Create Beautiful Backgrounds from Old Chalk

Do you have sets of chalks which you have not used for years? I know that I do.

I decided to get my old chalks out, and I tried something different.

I filled a basin full of cold water, and used a craft knife to gently scrape off some chalk from the block so it fell onto the water. If you are gentle the chalk will float beautifully.

 

I then lowered some white card onto to the water so it floated a little.

 

Then I pulled the paper up, and the chalk had left all sorts of lovely patterns behind!

 

As this months theme is Fit For A Queen with a Twist of adding gems I decided to use the adorable Crowned Bunny stamp. I stamped her in Archival Black ink and used watercolour paints to give her some colour. A tiny gem star completed her crown nicely. A little fluff of flowersoft gave her a cute little bunny tail.

 

Join in this months Fun Challenge and create something Fit For A Queen.

 

 

 

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Pretty In Purple

Barb here - I was playing with purple while I participated in a postcard exchange where the postcard had to be majority purple.  I always keep my journal open and put my leftover paint on a page.  I think I made four different postcards so there were different shades of purple on the page.  Somehow I also had pink on the page.  Unfortunately I don't remember when I did that.  But I started with basically shades of purple for the base of my journal entry.

Here is how the page turned out.

 This is the what the journal page looked like when I started my creative process.

I saw this flower online.  It is a stamp from an Australian company - well I knew I did not want to order one so I did my best to draw it.  I then traced it onto white tissue paper.

The tissue paper flowers were adhered to the journal page with gel medium.

I took a permanent black marker and drew in the lines of the flower.

Here is a close up of the tissue flower with the drawn black lines.

Added a layer of acrylic paint.

Here are all three flowers where they were painted.

I took some background stamps and I used purple distress ink and a bright pink ink I had and added the marks to the flower petals.  I also did some stamping with the bright pink ink on the right side of the page.  For my birthday, two friends gave me some wonderful new background stamps that I used on this page.

I stamped the sentiment on some tissue paper.  It turns out I did not like it.

I restamped the sentiment on a piece of purplish patterned paper and applied it with gel medium.
I used more paint and worked around the edges of the sentiment to make it blend a little more into the page.  I added some stenciling with pink around the page and then stamped the hearts on the page.  One heart was goofed up so that is why we have some black circles on the page.  I turned an OOPS into a creative opportunity.  I believe Carolyn Dube says that about OOPS.

Here is the final page again along with some close ups of some of the elements.

Thanks for stopping by and seeing how I created this page.

Dare to dream Mixed Media page tutorial

Hello my dear crafty friends and welcome to my new tutorial.
This is single art page made with a lot of mediums and this time I used Faber Castell DMC products as my mediums and Rebecca Baer stencils  and a lot of Mixed Media page.

 Step by step tutorial:
1. Make the background over thick white cardstock with Faber Castell gelatos and wipe the colors with baby wipe.
I made rectangles with those colors, some are metallic colors and then blended them all together without adding any water.

2.Use Rebecca Baer stencils- two of them- with modeling paste  over the watercolored page.
You may secure the stencils with washi tape as shown.

This is  how this page looks  without the stencils and it's still wet. 

3.Cover the main circled areas with a thick layer of Faber Castell DMC Glaze Medium, also I used Texural Accent Sampler. Add a few more smaller circles on the " empty areas"  as shown for more interest.

4.Add a thick layer of clear glitter over the glazed circles as shown.

5 Wait till all previous mediums are totally dry. Now let the fun begin! Cover the entire page with a thin layer of Faber Castell DMC Chalkboard paint. Then wipe the paint over  glazed, embossed, glittered areas with baby wipes. And  also just one wipe  is shown  here, you sure need much  more to get this finished look. And yes, it's totally messy, but worth the result.

6.Stamp Rubber Dance flowers from Antique Botanicals  and  Bold and Beautiful sets with FB DMC   Stampers Big Brush pen in Black over white tissue paper.This is an India ink big pen that works perfectly as an ink over rubber stamps as you can see.

7.Stamp two Rubber Dance Dragonflies - large and small ones-  over clear vellum.

Use clear embossing ink and heat emboss the images with black  embossing powder.

Hand cut the images and color them with FB DMC Pitt Artost  Pens in two  colors and one Stampers Big Brush pen in Light blue.

8. Stamp s few more flowers from Bold and Beautiful set  directly over the page near the edges using the same  black Big Brush.

Now tear the tissue stamped images and glue them as shown with FC DMC Gel Medium.

