Welcome to the OxSide

Hi everyone, I'm Christina.

Once I had an art instructor at college tell me that I should incorporate my fears into my art, because it gave it character and brought out my true self. The assignment was to interpret a Chagall painting - it was a circus. One of my many fears....clowns etc. I created a piece with my fears to make it my own. I received an A-

I remember that day, and I think I still have my art piece, in the basement.

So now, onto the good stuff.....!!!
As promised I'm doing a tutorial on my mixed media tag I created for this months challenge: April - Spring with a twist Showers.

As most of you know, Tim Holtz has come out with a very exciting product, Distress Oxides. This type of distress is a lot of fun to play with and I'm going to show you how awesome the colours work!

First I took a #8 Kraft tag and tapped it over the distress oxides, Vintage Photo and Faded Jeans (already spritzed with water) then heat set. I repeated this step till I got the coverage I wanted. Hint: to prevent the colours turning into mud, heat set after each application.

Next apply Ranger texture paste - Transparent over Tim Holtz stencil - Splatters with a palette knife, let it air dry. This gives the illusion of rain droplets/showers.

Randomly stamp images using Ranger Black archival ink on top of tag. I used Wendi Venchi Art for You stamp set, honeycomb.

Distress Oxide Vintage Photo and Faded Jeans were used to watercolour the butterfly on TH mixed media #8 tag. This surface sturdy and holds the color for a nice deep effect.

To make Tim Holtz Salvage doll less "creepy", I painted her with an alcohol ink mixative in gold, to give her a more angelic vibe. For those of you that don't know, I have a doll phobia. So it was a little challenging for me to add her. But I'm glad I did, as she is the focal point of this piece.

Did you know that you can oxide TH crinkle ribbon?? Just swipe the oxides on your craft sheet, make sure they don't overlap, spritz them and scrunch the ribbon till it's covered and heat set it. It's pretty cool to see the colors layering on top instead of blending.

Next I grabbed one of my hubby's spare guitar parts (a spring) and covered it with black gesso. Any kind will do. To speed up the drying process, heat set it.

This is the fun part.....! Be prepared to get messy, using your finger smudge various colors of beeswax over the spring to your desired taste. I used Art (c) beeswax in copper and Viva Decor Inka Gold in steel blue. Then sand it down so it's not as vibrant.

Here you can see the effect of the beeswax and how vintage the spring looks.

Attach everything in place and let it set. For the metal spring and "angelic" doll I used a very sturdy glue called E 6000. You can buy it at any local craft store. Mine was from Michaels in the floral section with the other glues.

I do hope you enjoyed my tutorial and if you're feeling inspired,  join in the fun in our April challenge: Spring with a twist Showers. We want to see what you create!!

Christina