Using Drink Tags in Mixed Media

Tamara Dinius who is a proud mother of two grown daughters and who she describes as being her support and ground has a special love for mixed media which she says has taken over most aspects of her creative journey. According to her, she believes mixed media allows for a broad range of styles and anyone can find success in this form of artistic expression. Through videos, she tries to demonstrate mixed media techniques using bargain bin finds whereby the techniques shown can be used on multiple substrates to create unique gifts for any occasion.

All what you need to have in place is cheap substrate while adding some paints in addition to stamping and stencilling to decorate your altered art. Some of the very simple and readily available materials she will use from the local craft warehouse are Drink tags. Through her daughters and the very awesome husband she is able to embrace her work since the larger part of her family are amazing people in their own right. You will find a lot of her work on her website countrycraftersusa.com, Etsyshop and you can also get her on Facebook. Clearly, mixed media art and the way of expression is all exciting. However it takes a lot of creativity to create something worth.

Art Journaling with Altered Art

Keri Sallee is a lover of all things creative and believes that everyone has the ability to be creative in some manner. Many people may have heard about art journaling and probably have tons of pin on Pinterest of artist that inspire you and quotes that moved you. However you can chose to take your art journals out of your books and instead make 3-D embodiments of your feelings and thoughts.

Creatively, she tries to describe her story to illustrate the desire to be normal and perfect despite our baggage, our history and our scars. She will use a dress; one which is sparkly, pristine and dazzling white, while the other is dingy, tattered and torn. Every choice of embellishments has some kind of meaning. For example the necklace used is heavy in symbolism of a clock to symbolise everything happens in time, bird cage symbolises need for freedom, roses there are seasons for everything and the word “journey” we are ALL on a journey.

We all still have dreams that we dare to dream, even if it’s only in our own heads. In some ways, we all have scars on our hearts, but through the love of family and friends we can be stitched back together and be free just like a little bird. So what do you do? Take your thoughts, dreams and desires out of your books and put them on display for all to see and to remember that art can be both beautiful and healing.

Making Decorative Fridge Magnet

If you did not know that you would make decorative fridge magnet with mixed media, Sandra Pares who is more often than not amazed by colours and textures will tell you how through this write up. This is especially useful for those who forget to bring gifts to family and friends after being on holiday.

What supplies and materials will you need?

• Acrylic paints in various colours
• Modelling paste
• Adhesive magnetic tape
• A square piece of wood 6x6cm
• Stencil to make abstract backgrounds
• Sponge and brush.
• Old credit card
• Stencil with a sharp image to fit inside the square 6x6cm

The procedure to follow is:

• Put gesso on wood and let it dry completely. You will have put ready the support for painting while you choose the lighter colours from the acrylic paints to paint the surface.
• When the layer is dry, take a stencil that allows you to add texture over the background and with a sponge stencil the template using a contrasting colour to the background layer.
• Once dried take another template and choose a stencil with a sharp image. With the credit card catch some modelling paste and fill the gap with the paste. You will have an embossed figure. Let it dry a few hours until the paste is completely harden.
• When the paste is dry paint the figure with acrylic paints. You can paint around the edge to give sense of well finished. When all the work is dry put a piece of adhesive magnetic tape to get the magnet.

That's it. Happy Creating!

Using Recycled Corrugated Cardboard for Artwork

Kim Kelly is obsessed with crafting and art work and it’s only within her to save of everything and anything she collects. Apparently, she will collect stuff and forget where she kept is. Her current habit is of saving boxes and in as much as she will have a standard use for them like stuffing and sorting stuff, she will also cut them up and use them to pop up parts of a project or to back a page she creates.

Using some recycled cardboard she tells of how she made a wall hanging an idea she got from Gabrielle Pollacco. This is how she says you go about it:

• Cut flaps from a box into 3 6” x 6” squares, add holes to attach them together and in several places peel some of the paper back to show the corrugated insides.
• Use gesso with a damask stencil to get some texture. Add colour and embellishments. Soft colours would do well. 

Kim Kelly will get very creative with words after her final work. She will pose with words like Deuteronomy 31:6…”Be strong and courageous. The main reason that she loves Mixed Media Art is because one is free to beyond your comfort zone, while using your imagination and exploring an anything that gets set on your mind. She has taken it upon her obligation to learn and explore new techniques.

Mixed Media Art Project with Sprays and Stazon Inkpads

Melanie Statnick has this happy style for her artwork which she creates every day from her private studio. She loves all the juicy colours in all her collections and some of her new colours can now blend well with a palette. The results from them give her a lot of excitement because the colours remain bright juicy and added fantastic texture coverage to her art work.

