in that box pointed me in a new direction and the plan I had was abandoned and the words set aside.

This background is colorful junk mail. Anything can be arted on, and junk mail is a great way to have fun with color.

The new plan created a new challenge, how to use all of the gel print and have the colorful Rembrandt on the page looking down. Spoiler alert, something had to be sacrificed.

Torn edges are great for adding extra pops of color, especially with Marabu’s Art Crayons. They’re creamy like my mom’s lipstick (and yes, she did get mad every time I used it like a crayon as a kid) and blend easily.

For a bit of scribble journaling, I wanted a gray colored pencil because they write so nicely on a PanPastel gel print. But I didn’t have a gray one. Then it hit me, a regular pencil is gray and I have plenty of those!

There were little bits of paper all around from the ripping and tearing of edges early in the process. Those scraps were colored, torn, and glued all around page.

Public Service Announcement- keep the scraps, leftovers, remnants of other play around you instead of cleaning everything off perfectly, because you never know when those will call to you!

Ready to make layered prints with your PanPastels to use in your art journal? Then check out Gel Printing with PanPastels!

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