Don't bother me! I'm mixing virtual paint!

If you love pushing around acrylic paint, but you're separated from your beloved colors -- nooooo! -- read on. I just found the most fun web page EVER.

Golden Artist Colors now has a virtual paint mixer! It's pretty easy to use. Start by clicking on a color swatch, then click on one of the virtual paint tubes on the right. (Follow my blue graffiti arrow.)

There's also a drop-down menu which allows you to choose heavy-body colors (the ones that come in a tube), fluid colors, or one of five other types.

To adjust the color ratios, just use the tube cap slider. (FYI, the first color default amount is "100%" until you start using the slider.)

But the best feature? Clicking on a point in an image -- theirs or one you upload -- and having the mixer suggest which colors to use! Apparently if I'm using fluid colors, my hair should be painted 70% Yellow Oxide, 20% Naphthol Red Medium, and 10% Carbon Black.

Or if I switch to heavy-body colors, I should use 40% Hansa Yellow Medium, 30% Light Violet, and 30% Light Ultramarine Blue.

Mind: blown.

Upsides, in my experience:

• almost more fun on the phone than the laptop (color on the go!)
• ability to see colors I haven't used before
• educational -- might reduce some trial and error in color mixing, which might save me some money if it keeps me from buying a color I can't figure out how to use

Downsides:

• some swatch colors are nothing like the real thing, until you transfer them into the "tubes"
• Golden's ad boast of "No More Mud" is a bit of a stretch: the color mix display seems to go quickly to "brownish" or "grayish" on my laptop (yes, it could be a calibration issue, but that doesn't often happen on my laptop)
• can't mix different paint types (e.g. a heavy-body paint color and a fluid paint color)

Thanks to DickBlick.com for sending me a link to the color mixer (I'm not being compensated by Dick Blick or Golden for this post).

Have you used the Golden virtual color mixer yet? How? What did you think? Tell me in the comments or on Facebook. And if you post about it, send me a link to your blog. Follow-up posts are awesome.

Calendar girl on CreateMixedMedia.com

Every day this week... I've got a calendar girl up at CreateMixedMedia.com!

I'd been thinking of contributing to The Week As Art for a while; themed art is a great way to get the inspiration flowing. But my life has been, um, "eventful" for the last four months. Then I got the online equivalent of an engraved invitation to submit, so I had to get moving and look for inspiration in earnest. So first I took camera phone photos of address numbers in the oldest part of downtown Seattle.

Harder than I thought to find numbers 22 through 28 in a row, or even within walking distance. Then I looked down... and found the parking stall numbers you see painted on concrete.

But that didn't really go anywhere either. Finally, as I headed to TwoBoo's day care center one afternoon, I drove past a Washington state highway sign. The numbers are set within a silhouette of George Washington's head.

And then I realized, hey... I live within reach of all the signs I need for The Week As Art!

So I combined the George silhouettes with my most recently-painted over image.

My little Calendar Girl plays peekaboo for the whole week.

Each calendar "day" measures roughly 7" square, and is available for $40 each. Email me if you're interested in one of them, or in the original wall piece -- "Impenetrable" -- from which The Week as Art pieces are derived.


And enjoy yourself on the Create Mixed Media site -- it's bursting with mixed media resources, profiles and even a Craft Wars-style contest this week. I'd highly recommend sitting down with a cuppa and allowing yourself to explore!

Mocked Etsy members? Time to mock Pinterest

You've heard of Regretsy, right? It's the blog that mocks Etsy projects gone (horribly) awry.

from Regretsy.com

Etsy's enough of a phenom for its vendors to have inspired ridicule from the internet satirists to mock it. Now there's a blog mocking the new cuteness -- Pinterest -- called Pinstrosity. First they show the original pin:

From Pinstrosity.blogspot.com

Then they show a photo from someone who tried the tutorial and didn't have quite so much luck.

Pinstrosity.blogspot.com

Similar idea -- "send us your photos of 'ohmyGod what is that THING?!' " but Pinstrosity also tests out DIY pins themselves to offer suggestions of how to correct whatever went wrong. Also, the vibe of Pinstrosity, despite the name, is not as venomous as Regretsy. More of an "oh, dear" tone than a "what the hell is WRONG with you?!" Entertaining... check it out.