Making a Customized Grunge Mat

Anjuli Johnson began her art career as a scrapbooker, and it’s been an evolutionary process ever since. Since she loves all things mixed media- paper, paint, pens, wire, gears, and clay she is constantly trying to push through her fears to discover and develop her talents, meet new people, and learn from those around her. Being a new home owner her head is full of plans for how she can update and improve certain things… new tile in the bathrooms, different coloured accent walls, perhaps some new kitchen cabinets at some point and of course, a brand new art studio.

While looking for décor ideas before deciding what she likes and want to incorporate in her home, she has been spending months scouring Pinterest and internet images and many of the gallery walls caught her attention. She knew she wanted to frame some small art pieces rather than photos and the position was to be on the outside of the mat, rather than having it framed underneath. She also wanted to do a whitewash grunge type of effect rather than having a plain white or black mat.

So what did she do?She used the cardboard insert from the frames she bought as mats and used gel medium on book pages to transfer text onto the surface. Once the medium dried, she dipped her fingers in water and rubbed off the excess paper to show the bottom text transferred to the cardboard. She used watered down acrylic paint as a wash and applied several coats until it was the colourshe wanted. She did let the cardboard dry in between before adding watermark stamped images in a few places to complete her mixed media mat.