First post back in 2 years! Mixed Media Monday!

For the last two years I've found it difficult to get creative and be inspired. I packed my craft stuff away and got on with life, mainly focusing on photography and self improvement. I always felt something missing though.

I guess you could say I had quite a depressive slump. In January I had enough of myself (and had a few health scares) so I decided to join a gym, to get healthy and lose weight. So far I have lost 20 Kilograms (44 Pounds). It has done wonders for my health, but also my confidence and self-esteem, as well as my motivation. It also helped me feel ready to craft again.

So I've set up an interim craft desk in my bedroom until I can get a better system sorted out.

I did my first mixed media art journal page last night:

 I'm a little Rusty, but I hope it's not terrible! My Inspiration for this piece was from a Mood Board over at Our Mixed Media Moods and their group on facebook, it had a great beachy theme which really spoke to me, since I live near the ocean!

Here's a couple of close ups of my page:

I hope you liked my page after a long absence, here's to more Mixed Media Monday's coming out more regularly!

Be Fearless - Mixed Media Monday

Good Monday morning to you reading this, I hope it finds you well!

I have a page from my Art Journal to share again, for Mixed Media Monday.

Check it out:

A very blue page, done with Dylusions sprays first off. Then I used a damask stencil and sprayed through using white Dylusions spray. I used a female figure stencil and stamped through it with a damask background stamp. I also went around and outlined it with black and white Big Brush markers.

Then it was just a matter of using some other texture stamps in the background, and adding some further details in, like the 'bubbles' up the side and top. 

Which tied in with my letters that are round rub-ons which spell out

BE FEARLESS.

I hope you enjoyed my page today, and will stop by again soon.

Thanks for visiting and commenting!

Mixed Media Monday - Umbrella.

Hi Friends! It's a bright new week, which means it's time to see another page from my Art Journal. It's Mixed Media Monday time!

For this page I put down some of that meshy wall tape you can get from the hardware store. I thought it would give neat texture. I then went over it with Gesso and dried it. I sprayed some Dylusions spray inks onto my page, and blotted it off, to give it a more faded effect. I didn't blot the drips for the pink rain.

I sprayed some white ink through a raindrop stencil, but it didn't come out that well. So I used some blue and purple inks with a dot stamp for added texture and interest.



For my figure in a rainbow, rainboots and umbrella I used some papers I made on my Gelli Plate. Which is a new purchase I made. Wow it's so fun! A great way to make neat papers with lots of textures for my Mixed Media work. I simply drew the shapes on the papers and cut them out and inked around the edges, and added some detail with big brush markers.

For the flower I used texture paste through a stencil that I heat zapped, and them went over with Faber-Castell Big Brush markers. I liked the idea of the raincoat figure sharing the umbrella with the flower.

Which brings me to my quote:

Isn't that so true?

So Thank You for being my umbrella dear friends, and I hope you liked seeing my page today. Thanks so much for stopping by and all your lovely comments!

Late Mixed Media Monday

Hi Friends, sorry for break in blogging again. I've been a bit ill for the past week and a half, but thankfully I'm feeling better now.

So I have a page from my Art Journal to share:

Just a painted background with some stamping, and the figures are a dylusions stencil sponged with some paint. I like the bubbly texture effect the sponge I used made.  All the leaves were fussy cut. 

I'll just keep it short and sweet. Any questions let me know. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

Mixed Media Monday - Girl/Woman/Lady

Good Morning all, time for a new Mixed Media page from my Art Journal.

 This is a page I wasn't entirely happy with, mainly because it was done in a cheap journal with thin paper and everything just reacted differently on it. But I figured it was worth sharing anyway. 

I really loved this quote I came across for this piece: 

It was done with various paints and stamping for the background, the lady's head is a wood stamp from my stash, and I drew in a body and coloured and painted it with big brush markers.

I had a brilliant weekend, where I went to the local 'seaworld' type place and saw gorgeous seals, dolphins, penguins, turtles and fish. I will have photos to share soon.

In the meantime I hope you all had a brilliant weekend, too and have a brilliant new week, also! 

Hugs

Elephant - Mixed Media Monday

 

Good Morning friends! I have some Art Journaling / Mixed Media work to show you, that I created.

I recently got a new Dylusions journal, the pages are thick and stand upto lots of paint, spray, ink and water, and don't warp like my old journal did! So I'm really happy with it.

Here's my first double page from it:

 For this page I started with multiple colours of Dylusions spray inks, and just covered my page with them, and sandwhiched the pages together, to get even covering on both sides. I inked through a numbers stencil with black dylusions spray on a sponge. Then added washi tape, and lots of stamping, in white and other colours to form interest in my background.

My main focal image was this elephant I cutout from a magazine! 

 I found a couple of quotes I liked online and printed them out from Word, and clipped them to pop them onto my pages. Beforehand, though, I went in with some texture paste and paint mixed together and went over some stencil images as more focal points for my page. Such as the key, the hearts, and the large heart bottom left.

 Here's a close-up of the heart done in texture paste:

 and the quotes:

 "Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole." 

 "Have the heart of a poet, and the skin of an elephant."

I hope you liked seeing my pages from my Art Journal today, I will be back next week with another page or two! Stay tuned Friday for some more photos, as well! Thanks for stopping by!!!

AWOL - Two Tags

WOW! Has it really been over a month since I have blogged anything?

