Michelle's Art Adventures

MIA but back again!

aztecmichelle — Sat, 18 May 2013 06:31:41 +0000

Wow! It’s been 12 months since the last Crusade and 12 months since I’ve hung up any art here, what-so-ever! I have been busy making art – honest- but have been spending my energy over at Mixed Media Art. It is a time consuming passion but I want to share the brilliant art / craft that is mixed media, that I have been going crazy writing and publishing a book, making videos and all sorts of stuff. Here’s a bit of an overview!

Creating Layers in Mixed Media Art

This book has brought together many techniques and two completely new pieces of artwork to share the joy of getting richness and depth into your artwork.

Available on Amazon

MMA Tips Videos

I have created a series of (short) videos, covering different aspects of mixed media techniques or materials.

Art Journals

My favourite art making at the moment is creating simple art journal, using large sheets of water colour paper. Then whenever I am painting something else and have any paint left over, or before I clean my brushes, I add a coloured wash.

Interesting background

Mixed Media Art Journal

Well, there’s the highlights for the last few months. I will be back soon!

Happy creating!

GPP No. 61 Restraining Order

aztecmichelle — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 03:58:22 +0000

GPP Crusade No 61 “Restraining Order” is the last Crusade for a while. Michelle Ward is having a sabbatical from running the monthly Crusades. It is with a “heavy heart” that I post my Crusade contribution.

How many Crusade techniques can you spot? See below for answer…

Michelle – thank you SO much for expanding our creative horizons and challenging our art supplies and self-imposed limits. I certainly understand how hard it is to fit all of this creativity into our every day lives and I hope, after you’ve had a lovely break, the Crusades will be revived again. I am sure there are a few of us that would be happy to help you out!

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Crusade techniques included in this piece:

gesso
credit card painting
stencils
tissue paper
paint colour mixing
stamping
partial images
limited colour pallet
and maybe a few others…

Happy Crusading!

GPP No 60 ~ I love

aztecmichelle — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:50:26 +0000

This month’s GPP Crusade has a (slight) Valentine’s slant (ugh!). Here is my art journal page:

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Happy Crusading,

Michelle

GPP No 50 ~ My “Ta-Da” List for 2011

aztecmichelle — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:41:40 +0000

This month, Michelle Ward has challenged us to review our artwork over the last 12 months and make a “Ta-Da” list.

What a great ideas and here is mine!

I am quite impressed that I did get so many projects started (and mostly finished), especially with the amount of work and work-related travel I did in 2011.

While I was creating my list, I found the best record was the photos I had taken of my work, so I used iPhoto as my reference. Then I realised I had a pictorial Ta-Da list right there, I just needed to turn it into a collage. Not being Photoshop savvy, I turned to Google to find me a photo mosaic software (free and online, of course). After a few minutes in Shape Collage, here is my pictorial Ta-Da list.

The same 37 photos are in both; I just rearranged them so some could be seen better. If you would like to try this yourself, you can find Shape Collage here. There is a tutorial video to follow and it’s simple enough, except for saving the end file. I couldn’t figure out where they were saved but could open them in Preview (on a Mac), then I re-saved them with a different name, which was just as well, because I can’t find the originally saved files. May be that’s because I used the free version.

Anyways, I love the outcome and I’m sure I’ll use it again!

Thank you again, Michelle, for allowing us to shine and say “Ta-Da – look at what I have done!”

Happy Crusading!

P.S. I’d love you to leave a comment – I will visit you; I promise!

GPP No. 58 ~ Girls on Film

aztecmichelle — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:59:37 +0000

Our challenge this month for the GPP Street Crusade is to get out from behind the camera; not something I do too often (as can be seen in the 3,000 odd photos we have taken this year! Lots of the boys; very few of me.)

I was planning on getting a good pic on Christmas Day but we all got so busy with people coming and going that we didn’t get to do our usual family pics. There was another day that taking photos of me crossed my mind, but didn’t get any there either.

