Mixed Media - A B C ...

Welcome back to Mixed Media Monday in the Korner.

The story behind today's piece from my large art journal: last week, a crafty friend posted a pic of one of her journal pages in progress, and I commented that her page put my unfinished circle page to shame. :)  She prompted me to post a pic of my page's progress so far - I was taking a little break from housecleaning, so I pulled out my camera and snapped a pic of my page and posted it into the thread.

Later that evening, my journal was still sitting there on my worksurface, and I couldn't sleep, so what better time than "now" to finally finish it? And that's how this page finally got done, many weeks after it was started. Without seeing my friend's post, and without her prompting after my comment, it might still be sitting there on the shelf, and still unfinished. :)

This page is one of the first in my large Dylusions art journal...

I don't have stepout photos for this page because - well honestly - I forgot to even think of it when I started playing with this. But I can give you some of the steps to the end product.

The paper in this journal is heavy mixed-media paper, and this time, I didn't put any gesso on the page first. I put a dab of different Dylusions acrylic paints around the page, and spread them with a combination of paintbrush, fingerpainting, and spreading with a damp baby wipe.

The larger black squares were made through a stencil using heavy black gesso - you can probably see that in the top right and lower left, I applied the gesso through the stencil in the usual manner to get the positive image. But for the lower right and upper left, I turned the stencil over and pressed the gessoed stencil down on the page to get the negative pattern.

I then used jar caps and black gesso to form the outlines for the circles down the page before adding the white speckled areas using Whipped Spackle through a Tim Holtz stencil.

After I had the circles laid out, I used molding paste through an alpha stencil in the lower corner and across the center.

Heavy white gesso was finger painted into the centers of the circles, so I could color them later...and that's as far as I got when I put the page away for another day...

You can see I didn't have far to go to finish this page, so it was well worth my time to get it finished and cross it off the list of the incomplete. :)

I used Gelatos to color inside the circles, blending black, purple and yellow. The little white dots were added with a white gel pen, and the smaller vertical black dots were made with black acrylic paint through a Tim Holtz stencil. 

The last bits were to add a few strips of washi tape here and there, and a trio of word stickers...and it's complete!

Here are a few closeups around the page...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Dylusions acrylic paints:  Crushed Grape,  Bubblegum Pink,  Lemon Zest,  Vibrant Turquoise,  Squeezed Orange

Liquitex heavy body acrylic paint - Mars Black;   Faber Castell Gelatos:  Grape, Buttercream, Black

Stencils:   Prima/Finnabair "Grungy Grid" and "Alpha";  Tim Holtz Idea-ology "Speckles" and "Dot Fade"

Word stickers:   Tim Holtz Idea-ology "Big Chat"          

Art mediums:   Faber Castell Whipped Spackle,  Art Basics black heavy gesso,  Liquitex white heavy gesso,  Golden molding paste

Miscellaneous:   washi tape,  Zig Mangaka black pen,  Uniball Signo white gel pen,  Prismacolor white pencil 

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

Art Journal - Wildflower...

It's Mixed Media Monday again here in the Korner, and I have a colorful journal page to share today.

Unfortunately, I didn't take stepout photos this time...and this is one of those pages with a lot of steps. But I think once you see it and I explain what I did, you'll get it. I played with Dylusions acrylic paints, and masks and stencils...and this spread is one of the few "flat" journal spreads I've made.

So, once again channeling my "flower child" younger years, here's the finished double-page spread in my small Dylusions art journal...

I started by eyeballing where I wanted my two figures to sit on the pages, and in those two general areas, went to work creating a background of text tissue paper, hand-drawn flowers, circles, pens and inks, Dylusions paints...fun and bright colors.

Then I placed the masks over the areas I wanted to show through, and used black heavy body acrylic to cover the rest of the background around the figure masks. 

I knew the text I'd be using, and since it was song lyrics, I happily remembered I had an older Tim Holtz music mask in my supply stash...and an older Heidi Swapp loopy flower mask, too. I left the masks over my two figures, laid the music and flower masks down over them, and added more colorful Dylusions paints over the black gesso, covering most of the background with blocks of color.

After that dried, a stenciling of black heavy gesso at the bottom, and more magenta paint through the same stencil around the top and sides, and it was ready for the quote and handwritten lines.

Here are a few closeup shots...

I printed the text onto white cardstock  (the font used is called Janda Truly Madly Deeply) and glued the words down through the center of the spread, then hand wrote another line from the song up the sides of the two figures...