I have to admit to being in a bad creative funk for the longest time. I had found myself very disillusioned with the craft industry and people in it. I also became very frustrated at my attempts to create, all failing miserably! Which added to my funk.

So, I have been concentrating on my photography, and other things in my life. But I did miss being creative with ink and paper, so thought it was time to get back to crafting, and attempted it again.

I have managed to make a few Art Journal pages, and also a couple of tags. Today I will just show the tags.

The backgrounds were done with Dylusions sprays, on the right tag I put a leafy vine stencil on it and lightly spritz with some white spray ink, I flipped the stencil and put the excess white inked stencil onto the purple tag.

And embossed diecut circle was lightly inked, and added this diecut vine to my tag.

The images are a cute fairy girl from a clear Penny Black set in my stash coloured with copics and fussy cut out.

I have the sentiments with my Dymo embossing labeller.

So there you go, just two simple tags to start me off back into blogging, and crafting!

I plan to hop by all blogs this afternoon.

Thanks for coming to see me.

Regards

Mixed Media Monday - 3 Girls with Layers

Hey-Hey Kids! lol! Can you believe this is the last Monday for January 2014!? I can hardly believe this year is already whizzing by so fast! But I have been keeping busy, and creating!. I have 3 pages in my Art Journal that I did this week to share with you for today's Mixed Media Monday!

Let us get on with it, shall we? All pages today seem to have feminine silhouettes or imagery, as well as layers of colour and pattern.

 

I'm not going to go into much detail of how I made each page.  Because I don't want to bore you, But if you have any questions about specifics just leave me a comment and I will respond there.  I just used a Palette knife, paint, Flossie Dylusions silhouette stencil, make-up sponge. Some Dylusions sprays, and other Dylusions stencils. Printed quote, and some foam stamps, and a gel pen for doodling. 

 

Imperfection is under-rated.

This second page I wasn't happy with at first, but I kept adding layers, pattern, and more colour. Then toning down the colours with some walnut distress stain. Which eventually made me mostly happy with the result. 

 I found this quote after the page was done, but felt it matched well with the shadowy tones and and because I felt it needed something more.

 "Never feat shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby."

 I used paints, sponges, distress stain in walnut, Balzer Designs Silhouette script head stencil, hexagon and zig-zag stencils and white Mr Huey spray.

This third one was done on a smaller Art Journal I have - all are usually A4-Letter Size, this one is half of that.

 I used more paints, love the thickness and texture these give, I just got them from a cheap shop, but they are really thick, great for going through stencils, which is what I did here.  Lattice Stencil, Zig-Zag Stencil, White Mr Huey spray, chipboard, crackle glaze for the heart, and some walnut stain to define the crackles. Tissue paper and staz on with the PaperBag Studios stamp girl called Sunshine Girl.

She {HEART} Art

She loves Art!

So there you go, my 3 pages for this week! I am really enjoying my Art Journaling, each morning I sit and spend an hour or so just playing, adding to a page or two, eventually having something pop out. It is great therapy and helps me express myself and have a positive outlet, as well as keeping creative and busy, and calm each day. 

I hope you liked seeing them, I will hop around your blogs this afternoon. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Mixed Media Monday - Vase of Flowers!

Hi Friends! Sorry I have been away from the blog for so long! I have been busy all over so far in this New Year, but hopefully everything has steadied now! I have also been doing lots of clean up and reorganization... The whole family did a lot of yard work over the weekend.

 Before that I revamped my craft and bird room, so I can get a lot easier access to my craft desk and craft items, so I can hopefully craft more often now! Before it was just so cluttered with bird cages and bird stuff and tables and other random stuff! But thankfully It's all much better now!  I'm sure the birds appreciate it, too!

So this morning I crafted in my new space and enjoyed it! It was so easy to get to everything I needed. Wish I had have done it earlier! 

So here is my Mixed Media page for today done in my Art Journal:

 

To start I popped down square torn scraps of patterned paper with gel medium, and basically collaged the background, then popped down some texture paste through various size hole stencils. So the holes would be raised as bumps and give neat texture on the page. I Allowed that all to dry and painted over the whole thing with a dark red paint, and used a baby wipe in places to make it lighter.

Hopefully you can see the circle/dots/spots texture. I also sprayed a bit of white Mr Huey misting spray through a polka-dot stencil.

I just folded a piece of 6x6 paper in half and drew a half of a vase shape and cut it out, so that when I opened the piece I had a full vase shape that was symmetrical. Stuck that down with gel medium, and shaded it in with some Faber-Castell gelatos and big brush pens. Also some charcoal pencil helped with shading as well. I Also added some stamping as you can see of some more dots, and also some flourishes.

 

I outlined the vase with a black big brush marker pen. I then free hand drew some star shaped flowers on blue patterned paper. Cut them out and arrange them, I drew around each other them as well as adding some more dots. I felt they needed more layers to look a bit more realistic. So just got out a flower punch and punch some cream and blue flowers out to layer them up some more. And finished each flower center off with a red enamel dot. 

 

Last but not least was the quote, I found one online and shortened it, and stamped in Distress Ink first for a shadow on the letters, then in black Staz-On ink.  

I hope you liked my vase flower page, I hope to share more often now! 

I am going to hop about your awesome blogs this afternoon, in the meantime Thanks for stopping by and have a terrific new week!!! 

Hugs xoxo