hi everyone its Keren here and I have a new video for you today these are 10
hacks for mixed media and art and for crafters as well enjoy
this hack is pretty easy it's just using baby wipes I don't most people don't
think about it but baby wipes are the most essential thing for an artist and a
crafter and a mixed-media artist everything that you're going to get
messy you can use this to clean your surface you can use this to clean your
hands and the most amazing thing is that once you clean different things that
have ink on them you can actually use them for your projects so you could
actually have these stain really nice stained and wavy wipes that dry up and
you could use them in your projects and I've done that before and I'll link some
here below and you'll see how I use different wipe air wipe wipe wipe wipe
for different projects and it's amazing to do here are a bunch more and you see
I keep them in all different colors so you can I could use them for my
different projects and it's just really good the same thing with paper towels
you could use a use your paper towel the same way and just wipe certain areas and
then use this on your project as well I have projects where I've used stained
paper towels and I'll link those below as well so there's just really fun
things that you can do with just recycled materials
another hack is basically saving recycling with recycled materials things
like trays foam trays or boxes or old paintbrushes paint brushes that have
been have gotten too hard and you can use you could use these in your art so
there's a lot of things you can do with them
old lids so you could use lids from different things to create stamp marks
and things like that different containers that you can carry this is a
lid you can use that you can use like old containers from em this is a
container that I just use to put mediums and mixed mediums around because there's
nothing in it so you could just use a lot of things
that are around you that are really good things like toilet paper rolls or form
trays tissue paper from from nice gift wrapping idea from gift wraps and nuts
and bolts and feathers and fabric and bottles and God knows how many things
boxes rags little doilies that you find in places it leads to things and just
basically anything can be used for texture can be used to actually alter
can be used for different things you can use things like deli paper right like
wax paper and you could use the stamp things on it so there's just so many
ideas to keep all your recycled things in one place baby wise which I just
talked about before it's another idea so lots and lots of different things that
you can save like all the rusted metals and shells and things like that to just
incorporate into your art
another hack is toothbrushes old toothbrushes that you don't need anymore
wash them well or you don't wash them I'll do whatever you want and these are
amazing to create really nice splatters on your work so for example I have an
old piece of like stuff that I did and this is just watercolor and all you have
to do is just rub this and it creates this really cute beautiful splatters and
if you want bigger splatters you put more ink and you go okay so that's
really a good tool is such a simple tool but it's just so easy to just collect
because we go through toothbrushes a lot instead of buying a splatter tool you
can just use your brush so how amazing is that
another great hack that I mean it's just so simple I'm sure I'm not the one who
thought of this but having a bin a large bin or even a small bin that can fit all
your stencils you fill this up with water and then whenever you're working
you don't have to constantly get a pool who loves getting up and doing that
right so we have one for our paintbrushes that is usually sits on my
table but you know just remembering to fill up this bucket and throwing the
stencil and then after you can go and clean it out and just work with them
after so you don't have to stop what you're doing just a simple hack and
doing this it's just really it's just a simple bucket that I bought at a dollar
store and just such a simple thing to use and I don't know if a lot of people
think about it but that's something that I've thought about and I thought it was
a great idea
if you don't have one like this which is I mean a great investment but if you
don't want to invest in it even though they're really cheap a great hack is
just using paper and you save a lot of packaging slips and basically recycled
papers of things that I don't need and I save these to catch to catch you can
make a tree out of them and literally make a whole tree by folding the call
four corners and creating a tray or you could use and just fold it for embossing
ink or for a how do you call this for beads so you could make your own
catching tree and that's and actually what you should fold it your folders
fold them in not out and I'm and it creates this really nice tray and you
can actually use some tape and tape it around and you should always keep one
corner open so that's where it would go so that's a really great idea to do I
mean it's a simple hack again not hacks are just simple there's nothing a huge
about things but your this works because you can actually dump your your your
powder in here or your beads like if you have like glitter right so this is
glitter and you have something that you want to catch it and put it back in the
container this is a great way of doing it right so here it is what I'm trying
to open this not opening okay so for example you know you have this is a
container and you just dumped a bunch of glitter and then you want to put it back
right so hopefully this works and I'm not a really easy hack I mean most
people know about this but or just folding this in half and I find that is
easier so for example I find it so much easier to just go like this and fold it
and yes I do spill most of time I spill a little bit and that's okay but it just
goes back in and it's perfect I didn't you see a little bit still left I mean
yeah do I waste a little bit of glitter you
but you could I mean the caching trail so the same thing happens to it you get
a little bit of glitter leftover but if you don't want to expend on this then
this is a great way to just use your recycled paper because I don't want to
waste paper that I haven't used yet but if it's recycled paper then it's great
another great hack is saran wrap and that can be used to really protect your
jars from getting stuck and not being able to open them for example this jar
gel gel is number one gesso and gel it always the ones that get stuck the most
so a great idea is to basically use a saran wrap to seal in between things so
that way I mean this is a big piece so you don't want it so big but what it
does it's like it predicts a seal so then first of all there's no air it's
airtight and also the gel doesn't go into the lid and makes it all stuck and
then you cannot open it and it's a pain in the neck so if you prefer you can
protect this you can protect your jars by doing this you can anything any
paints any tubes any it will work in basically any type of medium so you see
how easy it is and then it's so easy to open
although I already spoke about recycle materials and how you can use them for
your crafts and not to use things so this is like jars and no jars I mean
little containers that you could use like I don't know if you've ever tried
to buy a container in an art store they're really expensive and to mix