Supplies:

Art Mediums:   Ranger Dylusions acrylic paints-Bubble Gum Pink, Squeezed Orange, Vibrant Turquoise, Fresh Lime, White Linen;   Liquitex black heavy body acrylic paint;   Art Basics black heavy gesso;   Sharpie white poster paint pen;   Uniball Signo white gel pen;   Ranger Fudeball black pen

Masks:   Dylusions "Annie" and "Flossie";   Tim Holtz Idea-ology "concerto";   Heidi Swapp "daisy"

Stencil:   Tim Holtz "dot fade"             Orange gemstones:  Heidi Swapp

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!

Art Journal - Be a Butterfly

Happy Monday, everyone! This week is starting with a Mixed Media Monday art journal page share...and it's something a bit different for me. My art journals are little places to experiment and play, so not every layout is a "work of art"...more like a "work of wonder" as in "I wonder if this will work..." :)

I wanted to do something with my Indigo Blu/Limor Webber "Ink Splat Butterfly" stamp, and I wanted to pair it with a new Unity Stamp Co. butterfly quote stamp. But since I'd just about finished with another bright and sassy and experimental butterfly layout in my journal (you'll see that one next week), I wanted this one to be a bit moodier. (hmmm...wonder if the fact I was watching recorded "Falling Skies" episodes had anything to do with that...ha!)

Here's the finished layout in my small Dylusions journal...

The use of a lot of embossing powders, and paints with iridescence mixed with the flat paints and inks, gives this "moody" page a touch of brightness...here's a side view of the reflective surfaces...

Want to see how it evolved? The first step was to stamp and emboss the butterfly...I chose a couple different colors of embossing powder..so far, so good. Then I got an idea, so I masked the butterfly before applying the modeling paste through a brick stencil...

I wondered if this last step would give me the impression of looking through a hole in a brick wall at a butterfly flying in the distance. So I went ahead and colored the brick wall using a few different Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals, and shading with a few more...some flat, some iridescent...keeping the mask over the butterfly stamp as I painted the bricks and mortar...

Then I painted in the background colors with more Magicals...blue, orange and pink in the sky area, and more green and blue at the bottom. When I added some darker shading colors around the edge of the "hole," I started to see where I was headed with the layout. Mind you, I did think twice when I got finished with this step...I kind of liked the bright and happy feel to the page. So I let it simmer in my head overnight, while I did other things and wondered if I really wanted to take this in the direction I originally envisioned...

When I came back to it the next day, I looked at the wall and thought "no brick wall with a hole in it is going to look that neat...it needs some graffiti on it."  So out came more embossing powders, and a Ranger Fudeball pen, and a script stencil to get me started with my letter shapes, and by now the page had a mind of its own and I was just going with the flow. I used some acrylic craft pigments to draw in some stems and tiny orange and magenta flower petals and leaves along the bottom edge..

At this point, all I needed to do was add some more shading, play around with those circles in the upper left, add some more texture with modeling paste, gussy up the butterfly, and add the sentiments...and that's how it ended up as in the top photo!

Here's a less reflective closeup of the embossed and stamped and shaded circles in the top left...

I used my Indigo Blu "Rugged Edge" stamp to get the embossed edges along the top. First I embossed with a dark blue powder, then topped with a lighter jade-slate powder. Here's a closeup of the two colors...at the top, the jade-slate deepened the blue, at at the bottom you can see how it's a beautiful green-grey shade...

Over in the right corner of the layout, I wanted some more circles, but not as heavy as those on the other page. So I pulled out one of my stencils and applied modeling paste through it...texture and some of a similar element on the opposite corner. (See that light "brown" at the upper left of this pic? That's the jade slate embossing powder over the orange paint...a totally different appearance when over the other color, but the same powder!)..