Ethan took this one yesterday, but I realise it doesn’t really show my face.

So I have bitten the bullet (so to speak) and had this taken especially.

More exciting – here are my bright red toe nails; painted especially for the festive season.

It’s summer here and holidays, so no shoes for me!

Happy crusading!

Arty Oz Christmas Swap

aztecmichelle — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 06:44:29 +0000

This year I received a delightful Christmas present from Lucy Leatham in our Arty Oz Christmas Swap. It’s a gorgeous Paris themed book / shadow box.

Here is the cover:

And a close up of the decorative centre piece. It’s wonderfully rusty (not sure what it may have been in a previous life?)

Opening it up, a fantastic layout appears;

I’m so pleased with it! Thank you Lucy. And thanks must also go to Greta, who gets us organised and creating!

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Here are a few more details:

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GPP No.57 ~ All the World’s a Stage

aztecmichelle — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:46:24 +0000

Michelle Ward has asked us to documents the songs we love to sing along to,
in All the World’s a Stage. Here’s my (cut-down) list.

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This was added onto the background made in GPP No 55 Disappearing Act

Happy crusading!

GPP No.56 ~ I’m a Believer

aztecmichelle — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 10:47:50 +0000

Last month (I’m a little behind!) Michelle Ward challenged us to review what kind of artists we are and what our artistic beliefs are, in Crusade no 56 – I’m a Believer.

Using a background created in a previous challenge, I’ve journalled my artistic beliefs.

Here are a few close-ups:

I do believe I am an artist!

Happy Crusading!

GPP No 55 ~ Disappearing Act – Scene II

aztecmichelle — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 02:07:43 +0000

I had so much fun yesterday with the GPP Crusade’s Disappearing Act challenge, that when I had a spare hour, I could have either written another article for MixedMediaArt.net OR done some more painting – the painting won out this Sunday morning!

After yesterday’s oranges and yellows, I felt more purple today.

First, a few quick backgrounds (and I DID remember to note the colours and combinations I used)

Then used the same stamps from yesterday

Adding in an art journal layout for good measure:

Some stamping neat, some stamping random…

Now I have a HEAP of backgrounds, so I was wondering, if anyone else has a heap, would you like to do a swap? I love seeing how different everyone’s backgrounds are and swapping would give us a chance to have a close-up look at others. If you are interested, send me an email at createmixedmediaart (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll work something out!

Happy Crusading!

(now to get the paint off my hands before heading to a conference this afternoon – maybe no one will notice!)

GPP No. 55 ~ Disappearing Act

aztecmichelle — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:49:29 +0000

Yet again, another interesting journey through this month’s GPP’s Street Team Crusade. Michelle has challenged us to take our previous paintings and use the same colours to create a Disappearing Act.

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I started with my previous backgrounds made for the Mind Games Crusade. And even though I had lots of lovely backgrounds and the colours noted on cards, I hadn’t written down what colours I’d used and how I had mixed them. So I tried to replicate them but wasn’t happy with the results.

*Note for young players* Write down colour combinations and how you got them!! DO NOT rely on memory!

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Realising I was trying to do this “arse-about”, I mixed up another batch of colours and noted which paints I used and the mixing ratios.

Then I re-made the backgrounds. As this method doesn’t take long to dry, it was easy to create a few backgrounds.

Then I was ready to get stamping!

And here are the results…

I also used a hand-made flower stencil. [Editors note: Just realised that I made this flower stencil for GPP No 19, way back in April 2008!]

The first few pages, I had a neat pattern, then I had a few more random stamping pages, and they looked much better, so I want back to the first ones and stamped randomly over the top of the neat patterns.

In my quest of using up ALL of my paint, I also dug out the tissue paper created in the last Crusade and added more random stamping. I was pleased with myself that I know when to stop! (A somewhat rare occurrence for me)

So there is another very fun Crusade complete!

Happy Crusading!