About

Kathleen Gresham, tireless crusader for cheap, fun art supplies.

Welcome to Art Fun Cheap! I started this site because I love to play with cheap, fun art supplies. Cheap is good, because there is no guilt if your experiments don’t work out and you decide to discard them or give them away.

Maybe even more important, cheap art supplies are not intimidating. You don’t feel that you have to create a masterpiece. You can just have fun.

And some inexpensive art supplies are quite good!

After few months hiatus this blog is becoming active again, so please come back often, as I’ll be adding a lot of new content.

Please leave a comment and let us all know if you have tried some of these products, and what you think of them. Also, please leave comments about fun, inexpensive art supplies and ideas that you’ve found.

Hope to see you again soon,

Kathleen Gresham

3 Comments

3 responses so far ↓

1 Amy // Oct 15, 2008 at 6:13 PM

I am looking for cheap stuff that acts like Ranger’s Glossy Accents or Judikins Dimensional Glaze or Stampin Up Crystal Accents.

I tried Polyurethane but it’s too thin. Are you familiar with these dimensional adhesives? (They make things look like epoxy stickers. I see you say something about Gum Arabic being a dimensional Glaze.
2 admin // Nov 12, 2008 at 4:24 PM

I’m familiar with some of them. I have used several brands.

Do you need something that is waterproof?

Have you tried Golden gel medium?

If you need something that stands up more (is more 3D), how about using or any of the stiffer clear acrylic media (especially those by Golden) or a clear gesso?

I really like Diamond Glaze (or is that what you meant by Dimensional Glaze), and you can buy it in quite large bottles.

If you don’t need much dimension, you could try using clear verithane (from Home Depot, a hardware store, or maybe WalMart). It is a clear acrylic, too.

For real cheapness and easy access, you might try an acrylic floor cleaner, Future. You can find it in any grocery store with the floor waxes, but it is not a wax; it is a plastic.

Future gets very hard. It may yellow some, over years, but that may not be a problem, depending on your project. After all, if you don’t like it, you can always use it on the kitchen floor.

You would have to compare prices, ounce for ounce, but I think anything that you can buy locally in large sizes and then pour into smaller applicator bottles will save money.

Thanks for commenting. Please come back and leave another comment to let us know how it works out.
3 admin // Nov 12, 2008 at 4:28 PM

Amy—Sorry, when I went to answer your question, I missed the second part of your comment, saying that you had already tried verithane. So Future might not work for you either.

However, if you go to an art supply store and look at the thicker acrylic media and clear gesso, you may find what you need. A lot of people use those for collaging heavy or thick objects, so that they will not come off. So you will find other uses for those products anyway.

Again, you would have to compare carefully to see if they are actually cheaper in the long run.