The ULTIMATE Inexpensive Cell Activator Test!!

oh man look at all those cells look at all that lacing opening up hey everybody it's Anna welcome back to my art Channel thank you so much for being here I am super excited about today's video because this is actually something that I've had on my mind to do for months and I just haven't gotten around to doing it I am doing a massive cell activator test a cell activator Showdown if you will where I am testing out several different inexpensive cell activators which do not use Australian floatrol and I'm going to compare them side by side both with a bloom recipe mixture and with Flo troll mixed paints that are just a thicker consistency so I think it's going to be pretty definitive pretty helpful for all of us that maybe can't afford Australian flow draw so let's get to it [Music] so let me explain what we've got here so I have eight of these little six by six canvases so these will be for my floatrol mix paints these will be for my bloom recipe paints so my four cell activators are this is floetrol American flow troll glue Elmer's Glue Amsterdam titanium white paint all of these use Amsterdam titanium white paint as the paint and then it's got a little bit of Minwax pre-stained wood conditioner so that's a fairly common alternative cell activator recipe then this one is nine Parts American flow drawl to one part titanium white paint and it's possible that it was more like a ten to one so I've never tried this one before I've seen I've heard people say that it works so I'm excited to try this one then this one is my current favorite right now this is Amsterdam titanium white paint just mixed with water so this has been so far my favorite alternative cell activator and then this one is the floetrol glue paint and Minwax pre-stain mixture exactly the same as this one except this one is a couple of days old because I've had mixed results with this particular mixture when it's fresh mixed I've had some really good results like with this painting but if you then let that cup of cell activator sit for a while it doesn't seem to work as well the next time such as with this painting so I want to compare it side by side to see whether something that's mixed fresh like within an hour of painting versus something that's a couple of days old does it make a difference okay so for each one I'm using two that are paints and to try to be as consistent as possible one of them is Master's touch and one of them is creative Inspirations and then the other four colors are Mica pigments from this new set that I just got is not box pretty so this is a set of 24 mica powders and there are some really pretty colors in there they mixed up very well both in my gloss gel and floetrol mixture and my Bloom medium mixture and I can't wait to see how they work in these pores if you're interested in trying out these mica powders there is a link in the video description and there is a coupon code that is good for the next couple weeks so jump on that if you'd like to try out these powders these ones are going to be on a white pillow White House paint pillow these are going to be on a black pillow so let's start with the bloom side okay so I'm just going to use a little three ounce cup to sort of dip up some paint and I want plenty of pillow here because it's a small canvas but the sides are deep which means I need a lot of the pillow paint to stretch over those sides foreign I'm going to be going through a lot of baby wipes today okay let me give the pillow a quick torch get out as many air bubbles as I can okay now the fun part layering the colors so I'm going to be doing a cell activator swipe because I find that that's it's just easiest for me to get lots of cells so that's what I'm going to be doing I'm not going to be blowing from the center though that would be another future thing to test does a certain cell activator work better with blowing or with swiping but for now I'm just going to be swiping so instead of making a center pattern I'm just going to kind of squiggle the colors all over the place and I'll make just a fun design so I'm going to start here my colors for this side I have phthalo blue from Masters touch oh my goodness that is quite thick I didn't think it was quite that thick and I'll put it out on every canvas uh next up is Sky Blue by creative inspirations now it looks like it's going to flow a little better it's still quite thick generally paints for blooms are very thick but they have to be able to flow so it's that delicate balance between does it flow does it move but is it still quite thick [Music] okay let's do some of this brown metallic Brown so this is a mica pigment this is hot chocolate so I wanted to include some of this so we got quite an earthy kind of a feel but I don't want lots and lots of it the nice thing about sets of mica powders is it gives you colors that you might not buy otherwise you know would I have gone to the store and said I need a metallic brown paint probably not but now that I have it I'm using it so okay last one this is spring rain beautiful color and I want plenty of that and there are so many ways of laying down colors for a bloom swipe this way of just kind of squiggling them all over the place it's a nice easy way of getting just a blend of colors all across the canvas you could put them down sort of in lines which is a good way to make like a like a gradient effect sort of flowing from one color into another but I want a nice mix of the colors all over yay okay get those cups out of the way let's do another torch torching is very important with a bloom pour because house paint really holds onto air bubbles and they make these annoying little pock marks in the finished painting so you want to make sure you uh torch out all those air bubbles as you're going along to try to have less of them okay I'm going to start with this one because it's already spilling over the side a bit I'm going to bring it right here this is where I'm going to do all my swiping and tilting so this one corresponds with the nine to one floetrol to paint recipe so I'm going to put some of it onto the back of a palette knife not a huge layer but you know sort of a medium okay and then I'm just going to gently swipe across [Music] foreign some cells come up they're pretty small right now let me do one additional swipe with a