It can be challenging in the summer months to find time for creativity. Why not make some ATC cards?! They are quick and fun to make and there is no pressure. I love making ATC cards when I am trying out a new product or technique. I don’t have to worry about making a masterpiece and I can play with the product and learn more about it. In these ATC cards, I used the Creative Medium in Bronze. This metallic color is so rich and gorgeous! I can’t wait to use it on more mixed media projects.
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!
Wisteria is one of my favorite flowers but its season is all too brief. This year I’ve preserved a cluster in my art journal on a rich bed of pigment made up of layers of Fireworks Sprays and Creative Medium, taking my color inspiration from the blooms themselves. Creative Medium both protects the layers I’ve built up and gives a perfect surface to build upon—it’s invaluable!
Welcome to the first set for our Artist Project Swap with Arjita and Elina. For the Month of May, we challenged our artists to exchange tutorials and create each other’s designs in order to see how each of our artists interprets style and choices. The receiving artist did not know who designed the project, nor did they receive any images! In today’s post, Arjita’s turn to give the directions and recommended supplies list and Elina created the project.
I have to admit that I’m bit rebellious when it comes to detailed project instructions. Reading tutorials and watching instruction videos is always very inspirational, but the projects I make are very seldom precise replicates of the original projects. In case of Arjita’s tutorial, it includes techniques that I’m not familiar with, so I followed the instructions more carefully in order to learn. But once I think I’m mastering the key points, I tend to go my own way, using my own colors, patterns, and supplies.
On this project, I used two green Memento colors for the background in Bamboo Leaves and Pear Tart. For applying the inks on the background, I used a brayer and decorated the inked background with Shimmer Creative Medium. The stencil I used was not the same as on the original project; I used ‘Corncob Etching’ from TCW.
My card is not as monochromatic as the original project; for coloring the stamped flowers I did not use the background color, but yellow Memento in Cantaloupe and Dandelion. The result looks different, but I’m quite happy with the outcome! I did not want to use too much black on my card, so the die-cut circle background is not black but dark green. My nesting Sizzix dies cut quite a wide border, so I narrowed it to half with my scissors.
Supplies
Imagine
Memento Inkpad – Bamboo Leaves, Pear Tart, Cantaloupe, Dandelion
Imagine Blog 