Outline the largest circle with the pen- this will be our sentiment spot.

9.Let the page be totally dry and them color the tissue  flowers and leaves with a mix of bright colors using FC DMC  Stampers Big brush pens in a few colors.

10. Glue the  vellum dragonflies over the  page using Gel medium.

Make the sentiment with stickers (I used MME ones)

Outline some glitter circles with white  pen as shown.

And here are some close- ups to this art page:

I hope that you liked my tutorial!

Queen Of Our Hearts Mixed Media Plaque

Hello and welcome!  Deb here for Mixed Media Wednesday at Mixed Media Mojo and today I have a tutorial for you on how I made this 'Queen Of Our Hearts' mixed media plaque.

In keeping with our June challenge theme of Fit For A Queen with the twist of adding Gems or Jewels, I made this mixed media plaque to gift to my sister-in-law for her birthday.  Read on to see how I made it.

I started out with a chipboard Automaton doll that I purchased at Paper Whimsy, she seemed sufficiently regal for the theme!  I painted the body and arms with quite gesso first,

and then painted her hands and face with Ceramcoat AC Flesh and her body and arms with Americana Avocado Dip acrylic paints.

I then stamped her arms and body with a script stamp and Jet Black Archival ink and heat embossed the stamping with fine line black embossing powder.

I resized and printed out one of the Beautiful Faces (sheet 326) from Paper Whimsy and glued it to the Automaton's head, trimming and sanding the edges of the face once the glue had dried.

Since every Queen needs a crown, I took a chipboard crown that I purchased at Michael's and gave it a coat of gold embossing powder.

Some Jambo Lace Tape was used to embellish the Queen's collar and cuffs and a flat back heart gem from my stash was chosen to cradle in her hands.

I further embellished the crown with a red flat back gem and a line of midnight blue embossing powder and adhered it to her head.

A small chipboard fishtail banner was painted with black acrylic paint, the sentiment 'Queen Of Our Hearts' was printed out on the computer and cut to size and glued onto the painted banner.

For the plaque backing, a piece of heavy chipboard packaging was cut 5 1/2" square and two Maya Road flourishes were adhered to it.  The entire piece was then given a coat of white gesso.

I then dripped, painted and smooshed various colours of Distress stains onto the gesso painted surface (Old Paper, Iced Spruce and Peeled Paint), diluting the stains with water and letting them drip and pool.

After drying the surface thoroughly, I then stenciled texture paste through Tim Holtz's Rays Layering stencil and while the texture paste was still wet, sprinkled on more of the gold embossing powder (click here to see Tim Holtz's tutorial on this technique).  After the texture paste had dried, I heat embossed the embossing powder and intensified the colours on the plaque with Distress crayons in Mustard Seed, Peeled Paint and Twisted Citron and added shadows and contrast with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain.

My apologies as this is where I got on a roll and forgot to take any more in process pictures!  You can see the embossed rays in the photo above and I also ended up adding some small gold stars (star confetti from the Dollar Store) scattered here and there over the plaque.

The Queen was adhered to the chipboard background and the flat back heart gem was nestled in her hands.  Her head was surrounded with some flat back pearls after she had been adhered into place on the chipboard background.

The flourishes were given a coat of Distress Crazing collage medium and the tiny cracks were highlighted with some Vintage Photo Distress crayon.  I further enhanced the flourishes with an outline of Moss Green Distress marker that I softened with a water brush.

So that is my Queen Of Hearts mixed media plaque tutorial, I do hope that you have enjoyed it.

I also hope that you have been inspired to join in our June challenge, Fit For A Queen,

I can't wait to see what you make!  Happy creating,

Deb xo

Welcome June!

And another month has gone just like that!  It's time to announce our Mixed Media Diva for the May Challenge!  Thanks to all who played along with us this month!

Only one person can be crowned our Mixed Media Diva and that is:

Autumn with this fantastic canvas:

Congrats!! Please contact our Guest Designer Coordinator Jannet - (gillslap AT yahoo.co.uk.) for your badge and information on being our next Guest Designer!

Now onto our June Challenge!

In honor of the Queen of England's birthday this month's theme is "FIT FOR A QUEEN" with a twist of Jewels / Gems.

Barb

Deb

Irit

Jannet

Lucyna

Maria

I hope you will play along with us this month! Please link up below a new project created for this challenge and do not combine with more than 6 other challenges. Limit to 3 entries per person. You can be the next Mixed Media Mojo Diva!