Mixed Media Monday – Leftovers

This week over at Mixed Media Monday we’ve been challenged to use our “leftovers” – those bits and pieces left lying around after other projects are finished. Here is what I had lying around my desk:

A small 4″ x 4″ canvas, that had fallen down from somewhere, bits of text and music paper, a dragonfly stamped onto tissue paper, painted background paper with paisley stamping, a piece of cream cord, a circle punch and a few pieces of black card with some cutouts from the Pazzle cutter.

And here is the end result:

MMM Leftovers 4" x 4" canvas

Dragonfly and text stamp by Collections. Paisley stamps by See D’s.

I have added the details about how I made it over at Mixed Media Art.

*smiles*

Michelle

GPP – Crusade No. 25 Gesso

I’m back for this month’s GPP Street Team Crusade! This month is all about Gesso and it’s fabulous properties for creating resistance paint backgrounds. I’ve used Gesso a little before and had discovered some of its properties by accident. This is a great chance to delve a further into the sticky white “paint” with deliberation, rather than through sheer fluke!

Firstly I found a nice clean spread that already had some Gesso on one page, where I’d wiped off the brush from another project (I just HATE wasting that last bit of paint on brushes). I have a paint brush dedicated to Gesso, so I added some more with a criss-cross pattern [right hand side]. On the other page I stamped some swirls (from Buzz and Bloom) with Gesso brushed on. This was left to dry completely.

First Layer with Gesso

Next some purple and red acrylic paints were applied randomly across the two pages. I was a bit impatient here (and painting on the floor as my art table is such a mess!) so the colours are a bit too blotchy. I then squirted the pages with some water and used paper towel to swish some off. This worked better when I left the water to sit for a while – it created the whitish spaces on the RHS. I also found that the paints blended better over the Gesso background.

After paint and water spray was applied

The left-hand side didn’t work as well – that didn’t have any undercoat, so the paint tended to adhere to the page and the stamped swirls, rather that create a true resist. Next time I’ll paint with acrylics first, then add the Gesso images.  The RHS came up really well. Here is a close up:

Close-up pic of resisted area

You can still see the criss-crossed Gesso underneath. I have found that the underlying brush strokes in the Gesso often show through, so you need to keep that in mind.

Yet again Michelle Ward has created another fantastic artistic challenge – looking forward to many more into the New Year.

Hope all of your Christmas crafting projects are progressing well (that’s where I’m off to next!)

Michelle

4×4 Friday – Handmade Backgrounds

It’s been ages since my last crafty post, but this week I was inspired by 4×4 Fridays to make something from handmade backgrounds.

The handmade background for this card was made with my favourite methods. I painted a piece of white card with blue paint, using a very dry brush, at various angles. Other times I would add a watered down wash afterwards, but here I was looking for some white space between the brush strokes. Once the paint was dry, I stamped images from Judikins “Treasure Cube” with Staz-on Blue and Autumn Leaves swirl with Brilliance Moonlight White.

4x4 Friday Adventure card

To make the card, a 4″ x 8″ piece of card was folded in half and a square of the background paper was cut and stuck on with double sided tape. Stamped images from StampMania’s Australian Explorers cube, using Staz-on Blue, onto white card, along with “Adventure” by Limited Edition.

Happy creating,

Michelle

MMM Believe

This weeks Mixed Media Monday challenge is to use the word “Believe”, which I thought would be simple, as I use the word quite often…but being challenged with the word alone, there were many, many options and it was hard to choose one.

Scrapbooking paper was adhered with double sided tape (don’t have to wait for it to dry!) and Gesso’d over (this takes the brightness out of the paper). I then stuck squares of text in a row and painted over them again with Gesso. Stamped various alphabet sets with Staz-on. I don’t think it’s finished but don’t know what else to add. I was thinking butterflies but that seemed too cute.

Your thoughts are most welcome; please leave a comment.

Michelle