And finally, a closeup of the dressed up butterfly. Using a Fudeball pen, I drew inside the blue embossed circles on the wings to give them a textured look, outlined the outside, and added a strip of rhinestones through the center...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals:   Rizzos Rowdy Red,   Bodacious Blush,   Sandra Dee Sepia,  Gag Me With a Spoon Grey,  Pink Ladies Pink,   Pretty in Pink Pink,   Luscious Lime,   Tilt a Wheel Teal,   Orange Creamsicle

Lindy's Stamp Gang Embossing Powders:   Bonjour Butter,   Aurora Amethyst,   Tilt a Wheel Teal,   Hyacinth Blue Jade,   Twilight Jade Slate

Ranger Fudeball pen - black;     acrylic craft paints

Stencils:   The Crafters Workshop "Mini Bricks"  "Mini Halftone Borders"   "Mini Specimens";   Donna Downey "Scribble Script"

Stamps:   Indigo Blu "Ink Splat Butterfly"   "Limor Circles"   "Rugged Edge";   Unity Stamp Co. "Today is a Lovely Day"

Art Mediums:   Golden modeling paste             Miscellaneous:   Stabilo All pencils-black & brown,  clear crystal gems

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

Art Journal - Poppies...

Welcome to another Mixed Media Monday here in the Korner!

This layout began as a "catch-all" page in my small Dylusions art journal. I was playing with a few different stencils and color mediums, but as I went along, I got more ideas, and somehow found a way to blend them all together...

I began by adding my background colors first, using Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays, a speckle stencil and modeling paste, and stamping around the outside edges.

The butterflies and corner elements were made with modeling paste through the "Mini Specimens" stencil by The Crafters Workshop. I shadowed and traced the butterflies with Crystal Stickles and added some tiny pearls through the centers...

I used the Penny Black "Sun Catcher" stencil to gesso onto the pages, and copied the details from the matching "Poppy Time" stamp to hand draw in the details, then colored with watercolor pencils and acrylic craft paints. I decided I wanted some dimension to the poppies, so I stamped the matching stamp onto mixed media paper, colored it in, then cut out the center pieces of the stamped flowers and attached them to the center of the poppies on the pages using foam tape...

The final step was adding some of my favorite Unity Stamp quotes here and there...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindys Stamp Gang - Alpine Ice Rose,  Aloha Avocado,  Cowabunga Copper,  Hydrangea Blue

Stencils:   The Crafters Workshop "Mini Specimens";   Tim Holtz "Speckles";  Penny Black "Sun Catcher"

Stamps:   Penny Black "Poppy Time";   Unity Stamp Co. "empowered words";   

Fiskars/Teresa Collins "Music";   Stampin' Up! "Gorgeous Grunge"

Art Mediums:   Golden white gesso and modeling paste;   Plaid Folk Art acrylic paints

Miscellaneous:   Stabilo All Pencils (black and brown),  "Crystal" Stickles,  Black Archival ink, 

 Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens (black),  Kaisercraft mini pearls

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

Art Journal - Play...

Good day, everyone! I'm getting caught up on my postings with another Mixed Media Monday share of a project in my small (5-1/2" x 8-1/2") Strathmore watercolor journal.

The first week of April, Tracy Scott posted about her limited supplies while on vacation. One of the supplies she did tote with her on vacation was her collection of Neocolor II watercolor crayons...and that got me realizing that I hadn't played with mine since I made this art journal spread and ended up muting and covering the crayons to get the pastel look I wanted that day!

So, out came my Neocolor II crayons, and off I went with a seldom-made freehand layout again inspired by Tracy's style.  I guess I still had Easter eggs on my mind while I drew, and this page ended up being named the "Easter Egg House" when it was all done...LOL...

I did the initial sketching using a medium black Faber Castell Pitt artist pen, then started coloring with my crayons and blending with water using various sizes of brushes, depending on the area and depth of color I was aiming for.(Because I was using watercolor paper this time, I didn't gesso the base page first.) Some of the circles and egg-shaped ovals on the side are freehand cut pieces of patterned papers collaged first, then edged with black pen, and finally painted with the crayons.

The next step was to go over some of the black outlines with a white Uni Posca paint pen. Then little polka dots were added here and there with both the black Pitt pen and a white UniBall Signo pen.

I reached into my tool box and used the end of one of my palette knives to make the larger white circles using some lightly thinned gesso, then scribbled around them with the UniPosca pen.

The words are scribbled here and there with the UniPosca pen...

Supplies:

Color Medium:  Caran d'Ache Neocolor II watercolor pastels - Golden Yellow,  Lemon Yellow,  Orange,  Flame Red, 

Purple Violet,  Ultramarine, Purple,  Cobalt Blue,  Periwinkle Blue,  Malachite Green,  Light Olive, 

Emerald Green, Salmon,  Black

Miscellaneous:   Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen (black medium),  Uni Posca white paint pen, Uniball Signo white gel pen, white gesso, small patterned paper scraps

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