Product Review - Fude Ball (Ranger)

Hello lovelies,

I confess, it has been 11 days since my last art related blog post.... oops!

It has been a hectic time - teaching, playing tour guide to friends from out of town, squashing 4 days of (paid) work into 3 days, starting to film another Art Journaling 201 class, and travelling to Echuca for a class with the fantabulous Limor Webber. I'll do a recap of my class with Limor Webber in my next post.

Whilst doing my art journal spread for 201 I decided to use my *new* (i.e. new to me) Fude Ball pen.  I had seen this video (below) in which Dina Wakely recommended the pen.

What you may not know about me is that I am perpetually in search of the perfect art journaling pen. So of course I thought - Halleluiah, someone has found the answer for me!

not so fast.....

The pen writes really well - it is very "4WD" which is excellent, and it seems to be waterfast on a porous surface.  However, I had prepared my journal page with Gesso which is not porous at all.

Once I had done my journal spilling, I left the page to air-dry for 15 minutes or so and then painted over it with watercolour paints.  BIG MISTAKE!  Here's an excerpt from my video where I discuss what happened...

Half the words in the middle of the page washed away as soon as the water hit - and as a result the paint on the right page of the spread turned a muddy dark colour.

I then tried to heat set the page with my heat gun.  That didn't work either.

Eventually I settled on sealing the page with airbrush medium sprayed from a pump bottle - the same way that I would seal dylusions.  The spread is not finished in the pic below, but I have managed to stop it looking like a dirty mess...

So, in conclusion - for those of you who have bought the Fude Ball pen, be warned - whilst it is a lovely pen to write with, it isn't waterproof on a non-porous surface.  Best to stick to your Sharpie on Gesso.

My search for the Holy Grail in Art Journaling Pens continues.

'till next time

~Liz