things sometimes I like working directly in my containers just especially with
the gel but sometimes I'm mixing things in there as you can see this is all it
has like sequin and like little art stones and I don't want to taint my
whole box my whole jar so what I do is I hide keep one of the empty ones like
this and then I end up putting a little bit of gel and I add as I need and I
then I can mix things in it and it doesn't really matter if it's all mixed
up I also you know like this is an empty container of microbeads this one is from
salad dressing I don't know if you ever get to save these like they're perfect
they have a lid you could make gesso with some mica powder or anything any
type of paint and mix two colors together and then it will stay sealed
and wet and it will not dry out it's the same thing as I said before with them
with this styrofoam plate you could use this as a palette and that is you know
something that is recyclable and you don't have to you already bought
something vegetables or whatever you bought with it you can wash it in and
reuse it as a palette which is really really great so I mean you saving all
your containers it's really good even glass containers you could save glass
containers and that could be used for paint brushes to wash your paintbrushes
so there's just so many ideas so many hacks that are really easy for you to do
so you could make your life easier when you're working with products with artist
products
cardboard is an amazing hack that just people don't realize how amazing this
thing is and how many uses you can have for it besides using it as an actual
substrate and using it the como spec instead of a canvas you could actually
do a whole mixed-media thing on top of this right by cutting a piece of it and
the other option is you could peel it off peel the one side off and actually
get that really cool texture that you see here and it's so easy to just
basically peel and it could be either side or the sizing is easy okay so it's
really easy to just tilt peel things off and you have that really nice texture
that you see that brick texture but one of the really cool hats that I like that
I like using and this is something I learned from a friend it's not
specifically mine is cutting this into strips into pieces because this can
substitute to a lot of things so for example if you're making layouts or
cards or things like that and you don't want to spend a lot of money on tape a
foam tape you could use this as a substitute and create this really nice
3d effects so for example you could layer this up and then put a photo on
top which I've done this a lot you put a photo on top on your layout and this you
will create a 3d effect with it so it's really easy to just do that or in a card
for example you can use this instead of the expensive foam tape so look at the
thickness if you think of the thickness of the foam tape and you see the
thickness of this are very similar you can double it up as well and you get a
thicker ID a thicker one and if you don't like it in brown you could always
paint this all white and then you wouldn't see it behind cards and it's
perfect because nobody will notice it so that's a really good idea so three uses
for one cheap inexpensive free product that you can just basically get with any
anywhere you can you can use for three different ways you can use it for
texture you can use it as a canvas or a stress substrate and you could
use it instead of foam teeth so I think this is a great great great hack that
anybody would want to know about
so if you're going to do something like watercolor or even like just this is a
watercolor paper or even just mixed-media on it and you want to just
let's say either hold the paper so with some masking tape okay or just create a
pattern on it come on let me just rip this ups so this whole thing let me rip
it this way instead so let's say you want to use masking tape but you don't
want it to get stuck to your paper and rip it so I great hack for that and I'll
show you how to do it and let's say you want to create you want to use the
masking tape to create lines on your on your background and you don't want it to
rip your paper afterwards there's a great hack for that so first we're going
to add some colors so I can show you how the hack works so just you know we
adding blue and we could just paint this up and I want to
so the way this hack works is that you need to add some heat to the masking
tape in order for it not to rip the background and since you're right I'm
already heating the actual background okay
so I'm going to add some heat to the actual theme so it removes the glue part
gluey part of the tape and then I carefully oops
remove hold on let me turn this up I carefully remove and it comes out
perfectly and it doesn't rip my paper again I'll show it again it actually
removes the glue from the masking tape it melts it
and it gives you a perfect finish I want to have to remove this one first so
again and it comes out really smoothly I mean of course still be careful you
don't have to rip it but it really helps because it makes it makes it smooth and
doesn't rip especially something like the watercolor paper which is really
really porous and very thick right so it has a lot of layers and you want to make
sure that doesn't rip that so look at this it made it perfect and this is a
great hack if you're going to use it
there we go okay so what do you think yeah this is another great hack that I
thought I would show you and there you go and then you have a very pretty nice
patterned watercolor paper
this piece of acetate that comes from a stamp or from any packaging is just the
greatest hack amazing like ideas you can have with this piece of acetate and you
can use it for so many different things one of the things I like using this for
is for mixing things on top so you don't have to dirty your mat so for example
you could take let's say some gel and
just put a little bit of gel in here and then mix in some I don't know beads and
it or stones in it and then you have I don't want to waste a lot of it just to
show but like you can mix it mix things you know and then it will stay on this
and will not and it's sometimes gel is really hard to take off your mat so this
is a place you could do with with beads you could do it with with many different
I don't know microbeads a glitter and different things like that
another use you can have for this and this I mean now yes I'm wasting now
which I don't like wasting but I just show you what you can do with it okay
and I'm going to clean it look how easy it is to clean and you could use it
again and again or just throw it out because it's just packaging and another
option that you can do with this is you could use it for either alcohol inks or
watercolors and you could stamp with it or create these really cool patterns
thank you for watching my video today I hope you enjoyed my 10 hacks for mixed
media artist or crafters alike I really had fun thinking of these and I'm sure
I'm going to have a second list of hacks that might be helpful for people because
they're really fun to use or think about and I want to share with them if you
share them with people if you can think of a hack that you really want to share
with other people feel free to leave it in the comment area I might actually
incorporate it into a second video if they think it's an amazing hack that it
could really help somebody else so feel free to share any hacks that you think
are really helpful for others thanks so much bye