Mixed Media - Believe in Magic...

Happy Monday, everyone! I had to take a little break from crafting recently to tend to some family business and a sick family pet, but I was able to sneak in some crafty time in small bits and pieces during the past couple weeks, and will have a couple projects to share with you this week. :)

The first is a canvas (of sorts) to get back on track for Mixed Media Mondays. I recently purchased some newly released paints by an artist friend, Cheryl Mezzetti. They're called Perfect Paints, and they're acrylic paints with a beautiful sheen to them...colors that are brilliant with just a bit of reflectivity that makes the colors dance...they're called Shimmering Matte Acrylics, and the hardest decision to make was which colors to start my collection with!

Here's the finished project...

Can you tell what my "canvas" is by this photo?

In my stash, I had the backing chipboard piece from an empty wirebound 9x12 watercolor paper pad, already gessoed for later use. When my paint order arrived, I pulled out that piece, and started laying on colors - just playing to see how they covered, how they blended with each other, and what would happen when I layered one on the other after drying. These colors are so rich!

When I saw how beautifully the colors blended, an idea started to take shape...and that's about the time that other life issues started taking priority over my crafting time. So I started jotting notes on post-its as the ideas came while I was tending to other things, and playing with those ideas when I had a few minutes in the evenings.

Along with the paints, I purchased a few colors of Perfect Paints Polishing Plasters...a sort of molding plaster with color...but a bit of a different texture, and when buffed, a slight sheen...or when burnished, a shabby, vintage look. So, following my "try this" notes, I pulled out a couple stencils, and played with laying down the Plasters...and then I had this...

Here's where you can see how different the colors look when the combo of natural light and Ott lights aimed at the canvas board (in my little homemade photo booth) reflect the sheen of the paints. In real life and to the natural eye under normal room lighting, the colors look more like they do in the first photo above. 

I used "Organic Sugar" Polishing Plaster for the stripes along the left side, and a combo of "Cayenne" and "Sunwashed Clay" Polishing Plasters for the tree and branches. Once they had dried, I burnished each with the metal blade of a palette knife, and it gave them a smooth but vintage appearance.

As a finishing touch, I used Stabilo All pencils in black and brown to add a little bit of shading and dimension before adding embellishments on top of the pastes.

And here's where taking stepout photos ended, as I only devoted short periods of time in the following couple weeks to add bits and pieces to the canvas board. 

Among the little burlap flowers and diecut cardstock leaves decorating the tree branches, I added some dark bronze metal flowers, touched up with pink and yellow Shimmering Matte Acrylics. I also dry-brushed those colors on top of the multicolored micro and seed beads that I added around each of the larger metal flowers...

These chipboard hearts were first painted with the pink paint (Peony), and then a watered-down "wash" of the Peacock Blue paint gave me the violet/purple shade for a little variety...

I had painted this chipboard fairy for another project, and didn't use it, so I covered it up with black heavy gesso, then added some of the Peacock Blue and Peony paints to the wings, and topped them with some Rock Candy Distress Stickles...

The sentiment stamp is by Unity Stamp Company - it already has some of the words "blocked" but I drew in a couple more lines and some white dots around "magic" for fun...pens write beautifully over these paints! The pink and blue Shimmering Matte Acrylics were added inside the crystals of the butterfly to make it stand out a bit more...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Perfect Paints Shimmering Matte Acrylics ("Cantaloupe" "Rain Slicker" "Peony" "Peacock Blue" "Moss Green")

Perfect Paints Polishing Plasters ("Organic Sugar" "Cayenne" "Sunwashed Clay")

Stencils:   The Crafters Workshop "Branches Reversed";   Tim Holtz "Stripes"

Dies:   Simon Says Stamp "Fancy Believe";   My Favorite Things "Rose Leaves"

Chipboard:   Dusty Attic "Garden Fairy" and "Heart Attack Panel Small #2"

Stamp:   Unity Stamp Company "The Time is Now"

Burlap flowers:   The Paper Studio             Metal flowers:   theFunkieJunkie.com

Crystal butterfly:   Prima             Gems:   Prima and Creative Imaginations

Mixed media ink supplies:   Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens (black);   Stabilo All pencils (black & brown);   

Mangaka black fine and medium pens;   Uniball Signo white gel pen

Beads and glitter:   Rock Candy Distress Stickles;   Martha Stewart clear coarse glitter;  silver and pink German glass glitter;  

 Doodlebug Sugar Coating BonBon glitter;   craft store micro and seed beads

Thanks for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!

Mixed Media - Double the Fun...

It's Mixed Media Monday on the blog, and I've got two projects to share with you today, so I hope you have a few minutes to sit back and enjoy the picture show. :)

First up, an all-occasion card made with one of my "smoosh papers" - a piece of mixed media paper literally "smooshed" onto a craft sheet covered with leftover colors from another project. In this case, it's Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays.

The piece was the perfect size for an A2 card, and I liked the way the colors distributed so much that I wanted a lot of it still showing after embellishing. I added only a bit of modeling paste through a Prima stencil in a random pattern, and a bright floral cluster. Instead of using leaves in the flower cluster, I pulled out an old fern punch for a fun change of pace...

