Experimenting with PanPastels
Barbara Strembicki

Unlike Jess, I had read a little about the PanPastels before we began experimenting.  I'd watched a couple of the videos and had some idea what they were about and what I wanted to try.

I too found them soft and wonderful to work with and in addition to the tools, I also discovered that I liked to use a finger to smudge the colors around.  The first time we played with them Jess and I were together in my studio.  That session was followed by an afternoon that I spent alone messing some more.  One of the things I liked - a lot - is that the PanPastels can be worked till you fix them.  Of course you can work them to death and make mud too, if you're not careful!  The first thing I made was a painted sheet of watercolor paper with circles drawn that I filled with varying colors that Jess dubbed "planets"...

I worked on several other things that evening, but the only piece worth sharing is one tag...

You can't really see it unless you look at a hard angle, but I smudged titanium white all around the edges of this tag using a flat sponge bar.

Then I loaded the sponge bar with a very small amount of turquoise and began to blend it in with the white and over the rest of the tag

Till it looked like this.

I knew that I wanted to use this image from our Joggles Figures in Marble collage sheet, but also knew the tag needed more than just the background color. 

So I stamped a background image on the tag using Timber Brown StazOn ink.  Better, but still not quite what I had in mind.

I looked around and discovered some cheesecloth and decided it work be a nice top layer.  I tried adding some of the turquoise directly to the cheesecloth but found that it was a bit stark.  Then I got the bright idea of rubbing the cheesecloth into the Titanium white so that it would soften the turquoise.  Part of the advantage of the PanPastels is that they're virtually dust free.  One of the videos tells you to swipe a tool 1 to 3 times across the surface of the pastel to load it. Anything more than that overloads the tool and causes dust to form on the surface of the PanPastel cake.  I'll be the first to tell you that wiping cheesecloth across the cake also makes a lot of dust.  Admittedly, it was messy, but I did get the effect I was trying for. along with some messy fingers..

I used some The Ultimate glue and stuck the cheesecloth down to the tag and then glued the image over the top.  I like it; but it still felt unfinished.  I poked around the studio and found some silk ribbon and some beads and finally ended up with this...






The next time I was able to work with the PanPastels I decided that I wanted to make a book cover more or less like the planets I'd created that first night.  I found a 7 Gypsies Rubber Band Book Kit and liked the size (3" x 6") and decided to go with it.  The first step was to paint the cover to mimic the background of the planets and add the circles...

I can hear you wondering about how I got those circles so perfectly round...  templates!  I used the giant circle template on the larger watercolor paper piece and the small circle one on this book.  Like with the tag, the circles were filled in using the apply color and smudge with the tool technique.  I used my fingers here too as I enjoy getting into the stuff.  It wipes right off and I like the effects I can get using them.  Here are a number of photos showing the progression of the cover circles...










 

 

 

... to the finished product.


I also made a few pages for the inside of this rubber band book

This is a nice simple page... smudge color over the page to create the background, cut out images from a collage sheet and glue in place.  Done!

I discovered that you can "colorize" a black and white image which I did here by adding color to her face.  This is from one of Carol Murphy's Altered By Design Collage sheets called Beautiful in Black & White,  I used one of the round tools and adding a tiny, tiny bit of color at a time.  I began by giving her an even coat and then added shadows with a darker version of the color.  The shadowing on the image will help you decide where the deeper color should go.  Once that was done I sprayed her with the workable fixative to make sure I didn't make a mess as I handled the image.  When that was dry (spray outdoors - the stuff smells pretty strongly) I cut the image out. glued it to the page that I'd used PanPastel to make the background a pale grey.  Once she was secured to the page I used the square tool to add the deeper grey color all around the image.

Here some two colors were smudged over the page to create the magenta and purple background then I stamped the image with Palette Hybrid ink. The words were written with a Micron pigma pen.

This tag is from the 7 Gypsies "Gypsy" 17816 tag set.  I smudged color around the edges, added the image and then smudged color around it to set it off from the background.

In all cases you'll need to seal the PanPastels to stop them from rubbing off the surface.  You can use Krylon's Workable Fixative while you're in the creating stages which allows you to go fix the pastels, but also allows you to go back over them to add if you wish.  A final spray of a clear finish such as Krylon Crystal Clear, Matte, or Satin Finish sprays will do the trick.

What you see here and on Jessica's page are only the barest beginning of the vast array of things you can do with PanPastels.  The most obvious is fine art for anyone who paints or draws.  These can replace pastels and paint in many applications.  The mixed media/collage arena is almost infinite - anywhere you want color you can apply it with PanPastels!.  Jess even scraped some of the PanPastels off the cake and mixed it into gel medium which means you can custom color any gel medium you have.

You can use PanPastels on fabric, too.  I was able to do just a little and ran out of time.  Spraying with Workable Fixative will keep the color from smudging and rubbing off.  You can't wash fabric that you've painted on however.  The Workable Fixative will not protect the color.

One thing that we discovered is that they're very economical; a little on a tool goes a long way which means you're likely to only ever buy one of a color unless you use it, use it, and use it endlessly. 

S U P P L I E S
PanPastels & Sofft Tools  *  Tags of all sizes and shapes 8  *  Watercolor paper sheets, pads, & journals  *  Joggles collage sheets
Altered by Design collage sheets  *  Rubber stamps of all kinds  *  cheesecloth  *  7 Gypsies Rubber Band book kit
All kinds of 7 Gypsies blank books & kits

Click here to go back to the Multimedia gallery or here to see Jessica's experiments.