This is how she says you can create art with irresistible sprays and stazon inkpads:

• Lay the stencil down on your journal surface and spray approx.12 inch away from the paper. It dries fairly quickly because it is acrylic then wash off your stencil after spraying.
• Add some stamps using stazon. However it is debated that stazon makes stamps sticky and has a light odour to it but never the less there are other solvent ink that come in some yummy new colours. For images give them just a little something to catch your eye.
• After adding the irresistible texture spray and the stazon inked stamps, add water colour to the page and while it is still wet gently rub off some excess colour. The results will definitely be something beautiful.

It’s all about creativity that Melanie whose artwork can be found in art galleries and shops extensively in NC and with international private collections describes as the driving force for her.

Substrate Preparation

Elaine Brady Smith loves creating encaustic and mixed media art. Key ingredients in her work are vintage papers and hand printed collage papers made with repetitive marks, simplistic shapes, and transparent layers. Encaustic wax adheres to a variety of surfaces.It is important that the surface is absorbent and porous or it will eventually crack and flake off hence glass, plastic, smooth metals, and any surfaces painted with acrylic paint are not suitable for encaustic.

Good choices for substrates are: Birch Plywood, Regular Plywood, and Unfinished Pine and only if you are doing 2 dimensional works. The substrate should not have been previously treated with any oils or chemicals and as such it is good that you spend some time researching what substrate will best suit your needs and once you decide what type of work you want.

To prepare your substrate, encaustic medium or plain beeswax can be applied directly to most unfinished wood. If you are doing a painting, preparing the surface with a ground of encaustic gesso will enhance and give brighter colour results. Regardless of what type of ground you chose, begin your painting with a primer layer of wax on your substrate because the layers of wax cool very quickly as you add them and will remain individual layers. Through fusing process, the wax melts enough to bond with the layer beneath.There are many more techniques to discuss, but you can see that getting started is very simple. It is not beyond your reach to learn encaustic painting.

Have you Tried Calligraphy?

Calligraphy is “the art of giving a pleasing, harmonious form to the written word”. While one would think that calligraphy and mixed media should be a natural combination, Katja Blum who has been into collage and other paper arts often finds herself developing a special form of writer’s block – calligrapher’s block.

Many works of mixed media art include text – individual words or text blocks – as a focal point and added layer of texture, color and meaning. The surface of a piece of mixed media art is often textured and varied, with layers of different materials that make it hard to control the nib or brush, the classic calligraphy tools. Katja embraces her handwriting and forgets aids such as ruled lines and light boxes. So there is just freehand writing. And for good results she advises that you take a good look at your art tools first. Choose your tool, take a deep breath and just start writing on your artwork. The tools should be simple tools. For example; a calligraphy pen with a broad and fine tip is a good choice for a block of text, perhaps on a journal page.

Play with brushes. Pastels and crayons look substantial, but still relaxed – lovely in white on a dark background. Katja Blum is a big admirer of the work of calligraphy artists and to the delight of her husband she also likes to find creative solutions for ugly or broken things around the house.

Working on a Painted Paper Collage

What Debbie loves most about Mixed Media art is that you don’t have to be an expert at anything to create beautiful art. It is a great way to recycle found objects. Art is also such a wonderful stress reliever. She loves to paint and do collage onto mixed media paper. The trick behind her work is to let go of any apprehensions about messing up a nice canvas or other expensive substrate and this trick allows her to work freely and just have fun.

Depending on the size of the paper, a competed paper collage painting can be cut to make smaller pieces of art and you can as well use the entire piece of art. Some of the materials Debbie will use in her work include pieces from a vintage ephemera music book, dictionary and calendar page. Deli paper will be added as well. Once papers are collage on the mixed media paper, paint is added and did a bit of stamping with a piece of cardboard that has been brushed some paint onto and pressed onto the paper. Thereafter she will mount the paintings onto wood panels.

You can also opt to buy clearance craft art from your local hobby/home decor store and use as your substrate. Once you cut your paper close to the size of the substrate, extra paper can be trimmed off after the glue dries. However PVA glue is the best to use and which you should add to the center of the substrate and brush it out towards the edges. Don’t put too much of glue or too thin. You can then lay your art onto the panel smoothing out any air bubbles.