smaller palette knife just to grab a little bit more okay well I'm seeing cells this is not as much of that lacing cell reaction as I was expecting honestly so I want to stretch it out I need some more of my pillow paint for that I actually have some of the pillow paint in a squeeze bottle which is going to make it a lot easier to just put it in some targeted places just make sure we have plenty of paint on the canvas so we can cover all the sides okay let's tilt this [Music] [Music] thank you wow these colors are fantastic and as I'm stretching it the cells are definitely opening up so it was not an immediate lacing reaction but they're there they're present so this is really cool the color blend is beautiful yeah it's like Jewels you can see the direction where I swiped it and then you can see sort of the lace on top so that's very nice so that is the nine to one US flow troll to Amsterdam paint and I realize I have not covered all of the corners I'm just gonna do all the swipes and I'll take care of that when you don't have to watch it okay next one so this is the three parts American flow troll to one part Elmer's Glue to one part Amsterdam paint plus a couple drops of the Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner so let's do that and I'm going to do it exactly the same palette knife swipe [Music] and this is the fresh mixed version of this cell activator I mixed up the floetrol and glue and paint yesterday but then I only added the Minwax today all right let's swipe it [Music] okay wow so already I'm seeing more cell reaction from this one than I did from that one I'm curious to see how it looks when it opens up I'm going to do the same thing and use my little one to add a secondary swipe just to tie it all in this one I'm going to go up this way well that was weird I think my direction was wrong but most of that will go off the side anyway very cool definitely getting cell reaction here okay let's add some more of the pillow to the outside so that we can get the whole thing covered [Music] foreign [Music] that is gorgeous these colors are magnificent it's a beautiful beautiful blend of colors and I did get more lacing with this one but not drastically more just a little bit more next one to try is the Amsterdam paint mixed just with water so that is my current favorite and we'll see whether it performs as well as I think it will or whether it's kind of the same as the others all right here we go oh man look at all those cells look at all that lacing opening up that is a massive reaction I'm going to need to do two swipes with the little one because I sort of cut through the middle here so this has way more lacing I believe than either of the other two it'll be interesting for me to watch back through the video my impression is that this is more so let's stretch it out [Music] wow I love the movement of this one really swoopy just absolutely gorgeous and there is a lot of lacing it's beautiful I'm gonna blow on this section and see if I can open up just a couple of cells there love that one okay last one time for version two of the Minwax pre-stain glue paint floatrol whatever it is but this one is a couple of days old just to see whether sitting makes it not as effective I'm going to turn it so I can keep swiping right to left and I don't know whether two days is long enough to let it sit to kind of deactivate it when I've tried it in the past it's like if it's a week or a month or something it doesn't work as well so let's see whether two days is enough foreign so I guess two days isn't enough to deactivate it but it still is definitely producing less cells than this one markedly less cells foreign [Music] okay so that one turned out very pretty also so all four of these worked we got lacing in all of them we got you know cells come up the colors are beautiful the designs look beautiful all four of these could easily hang together as a finished piece um that said there are some differences in how the cells came up so I will show you that at the end of the video I'll give you a close-up of these and a close-up of these I'm going to quickly reset I'm going to clean this area up so that I can start on the second batch so we'll be right back I went ahead and covered up the corners with paint so those are all finished let's move on to this side now so I've got a cup of black base paint here and this is mostly house paint because again I'm trying to stay consistent from one to the other but I did add some floetrol so it's a little bit thinner and that way the mixture is more similar to what my colors are so let's put some pillow down on each of these so my colors here I have this pink this is light magenta my youngest daughter Lauren gave this to me for Christmas she picked it out herself so let's put that on first oh that's going to be so pretty next to the black okay I actually forgot to torch the pillow so let me torch that now get out as many of those air bubbles as I can before we get too far into it next one this is titanium white from creative inspirations and these are all mixed with floetrol the two paints are relatively thick paints so it's about one part paint to two parts flow draw and that still made this quite a thick mixture and then I added a little bit of water just to even out all the consistencies my two mica powders I mixed with gloss gel first to sort of form a thick paint and then I mixed that about two parts floetrol to one part paint so they're all pretty pretty even there if you were using a craft paint you might do a one to one just to make it thick enough okay there we go plenty of white okay first Mica powder this one is Tumbleweed which is an interesting name it's a really pretty sort of peach color okay and then the last color this one is brilliant green so it's a beautiful sort of mint color and I thought that that would be a nice sort of Pop of fun in this paint mix those are looking so pretty already really funky okay let's torch those and then we'll do exactly the same thing four cell activators four canvases I'm gonna swipe them and see what kind of effects we get because our paints are mixed differently here they're mixed with floetrol so it's possible that one cell activator will work really well with a bloom recipe but it won't work as well with this since I like using flotrol for most of my pores it's nice to find a