Whether you are able to travel this summer or are staying home, you can create this fun canvas commemorating one of the world’s most recognized landmarks –The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. After altering our canvas with tissue and Creative Medium, we’ll mask out or elements with washi tape and add layers of Delicata for a burnished patina. Once you’ve got the hang of it, try out more famous places that you’ve visited or only dreamed about.
The Color of the Month for July is Golden Glow. We love gold and with summer in full gear, the golden glow of the summer sun shines down on all of us! We are reminded of golden fields of wheat, fun in the sun, vacations and wedding parties. With cardmaking and scrapbooking gold is an essential element to any crafter’s toolkit. Imagine and Tsukineko offers several products to help achieve the metallic shimmery shine such as Delicata in Golden Glitz, All-Purpose Ink in Vegas Gold, and don’t forget a Brilliance DewDrop in Galaxy Gold! In the meantime, we have a couple of sneak peeks of this months beautiful golden glow tutorials for you!
Here is a sneak peek of what we have in store for July!
Keep your eye out for this fun cardmaking tutorial by Jowilna Nolte
The world of mixed media has exploded over the last several years. I have to admit, I have caught the bug and there’s no turning back. Have you seen an altered 3-D object or canvas with many textural elements and just wondered how the artist created it? I am always trying to pick things apart and figure out how they are made. I love the challenge of reproducing a cool effect or technique and even more, I love when unexpected results lead to something better than I couldn’t have imagined.
There are many different tools and supplies to use in this area of artistic expression. It can get overwhelming especially if you are just starting out. I’m going to break it down for you and give you a list of supplies to get started and maybe a few tried and true techniques to help your imagination take off!
Let’s break down some basic elements of Mixed Media!
Surfaces
First, you need a substrate, which is the surface on which you are going to create. It can be paper, wood, fabric, metal or canvas. Here I have a paper tag and a canvas board. There are no limits on what type of substrate you can work on—the only limit is your imagination.
Gesso
If you have a cool idea for a mixed media project, it is helpful to gesso your substrate. Gesso generally comes in clear, white or black and is used to prime the surface. It is not acrylic paint. Gesso prepares your surface so that when you spray, paint, or stamp on it later, all pigments will behave the same way every time. When you are working on different surfaces like paper, fabric, glass, chipboard, metal, resin, the best way to ensure your pigments are going to behave the way you expect is to cover everything with a layer of gesso first. It presents a neutral ground and you will have much better results.
Coat your surface with a nice layer of gesso to prepare it for texture and pigment. Don’t forget to let it dry before moving on.
Texture Paste
Texture is a wonderful aspect of creating mixed media art. Texture allows the viewer’s eye to wander to all the fine details of the project. To create texture, you will need a type of texture paste and a palette knife. To make structured texture elements, you’ll also need a stencil or two. For each of these 3 items, there is a considerable amount of variation of product to chose from. Let’s start with texture paste. I’ll break them up into two broader categories. There is a gel, which comes in different finishes (glossy, semi-gloss, matte) and thicknesses. Imagine makes a great gel paste called Creative Medium. It comes in different metallic colors, iridescent colors, and clear. Gels that have a gloss finish tend to resist pigments when dried on a surface. This can be useful when the shiny resist effect is desired. Then there is modeling paste. These tend to be good as a strong adhesive for heavier objects. It is opaque and less flexible than gel. To spread these pastes, you need some palette knives. They come in different shapes and they are usually either plastic or metal. Both types of palette knives work well and it mainly comes down to a preference of the artist and the type of stencil you are working with.
Scoop some of the texture paste, in this case Creative Medium, out of it’s container with a palette knife. Spread it over the stencil on to your surface ike you are icing a cake. You don’t need to cover your entire surface or use the entire stencil, just spread it where you want it. Lift off the stencil and let dry before moving forward.
Pigments
Finally, you get to add color! You have prepped your substrate and now it is ready to receive the colors and inks to create a theme and mood. Whether it is paint or ink, the pigments and colorants come in all types of mediums such as water-based, solvent-based or oil-based. Tsukineko and Imagine offer a variety of inks that work wonderfully with mixed media art. Imagine has Fireworks and Walnut ink sprays, irRESISTible colored texture sprays, and Pico embellishers. Tsukineko’s All-Purpose Ink is a rich dense pigment ink that can be used as a wonderful colorant. Depending on what you are creating and what effect you are trying to achieve there are many colorants to get your desired effect.
Now that your surface is prepped and textured, you get to add color—my favorite part. Have fun!
Check out more of Kassy’s awesome mixed media projects on YouTube!
Summer is the perfect time to be outdoors, throw a BBQ party or to show off your patriotism with the Fourth of July! Luckily, Joy Clair has a perfect stamp set when it comes to American Flag themes. In this quick and easy crafting project, I used their 4 x 6-inch Grungy Flag background stamp paired with Memento Luxe ink to create this amazing looking banner.
Skill: Intermediate Time: 1 – 2 hours
Directions
Step 1
Tear cotton or linen material into 4” x 8” pieces. The number of pieces will depend on how long you would like your finished banner.
Step 2
Place a strip of fabric on a stamp positioner at the 1” mark. Put the stamp directly over the area to be stamped. Close the positioner to affix the stamp to the lid.
Step 3
Ink the star area with Memento Luxe in Danube Blue and the stripe area of the stamp with Memento Luxe in Love Letter.
Step 4
Close the positioner and press the inked stamp onto the material. I wanted a vintage feel to my banner so I stamped the image once. For brighter, solid colors, reposition the material, re-ink the image and stamp a second time. Stamp each additional panel in the same fashion.
Step 5
Iron each stamped piece of material to set the inks. Once you heat set Memento Luxe it is permanent on the fabric!
Step 6
Adhere each stamped flag to a length of string or ribbon. Hang it up outdoors and enjoy!
When I first saw the cute gnome stamp set by Joy Clair, I immediately knew what I wanted to create with it–a collage with bright colors! The ‘Gnome Is Where the Heart Is’ stamp set was just perfect to be used in my new Moleskine journal. The art journal spread was fun to make, and now I’m creating a set of gnome cards and ATC’s with a similar layout and look. I’m pretty sure they will turn out nicely, too! Enjoy!
Skill: Beginner/Intermediate Time: 1.5 hours
Directions
Step 1
Take a piece of green cardstock and apply Memento in Bamboo Leaves with an InkBlusher.
Step 2
Ink the top of the page background with Memento ink in Danube Blue. Whitewash gently with white acrylic paint. Let dry. Stamp the sentiment text on the upper left corner of the page with StazOn inks, they work well on acrylic paints. Create a background hill scenery from leftover cardstock pieces using both solid colors and patterned papers. Glue the free-cut paper slips on the page. Cut oval shaped trees from inked green cardstock. Ink edges, and glue on the page.
Step 3
Stamp images using Memento in Tuxedo Black and color with alcohol markers. Fuzzy cut, and glue on the page.
Step 4
Continue to add details as you see fit! Since this is your art journal and you make up the rules, then continue decorating as you desire.
Supplies
Imagine
Memento – Tuxedo Black, Bamboo Leaves, Danube Blue
June Color of the Month is Sea Breeze. We feel this is the perfect color to welcome the summer with dreams of ocean waves and beach loving fun! This is also a month we will be doing a trade with Joy Clair stamps. Joy Clair makes acrylic stamp sets that have empowering and spiritual themes that are great images for bible journaling, scrapbooking or cardmaking.
Here is a sneak peak of what is coming up for June
Imagine Blog 