Mixed Media #25 - 2nd Anniversary!!

Welcome to the 2nd Anniversary Party for The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge!! Woohoo!! 2 awesome years of challenges, fun and tons of prizes!  And, it is never a good month until we start with our challenge and for this month, pick one of your favorite challenges and create!! So pick one of the challenges from this year, and get your month started! 

Our sponsor this month is the Funkie Junkie Boutique! This store is full of amazing items for all your "Frilly and Funkie Projects!"  And one of our amazing players this month, will randomly be drawn to win a $25 gift certificate to the Funkie Junkie Boutique! Awesome!  

Come and create with us!! 

And here is my project for this month!! I chose April's challenge, Dimension and went crazy.  I was trying to break out of my own box and be a little crazy. 

Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #24! Butterflies and Blooms!

Welcome back Challengers!! Here we are again with the  Monthly Mixed Media Blog Challenge #24!!  This month we have an awesomely fun challenge!! And the wonderful Ken Oliver is with us this month as our guest designer!! He also has brought with him an awesome prize - one lucky, random challenge player will win a Set of Color Burst Caribbean Brights and a Best Ever Craft Mat!!  (SO awesome, I have really wanted to buy one of those mats myself!!)

SO, come and play with us!! Our theme this month is Butterflies and Blooms! Perfect for this time of year because I am planting the blooms and really hope the butterflies will come!! And also, a really fun challenge for mixed media!!

Here is my project for Butterflies and Blooms!

I started with plain white tissue paper and inked it up with black script!

Next I took ultramaring blue color burst and watercolored it onto watercolor paper.  (But for I mis-calculated and stopped a little short ... you'll see where later!)

Using matte gel, I prepped my canvas and the back of the watercolor paper to stick together!

Using matte gel on the back of the tissue paper, I carefully put the paper down onto the watercolored paper.  Then I gently wrinkled the paper to give some texture to the background.  Then I brushed on Ken Oliver's Liquid Metal in Platinum for some beautiful shimmer!

And the fun part - playing with my colorbursts!  I watercolored with them, I sprinkled them and I used them with stencils!! I loved the way this one came out.  I was working on another canvas and just wanted a frame around the edge.  I placed a piece of watercolor paper in the middle and used a stencil and colorburst. The edge of that canvas turned out great.  The overspray piece,  I LOVED the design and colors so much, I knew I had to use this piece somehow!!  I used Color Burst in Ultramarine Blue and Lemon Yellow to make this.  (I might have also sprinkled on a tiny bit of purple!)

I used tissue paper in my printer to make the text.  I found the quote on Pinterest and tried a couple different fonts and sizes until I found the perfect one.

The stenciled, color-bursted paper was cut into the shapes for the 'hills.'

I glued them all down! But I cut the hills ... and somehow I miscalculated something and the line of the watercolor paper was visible.  Luckily, I just took some colorburst and painted in the missing color part!

Now, somewhere in the middle of playing the colorburst, I used a Linnie Blooms butterfly stencil kit and other stencils to make the butterfly shapes!! Loved them!

Then a little doodling and shading to finish up!  This was so much fun! I made a complete mess of my desk area and my fingers were completely covered in color!!

Now it is your turn!! Go create something with butterflies and blooms!! So much fun and I can't wait to see what you all come up with yourselves!!  Come and visit us at The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge!

The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #23

Finally, Spring is in full swing and the pollen is tormenting me as I write this post!!   But, luckily, I am indoors and enjoying this awesome new challenge from The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge!! Our fantastic sponsor is Stampers Anonymous and our amazing Guest Designer is the awesomely talented Wendy Vecchi! Make sure to visit her website and drool over her fantastic work!  For our challenge this month, we have two prizes for our random winners!!  So make sure to play along with us this month with our Dimension Challenge!

Click here to visit us at The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #23!

And here is my project for this month's Challenge!!

Last month we had so many different entries that used their Gelli Plate - I was totally inspired to bring mine out to play! I used my Paper Artsy Fresco Paints, stencils and tissue paper!

Michael's had a fantastic canvas sale last month, so I bought some fun 10x10 square canvases!  I dragged some ink around it and stamped randomly to start.  Then I covered it with Matte Medium and put down my favorite Gelli print.

In order add dimension, I used light modeling paste through a stencil.  I tinted the modeling paste with fresco paint.  I added some gold rub-ons too!

Then I needed to create my pieces.  I took some old hymnal paper and used matte medium to stick it down to some heavier cardstock paper, and painted matte medium on top of the paper as well. 

Now, I love crackle paste.  I have used many types and I was super frustrated with my golden crackle paste because the crackles were either too big or there weren't enough .... but I learned through a lot of trial and error, that applying matte medium to the top of the hymnal paper to help the crackle paste adhere better.  This finally was the solution to getting my crackle just right!!

I used metallic silver paint and some washi tape to create my tin bucket.

For Christmas, one of my presents was this sheet of bird stencils.  I actually really love the bird shapes!  I traced the outline of a bird and used watercolors to create a little bird to sit on top!

And then I put all the pieces together!  I watercolored some some musical hearts. I also doodled, added some rub-on stickers and finished my canvas!! 

I hope you all enjoy this project as much as I enjoyed making it! Thank you so much for stopping by and I really hope you jump over to the MMMC challenge and join in the fun!! Karen

The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #22 - March Inspiration!

Hi Everyone!! Welcome back!! This challenge this month is to use the Egg photo as your inspiration!! Use the colors, the shapes or whatever it inpires you to create!!   And if you are lucky enough, one random entry will win a $25 gift card to Waffle Flower, our awesome sponsor this month!!

So click here, to jump to the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge blog, to just visit us or to join in our challenge!!

Our wonderful sponsor this month is Waffle Flower!! Waffle Flower sells some amazingly cute stamps, I personally love the DT Mix set and the Planner sets!! So glad they are a sponsor because I love finding new and creative shops!! They have generously donated a $25 gift card this month!!  And we are so lucky that Tessa Wise, from Waffle Flower is our guest designer this month!!

Here is my March photo Inspired Project!!

And here it is sitting on my little table in the family room!!

I started out with 4 pieces of rough pallet wood and sanded them down a little because last time I used pallet wood my hand ended up with a nasty splinter!! Whoops!  I glued them together and held them in place until it dried with some kitchen string.  Looking at the string, I thought that somehow that string design had to be incorporated into my piece!!  So I actually covered the wood with Ken Oliver's Color Burst powders.  WOW! Such color! (I realized though, I never actually took a pic of this step, bummer because it was cool!)  But I ended up covering the bright colors with some stone fresco paint from Paper Artsy!  Let me tell you the chalk paint on the wood ... yummy!!

While the glue dried and the paint settled, I made a ton of modeling paste eggs. Using an egg shaped stencil and parchment paper to make my own embellishment pieces, when they were dry - I peeled them off the paper to decorate like real eggs!

 When the fresco paint was dry, I added a little more modeling paste to my project through stencils.  

See the Color Burst popping through the Fresco paint .... it looks so awesome!

Then the eggs were decorated with paint and Archival ink pads. I used brown paper bag ripped into strips and coated in matte medium and twisted for the basket handle! I also cut some grass out of dried modeling paste and colored it green for that all important Easter Basket Grass!! (And you can see my dog keeping my feet warm! LOL)

I hope you all enjoy my project as much as I did making it!! This is just one of those projects that was so much fun to make and I really love!! 

Join us at the Mixed Media Challenge - you will have so much fun creating and we just love to have you join us!!