Here are some closeups of the floral cluster...

The only rose in the cluster is the large one in the center...all the rest are pretty little sweetheart blossoms...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Sprays  - Pop Rock Purple,  Tea Pot Purple,  Hydrangea Blue

Stencil:   Prima "Circular Lattice"            Dies:   Memory Box "Quinn Flourish"

Punch:   Punch Bunch "Large Fern"             Flowers:   Wild Orchid Crafts             

Stamen cluster:   ChocolateLetters on Etsy             Pearls:   Recollections

Last Monday when I shared the butterfly through the brick wall journal page, I mentioned this art journal page layout. It was purely a "work of wonder" as in "I wonder if this will work!" 

It's an experimental blending of different types of mediums (more than an artful design). To my pleasant surprise, since I had never combined some of them before, they all worked together beautifully. (There was one experiment that didn't work out exactly as planned, though, which you might spot right away.)

I wanted to play with using die cuts for texture instead of art mediums and stencils...and I wanted to try to blend wax based color background mediums (Gelatos and Neocolor II watercolor crayons) with water-based spray colors (Lindy's Stamp Gang Flat Fabio spray) and various pens (Ranger Fudeball, Uni Posca, Uniball Signo)...

Here are some progress stepout photos, starting with the die cuts gessoed after gluing onto the pages (a bit hard to see since everything is white)...

You'll notice there are some white splatters on the finished page. Instead of splashing white ink onto the finished pages, I wanted to see if liquid frisket would stand up to all the different product layers, and then come off smoothly when it was finished...and it did! The orange dots are the liquid frisket...

The next step was base color. I used Gelatos inside the circle diecuts on each page (I applied them in a circular design then used a wet watercolor brush to spread them through the circle), and the rest of the background is Neocolor II pencils applied much the same way - scribbled on, then spread with a larger wet watercolor brush.

There was a method to my madness with the butterflies. I added two colors inside the white diecuts on the background, and as you can see in the finished page, when I applied a second black diecut with raised wings over them, I ended up with dimensional butterflies with the colors under the black outline diecut - a fun technique...  

Here are a few closeups showing the finished butterflies and a few other details. You'll see in the closeups how perfectly the liquid frisket came off after the pages were dried. :)

In this first one, you can see that I outlined the bottom butterflies in white for more accent. The hand drawn scallops around the edge were done with a black Fudeball pen, with white accents inside the scallops drawn with a UniBall Signo in white...

I drew inside and outside the circle diecuts with a black Fudeball, and accented inside the circles with a white Uni Posca paint pen...

In this photo, you can see to the left and below the butterfly where I used a Lindy's Stamp Gang Flat Fabio spray (South Shore Sand) to shade and add some dimension to the scribble diecut texture and around some of the diecuts. I wasn't sure how, or if, it would adhere over the Neocolor II's, but it surely did. Even though the Neocolor II's are labeled as "wax pastels," they behave much like any other watercolor once they're dry...

Here's a closeup of one of the circle diecuts, colored with Gelatos and accented with black and white pens...

I also added some of the Lindy's Stamp Gang spray around the circle diecuts for shading, and randomly inside the honeycomb diecuts in the corners. (And yes, I glued the sequins on "upside down" because I liked the way the stamped creases on the back side mimicked the honeycomb pattern of the diecut. :) )...

Have you spotted the one step that didn't work exactly as I had hoped, but was worked around to a degree? Yep, it's the flowers on the lower left. I was curious how stenciled flowers would apply on top of textured diecuts. First I pulled out my black heavy gesso, then realized that wasn't much of a challenge, because of it's thicker consistency. So I went for broke and pulled out my bottle of regular black gesso...and boy was I in for some fun.

I was very careful...and I mean "very"...to make sure my stencil was flat on the top of the page, but I took a deep breath, and instead of using a sponge applicator (which is what I'd normally do with regular consistency gesso) I pulled out a small palette knife. And you probably know what happened next...seepage to the nth degree! LOL

But it wasn't so bad that I couldn't take the edge of the knife and pull out the edges of the flowers to look like large, spiky, blooms. And one advantage to the "seepage" is that the design doesn't just rest on top of the diecuts, but seeps down to the base of the page, making it a more continuous image (and at least now I know what will happen to the design with this technique...LOL)...

Supplies:

Dies:   Tim Holtz "Mixed Media" and "Scribbles & Splats";   LaLa Land Crafts "Fancy Butterfly";   Simon Says Stamp "Bubble Parade"

Color Mediums:   Faber Castell Gelatos;   Caran d'Ache Neocolor II wax pastels;   Lindy's Stamp Gang Flat Fabio "South Shore Sand";   Ranger Fudeball black pen;

Uni Posca white paint pen;   Uniball Signo white gel pen

Art Mediums:   Golden white gesso,  Golden gel medium,   Darice Studio 71 black gesso,   Grumbacher "Miskit" liquid frisket

Word stickers:   Tim Holtz "Small Talk"             Stencil:   Tim Holtz "Wildflower"             Miscellaneous:  sequins, small colored gems

Thanks for stopping by for a visit...I hope your week is starting with a smile!