Note:  I am writing a story/journal that I don’t want to show before it is published in full.  These are some of the illustrated pages in the sketchbook for the story.

Because of the business
we are in we end up having “old” shellac left over.
It is old not because
it is unusable, but
because it won’t perform
well on antiques.
For antiques, shellac has
to be freshly made!

(Above, my first portrait, Mitchell.  I was going for realism.  It is not too bad.)

I don’t like waste, so I was thinking, “Hmmm, what can be done with the extra?”

PAPER!

And so, my tip-ins began.  What to put on the shellacked paper was a mystery.
I still play, finding that some inks work, some don’t (have not figured the mystery of the inks yet).  Pitt pens work, and I know oils work but I don’t want to do paint with oil.
As I worked, there are some inks gone wrong, but that is all part of the experiment.  The two types of gold Pitt pens (above) worked oddly to create the gold on black lacquer of Marguerite McLoughlin’s Sewing Cabinet.

Ah well.  The story is there.

Jai giving thanks for a heater, above.

For those of you who don’t know a tip-in is a page or piece you add to a journal,
a page you slip in with a bit of glue or tape or if you  are a master book-maker
(not to be confused with bookie) you might sew tip-ins.

Mitchell at the end of a workday.

OE journal with shellacked pages used as tip-ins in my Moleskin 8×11 watercolor journal.  Pentalic HB woodless pencil, Pitt pens, Platinum Carbon pen, many inks,
the most obvious being De Atramentis Document, Super5 or Noodler’s inks.

Copyright 2015 D. Katie Powell, however, my images/blog posts
may be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.