Hey you guys!!!

I feel like I havent blogged in ages! Which isn't true since I dropped a quick post yesterday but still. I feel like if I havent written over 300 words it don't count as a blog lol.

I've been sick the last few days. I've got gut issues that need to be sorted so while that's happening I'm a bit like a snail at the moment, it's taking a while to get everything done.

The good news is Hubby came home with Floetrol on Friday night answering all my pouring problems.

Previously I was using PVA glue, water and the coconut serum.

Here's what happened with my last pour.

After a lot of trial, error, getting advice from my pouring groups, watering down my paint mix I finally got cells.

It was a painful process trying to figure out if the paint trickle resembled 'warm honey' enough but it worked. Pva + serum with paint thinned out with water absolutely will give you cells in your pours, not a whole heap of them, but hey, it's better than nothing. However you need to work and fine tune your paint mix.

That is, if you dont have Floetrol.

Here's what pours with Floetrol look like

One of my favourite pourers have figured out a way to bring out cells without serum oil just by fine tuning the Floetrol mix. The thing with serum oil is you will need to clean the oil off the canvas before you can finish the canvas with resin.

Some people use the serum and some use 100% silicone oil to create cells.

So if you can avoid oil additives then you should as it will make life easier. For me, I've heard the serum is quite easy to clean so I'm hoping when I get to thr next stage the clean up will be much easier.

This pour does not have any serum in it but seems I got lucky and managed to get some small cells.

This is my second try this time using the dirty pour method with Floetrol, acrylic and mica powders, no serum. As you can see, no cells.

My third try using the same mix of paint as the last but this time I added a drop of serum in each paint colour before I poured the colours in the cup.

The top row is how the paint looked once it was added to the cup. The bottom row is the cup after 5 minutes of marination. You can see the serum has done it's thing.

Here is the dirty pour result.

There's some cells but they look too mixed in with the paint. On the plus side, the swirls remind me of a planet.

Finally on my last pour on Saturday I got the result I was after.

This is a direct pour using the paint from the dirty pour. This time instead of layering each colour into a cup, I poured each colour on top of each other hoping to get the circle rings.

You can see I achieved the effect I was after, for a few minutes anyway, before cells starting coming up everywhere!

Based on my experience thus far..

1. Yes you can use PVA glue as your pouring medium. Yes you can get cells if you use silicone oil or serum. BUT Floetrol just makes life so much easier. It took me 11 pours on PVA to get cells. Floetrol first go, granted I made a mistake and thinned my paint out, but the cells appeared with no struggle.

2. Floetrol improves your paint! The paint I'm using is about 3 years old. I thought they were fine, but I found some of them didn't mix with the PVA or resin properly leaving clumpy pigments on the canvas. I sorted through them and was going to throw out the old paint out but decided to try mixing it with Floetrol and they were fine. No clumps, just nicely liquid paint.

3. If you want to try acrylic pouring definitely buy Floetrol and the coconut serum. I cannot rave enough about the combo.

4. Canvas is important. I've got stretch canvas, canvas boards, mdf canvas that's 3mm thick. They're all crap. The boards end up bending, one canvas sagged in the middle. I'm looking at getting mdf boards that are at least 10mm thick for my next lot.

If you're looking to jump on the acrylic pouring bandwagon, I hope you found this helpful. As you can see there's a lot of experiments involved in learning a new skill, but I can definitely say it's worth the effort.

Acrylic pouring, once you have all the right materials, is such a joy. From selecting the colours, to mixing them, to the type of pour and then watching all the cells pop up transforming the canvas before your eyes. It's a journey.

I highly recommend it to everyone.

That's it for me today. I hope you're all having a great Tuesday!