Mixed Media Art Journal Fun

Tracey here with my first Mixed Media Mojo post.  I'm on holiday at the moment and all that I have brought with me and have been watersoluble medium along with one tube of black and white acrylic. So I have been experimenting and playing with them all week, it just goes to show that you don't need lots of supplies to make art, I felt like I was gonna have a breakdown not having my beloved acrylics to play with but with practice and perseverance I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of them and creating art I'm pretty pleased with.....

I used my tube of black acrylic that I brought with me to do the outlines, making sure they were completely random and not thinking about it too much, I then took a wet paintbrush and went over the lines to create a grungy grey look in places.

Once this was completely dry I used my neocolour watersoluble crayons as my watercolour medium and started to colour allowing some of the paint to be stronger causing shadows, I took a creative impression Rex stamp and stamped with black archival ink inside some of the circles and did some random stamping around the page using my paperartsy ink splatter stamp and my artistic stamper bubble wrap stamp. I added a few dabs I'd white acrylic with my fingers to create dots...

I then cut out some shapes from a scrapbook pad I had with me in complimentary colours and stuck these down, outlining them with the stabilo black pencil and activating with a water brush to blend them into the rest of the page.....

To finish of i scribbled some outlines with my ranger fudeball black pen

I'm really pleased with the final result and reaffirms to me that it's all about the practice and perseverance with a medium 'if at first you don't succeed ' springs to mind.

New Design Team Members Introductions - Day 1

Hello and welcome to the start of our Design Team introductions!  Last week we introduced 5 new members of our team.  Now it's time to share a little something about each of them.

Meet Lucyna:

Here is a little something about Lucyna:

"My name is Lucyna Marynowska, aka Lula.

I come from the north of Poland. 

Fifty- something, stay at home wife, mum of two grown up boys and a happy grandma. 

I started my crafting journey 3 years ago and immediately became an addicted paper-lover.

I love making cards, altering things and playing with mixed media.

And I love making crafty friends all over the world!"

Be sure to swing on by Lucyna's blog to check out her amazing work.

Be sure to also check out our April challenge and play along with us!

Stay Tuned this week for more introductions!

Maria

April Challenge and New DT

Happy April!  I'm thrilled to announce the newest members of our Design Team and share our April challenge!

First of all I want to thank NIKI for all her wonderful projects and hard work.  Niki has decided to step down from the Design Team (after this month) and she will be missed.  However we understand how busy life gets and wish her all the very best!  Niki be sure to come and visit!!

Thanks to all who submitted to our DT Call!

Please welcome our newest members:

Lucyna

Hazel

Tracey

Linda

Siv

Be sure to swing on by all next week to "meet" our newest designers!!

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Now before we get onto our new challenge let's announce our Mixed Media Mojo Diva for March! And the winner is:

Ann - Ann's Cardmaking Garden Ann created this great pair of ATC's:

Ann please contact me riaann at optonline dot net

We would love for you to be our Guest in May!

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Now onto our APRIL CHALLENGE:

This month we are recycling and using flowers!  

Check out what the Design Team did:

Niki:

Hazel

Barb

Kim

Linda

Lucyna

Maria

This is such an amazing assortment of wonderful projects!  You NEED to head on over to each designers blog to learn more about these fabulous projects!

Then be sure to play along with us this month for your chance to be our June Guest Designer!

How to play along for your chance to be our next MIXED MEDIA DIVA:

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.

Thanks for stopping by!!

Maria

Spring ATC~"Thoughtful"~March Challenge Inspiration

Hi!
Happy Wednesday!

So delighted you stopped by! Today it is kim here with a small piece of inspiration and a step by step. You still have a few days to play along. One of the most fun things about ATCs is they are small and once you have time, they can be made quickly.

Please click each photo to see a larger version.

