Oh my goodness! I picked up an inexpensive set of fluorescent oil pastels from Dick Blick today and they are amazing! My iPhone fails to capture the glowing awesomeness of this simple little Jack o’ Lantern

The great thing about oil pastels, and the reason I was so excited when I discovered them at the Philadelphia store, is that oil pastels act as a nice resist to paint. The sky, which is much brighter under black light, is a wash of slightly thinned fluorescent blue Golden acrylic over yellow fluorescent stars. I am imagining all sorts of black light projects after this pumpkin thing that I’ve got going on runs it’s course.

Had a bit of fun with a cool paint resist technique that I discovered from Agnes the Red Tutorials. She describes how to use gouache as a resist for ink, and as you can see from my first attempt the results resemble a lino or wood cut print.

My inspiration for this jolly little fella are the wonderful vintage Halloween postcards that feature grinning Jack o’Lanterns. They always make me smile, so I’m thinking perhaps for the month of October I’ll paint or draw a Jack o’Lantern every day. Sort of a Halloween advent calendar? And on the last day, we all get treats!

Notes: following the resist technique described above, I had only a few problems that were due using old gouache that seemed very gummy. It took a long time to dry, so towards the end I sped things up with a heat gun, which was fine, none of the cracking that the artist describes as a possible result of using the heat gun. I did, however, end up with some cracking when I used the heat gun to speed up the ink wash drying process. This wasn’t such a bad thing, as it gave the piece a weathered look. Using the thinned acrylics seems to have sealed in the crackly bits of black.

I’ll be playing with this technique some more, it’s a lot of fun, the results are a bit unpredictable.

I had purchased three sets of their ready-to-stitch acrylic coasters,  and then set upon stitching, confident that the coasters would provide an inexpensive finishing touch for what I hoped would be special Christmas gifts.

Unfortunately, I only glanced at the coasters prior to finishing the project .  The acrylic, which one would expect to by crystal-clear, was not. Most of the coasters shared the same flaw, along one edge of the hexagon. This edge was rough and opaque, with a wave-like, almost finger-print like pattern near this defect. As if the acrylic had dripped?

Then there were scuffs on the top surface of a few. And when something is supposed to be crystal clear, any blemish becomes very noticeable.

Looking at the shrink wrap, it could be that the coasters could possibly have been damaged during the shrink-wrap process (at the factory, or at Herrschner’s?). The shrink wrap was sealed with heat (or so it appeared), and it could be that whatever the source of the heat was, that it melted an edge of the coasters.

Whatever the cause, as I was under the wire for gifts, I managed to put together a set by salvaging what I could from all three.

I would return them, of course, but I suppose that I could use the remaining coasters to mix paints. Not their intended purpose, but I have no idea what happend to the receipt or the shipping box.

I still like the idea of coasters, they had such potential. But in the future, I will spend the extra money and go for a Sudberry House product. Or, with a few pieces of glass, some copper foil, and cork, just encase the stitchery myself.

I should also mention that the coasters were not secured in the box–they were accompanied by a wadded up piece of brown packing paper. But the cardboard box was thick, and although the packing seemed rather careless, I believe the coasters were defective from the beginning, and not damaged in transit.