Facebook hiatus

~ Elliementalist ~ Leave a comment

Just a quick little post to keep you updated incase you follow me on Facebook.

The sad part for me is that I have some friends from Cape Town who I only have contact with through Facebook. I also have a local craft group which I can only contact through Facebook. And then there’s obviously my Elliementalist page with I use for business/advertising purposes.

But it is what it is. :/ I don’t want to expend more energy on this.

Keep crafty!

Peace and love, Ellie

Acrylic paint: Matt varnish test

~ Elliementalist ~ 4 Comments

Dear Readers,

A few weeks ago I used some heavy structure gel in one of my paintings to give it an impasto look. However I found that from certain angles it reflected light a lot more than the acrylic paint on its own and therefore changed the colour of the painting.

The sun set painting is the specific painting I am referencing

So this week I decided to do a test painting and then varnish it with a Matt varnish to see if I liked the results.

The middle of the painting that looks impasto is done with acrylic and structure gel, the smooth parts are just plain acrylic paint.

Before varnish face on

Before varnish side on

I used one coat of Matt Liquitex varnish to see what the effect would be.

Front on after varnish
Side on after varnish

At the end of the day I think that I prefer it before/without varnish. I think that although the Matt varnish has homogenised the painting I think that it looks more muted and has lost a lot of definition from varnishing.

I don’t think that I will be varnishing my paintings in future. 🙂

Hope that you have been having a lovely crafty weekend.

Peace and love

Ellie xoxox

Bathroom update 01

~ Elliementalist ~ 5 Comments

Dear Readers,

This week we started doing up our bathroom. This has proven to be a bit of a pain as it is our only bathroom! We started with the ceilings. The previous owner did not use proper bathroom paints and so even though we mostly keep the window open there was beginning to he mildew marks on the ceiling. This is also an issue because the ceiling is really low compared to some houses.

The previous owner also did not check the watts requirement for the sort of lights they installed so the paint bubbled on the mdf around the downlighters. So that needed extra sanding.

The ceiling had strips of MDF interspaced with plastic mirror strips but we decided to paint over those as well. So I sanded them too inorder to give a grip surface for the paint.

Ceiling before, with the mildew stains and the mirror strips
Ceiling after sanding

It took me the better part of the day to sand the ceiling and the architraves around the door. I had to keep taking breaks as the blood would run out of my hands from sanding above my head. I did have a sanding block though so that made it a little easier.

Ceiling after one coat
2 coats
Final 3 coats

The painting took quite a while as the special bathroom paint required 6 hours between coats! That meant that it took us 3 days before the bathroom was fully functional again. The final coat also had to be left for 24 hours before fully dry!!

But we are much happier with the ceiling now and hopefully it will be more mildew resistant. In terms of the bathroom we still need to finish painting the door and the architraves but we were having visitors this weekend and we didn’t think having the only bathroom doorless was very hospitable 😂

On Friday My hands were soooo sore from sanding that I couldn’t knit 😢 but my hands are feeling better today (Sunday)

Jack has been an adorable little nonsense as usual
Playing with his mouse toy

Hope that you all have been keeping well!

Peace and love Ellie Xoxo

Fully Vaccinated!

~ Elliementalist ~ 6 Comments

Dear Readers!
I am very happy to say that I am now fully vaccinated. I got my second dose on Sunday. Yesterday I felt a bit rubbish but today I am feeling much better. Just a bit of an ouchie arm. 😉

Art by me, using Canva

I hope that you are all well and having a lovely week!
Peace and love
Ellie
XOXOX