Blogging A to Z: K is for Knife

April is here!! It's time for daily blogging, lots of visitors and meeting new friends.  In other words, time for the Blogging A to Z challenge hosted by Arlee Bird and his team of minions.  Thousands of other bloggers from all over the world participate in this blog hop each year, and anyone may join in as long as they blog each day during the month of April, (except Sundays) the blog posts correspond to the appropriate letter for that day, and they sign up on the link list. Simple!

There are two types of knives I use in my art: an Xacto or other variety of a razor knife, and a palette knife.

While there is only one real use for a razor knife, cutting, there is nothing like the precision you get with a sharp point.  Mostly I use it to cut text out of books for use in mixed media, but sometimes I cut a stencil or need it for fine detail work.  I'll confess it is not my favorite way of cutting, as I don't seem to have very good control and often cut things I hadn't intended to cut.

The palette knife is one of the more useful tools I have on my table.  It can be used for mixing or applying paint or other media either on a palette or directly to the work itself.  My favorite use is for spreading modeling paste or glass bead gel onto the art through a stencil.  The smooth flat edge makes it easy to press the media into the stencil while controlling the surface and depth. It is one of the tools I reach for quite frequently, especially when I am journaling.

There are several shapes and sizes available, but I find I mostly reach for the same diamond shaped plastic one.  I invested in a metal one with a longer thinner blade, but I don't seem to have as much control, so I keep going back to the old cheap one.  At any rate, I'm glad there are options. :)  Below are a couple of examples where I used a palette knife to apply modeling paste.  The flowers on the top card, the feathers on the left side of the page below.

Thank you for stopping by today.  I hope you'll leave me a comment to say hi!