I started with an ATC background that I cut from a piece of manila folder. I coated it with gesso and drew some lines in it while wet. Once dry, I pressed it into puddles of acrylic paint. Then misted with water to make it blend and run. This step took the longest, just in drying time. You can coax it along with a heat gun, just be careful you do not overheat and bubble the surface...unless that is the look you want(it is awesome btw)

I saved some teabags I used to make sun tea. Once dry I opened them up and brushed off the loose tea leaves.

I used Distress Embossing Ink and a clear bird stamp by Inkadinkado. I am so inspired by Barb and her lovely birds!

I stamped the image and sprinkled with Ranger White Embossing Powder. Then I used my heat gun to melt the powder on the used tea bag.

Next I tore away the edges to leave it rough, you can fussy cut if you prefer.

I  inked the edges of the ATC with Vintage Photo to tie the two parts together.

It still needed something....so I used a white Gelly Roll pen to "draw" lines. These were the lines I had scored in the wet gesso. Even with out them, it is easy to draw on top of the gesso and acrylics.

Taaa-daaaa! Here is "Thoughtful". What do you think?

Thanks so much for following along! All of us here at Mixed Media Mojo cannot wait to see your art! Each month the winner is named out Mojo Diva and asked to be a Guest Designer.

See ya soon!

~kim

Meet our March Guest Designer

HI there Maria here today to share a little something about our March Guest Designer Kathy!

Meet Kathy:

Here is a little something about Kathy:

"Hi! I'm Kathy, a Southern Californian native who now lives in upstate New York. I'm a RN who loves creating. I currently belong to the design teams of Open-Minded Crafting Challenges, Send A Smile 4 Kids, Sketch Saturday, Cards in Envy, Try Stampin' on Tuesday, and Repeat Impressions. I was thrilled to be asked to design for March's Mixed Media Mojo challenge and I hope you enjoy my ATC's.  Please stop by and see me at https://craftynurse4u.wordpress.com/"

Kathy shared a great project this month for our current challenge with is: Theme: ATC Cards and the Twist: create a pair.  You may have seen this earlier this month but they rock so let's share them again!

Thanks for stopping by!

Maria

Bird ATC - How To

ATC’s (artist trading cards) little pieces of artwork that measure 2.5  x  3.5 inches.  Here is a picture of the first steps for creating this bird ATC.  A playing card, a dictionary page that is adhered to the card; gesso is applied and then a layer of acrylic paint to start the base of the ATC. 

I have a thing for the alphabet so I used my Tim Holtz stencil and some spray to add color and design.

I then added more layers of coloring using gelatos and acrylic paint. 

I stamped the Scribbly Bird from Dina Wakely on some tissue paper and colored it on the backside.  This was adhered to the ATC base with gel medium.

I then added the B rub ons to each corner.  They are very old so they did not go on too well but with a black pen I was able to fix some of them and then you just start adding paint over them and all the problems somewhat disappear or add to the “creative movement” in the ATC.  I brightened up the paint.  Rubbed some more paint along the edges and on top of the bird.  Added some stitch rub ons and a few doodles with a pen.  The ATC is finished.  An ATC is a fun piece of art work – very small and manageable – it does not overwhelm you.  Come play along with us in our monthly challenge.  

Fabric ATC

Our monthly challenge is ATC's in two's.  The two can be two ATC's, two elements, or I chose to do two different ways of using black on my fabric ATC.

I started with two layers of fabric and then I stitched them together by hand.  (next time I will do this by machine - my hands are not as young as they use to be).  I decided to leave it messy and let the strings hang off the edge.

In a prior life I sewed and I sewed very well but I have purged many of my supplies so dug through my supplies and found some things that coordinated.  After quilting the fabric together, I added several different layers of lace and trim.  The B is from my card making supplies.  This little piece of art will be on my B wall in my living room.

You can see that the trim and the B have the "2 element" of each having the color black in them.  This was fun to play with and I do hope to make a bigger fabric "B" piece of art.

Thanks for stopping by the Mixed Media Mojo blog and I hope you join us in our challenge in this month.