cell activator that can work for that too so this is going to be the floetrol glue Minwax one we'll start with that okay so some some cells are opening they seem to be mostly round cells cells that are popping up instead of lacing um let me add a couple of small swipes to tie it all together so a lot of that white is just sitting on top it's not really turning into lace at this point so let's tilt it and see whether any of those bright colors pop up and the cells open up oops I forgot we need some more need some more of our base layer first okay so that's super interesting interesting in that not much happened it's very gray I don't know if it was the white cell activator paint or the white actual paint that just blended with the background that is not very attractive and it did not get very many cells I'm not loving that it's very milky I mean it looks very kind of space-ish but that is not my favorite look I was hoping definitely hoping for more cells more lacing and that's not what we've gotten okay next one this is going to be the nine to one floatrol to paint let's see how this one works [Music] okay not a lot of cells popping up here either this is very interesting it is a bit surprising that neither of these is working very much so let's cover it up cover this Corners stretch it out see whether anything else happens when I stretch it wow that is what you call a failed cell activator there's like no cells Okay so moderate success with the uh Minwax one absolutely zero success with the nine to one floetrol and paint which is not surprising since all the paint has floatrol in it so it wouldn't really add anything new to the mixture now let's try the one that I'm almost certain will work the Amsterdam paint and water and I'm pretty sure this is going to work because it has worked for me before foreign oh yeah we got lots of cells opening up there I was going to say they look rounder than these but they continue to grow so it is still somewhat lace it is not as much Lacy as with the bloom recipe but there's lots of cells and that's from the Amsterdam paint and water let me add my second little swipe there foreign I mean just look at the difference there this was a proper cell activator it made so much lacing so many beautiful cells okay so the only one left is the Minwax floetrol glue mixture that's two days old I'm expecting it's going to work about like this I'm going to do it anyway foreign pretty much like number one it's very milky not a lot coming through let me try torching to see whether that brings up a few more cells will it pop some air bubbles I don't know if it's going to give us more lacing though foreign [Music] let me give you a close-up and show you what we've learned all right here we go close-up time okay so let's just remember these were our four cell activators top left was three parts to one parts to one part floatrol glue and paint plus a few drops of Minwax pre-stain top right was nine to one American flow trial to paint bottom left was about two parts paint to one part water and our bottom right was the same Minwax solution but it was about two days old instead of fresh so let's start over here so each one of these made cells it made lacing so here was our first Minwax one see we've got lots of beautiful small cells this was the nine to one and we got some cells there I don't think it was as many see here in the corners there's not as much reaction as there is kind of in that Center area and then here the Amsterdam paint in water I think this is the best one It produced the most lacing and the lacing is that sort of jaggedy you know lightning kind of lacing that you like to see in blooms and then over here this was the two-day old Minwax solution and it was about the same as the other one maybe not quite as many cells but pretty close and that was our bloom recipe moving on to the paint sorry my chair is squeaking moving on over here to the paints that were mixed with floetrol okay so we had a little bit of reaction here now I just torched so those spots that are just black those are torched cells those are not actual things brought up by the cell activator then this was the nine to one flow trial to paint this was abysmal pretty much the only cells we have here are from the torch same with this one the two day old Minwax not great we had a little bit of cells but mostly just a big smear and then we have the Amsterdam paint in water and look how much reaction we got even with the floetrol mixed paint so the lacing in the cells are slightly different shaped they're a little bit more round with the flotrol mix then with a Bloom mix but still you get a lot of that lacing okay I'm going to let these dry let me show you what they look like then so all of these dried perfectly none of the cells warped or anything isn't that just gorgeous these Mica pigments are really cool very shimmery as the light catches them especially here in the bloom recipe pores they're extra shiny over here you can still see some of the colors of those Mica pigments but because the cell activator kind of stayed on top most of the time they're harder to see than I think they would be otherwise but yeah a very cool experiment overall what did you think let me know down in the comments have you ever used one of these cell activators which one of you tried and have you been satisfied with it did this test surprise you coming soon I am going to put the best result from this video which is the Amsterdam paint in water I'm going to put that head to head with Amsterdam paint and Australian flow troll just to see whether the inexpensive one works as well as the real deal or not so be on the lookout for that video because it's coming soon thanks everybody for watching this video I hope it inspired you to try something new and I will see you very soon for another video bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Anna Blount Art

Views: 184,796

Keywords: DIY, acrylic pour, craft, fluid art, painting, satisfying, tutorial, Experiment, SheleeArt bloom, Cell activator, No Australian floetrol, No Aussie floetrol, Cheap cell activator, Best cell activator, Easiest cell activator, Easiest lacing, Beginner fluid art, Blooms for beginners, Bloom swipe, Palette knife swipe, Paint pour

Id: XBaXs7WzTTc

Length: 32min 5sec (1925 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 02 2023