How to Create Mixed Media Hair

Out of her love for playing with mixed media and techniques Kate Palmer better known as Sparkle Tart brings to you a tutorial on how to create interesting Mixed Media hair with depth and texture. While most of her work incorporates sparkly media of some sort, which is used on journal pages, canvases, scrapbooks or handmade cards, read below to see how it happens:

Materials and products to use:

• Magicals mixed with Gesso for pastel background, Gel Medium for hair base, water as ink
• Starburst sprayed over background
• Magicals mixed with acrylic paint for face
• Martha Stewart Gesso – white
• Golden Mediums – Glass Bead Gel and Fiber Paste
• Stencil Magic Stencil – Floral Accent
• White pre-gessoed canvas

Instructions

• Sketch image onto your canvas
• Colour the hair using Magicals mixed with Gel Medium to create a base layer. Add denim to darken.
• Once the base layer is dry, cover hair with texture paste, making sure to create loads of peaks and valleys as these will catch the colour and shimmer of subsequent layers.
• Once the texture paste is dry, mix Magicals with water to create a sparkly ink and apply over the hair, make sure to be heavy handed and allow the mica to settle into the valleys in the texture paste. Allow to dry thoroughly.
• Apply a light layer of Inka Gold to the high points created by the texture paste,
• Protect the face and apply the bead gel through the stencil onto the hair. Allow each section of bead gel to dry before applying the next.

You will finally get a wonderful glossy appearance with colours from underneath that enhance the sparkle.

Do you want to make Dummy Journal Pages?

With a serious focus on sharing her journey to art, Vicki Ross has always been involved deeply in the creative arts from which she has achieved various capabilities. Mixed Media and all the products available for the craft and scrapper market are somewhat familiar to her because she is a child of the 70’s.

However she is learning to meld new products into fine art, and having a bit of fun on the way. The secret is not to give up because most of these things never turn out like you plan, especially when working with strange new products. Even old traditional media don’t behave exactly like you want and plan. This is how most of my little ideas turn into BIG ones.

The following tutorial highlights to you how to make Journal Pages using very traditional materials.

• Cut the frames until you get the right size for the book, and laser prints of the images. It must have had a plasticizer coating or something.
• Add the black frame with the Explore silver lettering at the top.
• Move on to the texture issue. Sprays don’t show up on black paper. Neither did the stamp inks. Picked up some embossing powder, and the grey powder turned silver with heat! Perfect.
• Another coat of Matte Medium will do it good.

Finally use black marker to cover some of the wayward silver embossing. Fixative again, another coat of Matte Medium, and there you have the Victory!

Getting Creative with A-B-C Blocks to Create Puzzles

Martice Smith II has stunning illustrations that reveals her love for fashion typography and wildlife- using a combination of analog and digital techniques. She brings along a tutorial for making a beautiful designer block puzzle while using the concept of those little A-B-C blocks you may have played with as a child. Here we go:

• Gather supplies and any size of blocks will work just well. Other supplies include Stencils, stamps, Spray paints (various colors), face mask and a masking tape.
• Prepare the wooden block
• Set up the blocks three wide by three long while working on an even surface
• Use a stamp to design side 1 so that there are 6 blank surfaces on top again.
• Spray paint the cardboard cut offs and stencils for the other sides. This is while wearing a face mask
• Design side 2
• Design side 3 and 4 with commercial stencils. For side 3, you can use square dance while side 4 you will use Art Nouveau stencil.
• Design side 5 and 6 with handmade stencils. For side 6, you can use more bold and graphic approach by using the “and” symbol. 
• Reset the blocks and having designed all the sides you can create different looks for your visual pleasure. 

It is advisable and important that you keep your imagination fresh which will give you a good challenge to recreate your own, unique combinations.

Encaustic and Collage Art

Vicki has always been involved deeply in various aspects of creative arts. As such she is focused on sharing her journey to art and how life events can shape us through creativity as long as the piece has something new to learn. Though she has been a fiber artist working with silk thread and the smallest silk gauze for needlepoint, she has also been doing quilting and she brings below a way of making a quilt pattern created in deli paper and encaustic.

Materials include:

• Razor Blade
• Deli Paper
• Heat Gun
• Encaustic medium
• Ranger Tacking Iron
• 6″x 7″ Luan panel

Steps to follow include:

• Prime the panel with two coats of clear medium, fusing each with heat gun.
• Use template pieces cut direct from thin encaustic medium. Deli Paper can be used to rescue if there is a mess of pasta.
• Precut the pieces you need and dip the required number of pieces into the same color mixture so it would resemble print fabric. You can the mono – print each piece on both sides using tweezers.
• Put your work on a board and decide on size laser print you want for your collage. 
• You can now make the shapes you want. 

Once you have done all that victory is declared and the creativity moral to cling on should be “learning is the healing power towards creativity”.