Specimen A by Riikka

Media are heaven for artists and creative souls - most often the effect you achieve is not completely expected, but this is what makes playing with them so excited. Take a look at Riikka's art-journal spread below and you will surely know, what I mean :)


It seems that turn of the year makes me want to explore and play. It’s not that often I take out my art journal and do a page there but lately I’ve been using it more and more. For example, this spread started as a playground for watercolors, acrylics and inks and ended up looking like this in the end!

What I did first was to add watercolors to the spread that already had touches of acrylics on it. I used a big brush and covered most of the white pretty quickly. On top I then started to layer stamping and inks through a stencil. The whole spread was going too green for my taste so I grabbed the oil pastels and added some turquoise touches here and there to balance the things out. You see, the acrylic spots already in there were turquoise and green so I needed some more of the other color, too.

When I had the background done I started to think what to put on top. As I’m always fascinated of old photos the Ephemera pack was a great inspiration and I chose two photos and made a story with them. Before adding the layered papers to the spread I noticed that the color scheme of the background was way too bright for the vintage photos. But not to worry, tea to the rescue! I mixed tea, watercolor and Soft Matte Gel together into a glaze kind of thing and spread the whole background with it. While drying with the heat tool some lovely streaks appeared when the glaze started to pool.

After getting “him and her” in place I added a couple of embellishments and wrote the story with a Sharpie. I deliberately used rounded handwriting and wrote the lines on top of each other that the words are not readable but form a design element.

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

Creative Gym #16 + DT Call

Hello mixed media fans!
Today's post will be a little bit different to our usual gym posts as we have some news to share :) but before we do it, let's see first challenge in 2016!

This month challenge is held by our wonderful Pascale: 

 'New beginnings...'.

You can create any type of project from mixed media pieces like cards and tags, to altered art, assemblage, journals and more. You have a complete freedom... be sure to include theme 'New beginnings...' in your art.
Let's all the wonderful art inspirations and exciting NEWS to share!

Hello Sweeties!

You have certainly heard about Wanderlust 2016 by Everything Art: a year long of online classes with 26 teachers to discover mixed-media and Art Journaling. The page that I want to share today is the result of my first lesson with Kasia.

Those who know me, and how I work, will understand why this page was a true challenge for me, a new beginning. 

For this first class, I had, how to say, to let go. Something I explain very regularly during my classes, but here it was different. I'm not used to work with acrylic paints, at least not like this. I can assure you that the hardest was to begin ...

... but after I applied the first colors, it became very natural and I really enjoyed making this page.

Products from Mixed Media Place:

Next up is our fantastic Riikka.
First thing that came into my head when thinking about “new beginnings” was flowers and plants. So I made a journal spread with three blooms and wrote about my hopes and dreams for the new year. It was really fun to layer different mediums on top of each other and I was actually quite amazed how well the Oil Pastels covered the stamped words underneath the bloom as I didn’t mask it. 

Products from Mixed Media Place:

Time for one and only Marianne.
New year – new beginnings and it’s always a time to start something  new . Like just now!!

Products from Mixed Media Place:

Time for talented Janka.

Size of my project is 8x8'. 

Recently, new beginnings remind me of school, and that is because my son started primary school in this year.
I created a canvas and I made the transfer using gesso - firstly I painted my canvas with white gesso and while still wet I pasted pieces of paper from an old book. 

 

I dried my piece and then I sprinkled some water on top. My next step was to take off the top layer with my finger, until we have left only letter designs (without the paper).  

Lastly I added some stenciling and coloured it with mists from Lindy's Stamp Gang and Ecoline Sepia. As my final touch I added some stamps and picture from a postcard. I splashed whole piece with black Ecoline.

Products from Mixed Media Place:

Thank you so much for taking part in our last challenge

 Exercise #15. We are delighted to see you all joining Creative Gym! 

 And now is the time to see who is the winner?!

 Congratulations to Asia (Aisha) ! Be sure to visit her blog for more amazing projects !
Congratulations!!! Please, contat us at: store(at)mixedmediaplace.com to claim your prize. 
We hope you will join our new challenge ! You have time to present your works until February 17th. Simply add a link to your work using the inlinkz tool below.
Our Design Team will then choose their favorite piece and its author will win a discount coupon to be used in our Mixed Media Place Store.

Did you see that Mixed Media Place is looking for new designers ?

Would you like to be part of our creative team ?

Check this out and apply today: [email protected]

 

One more news!

Mixed Media Place is on Instagram!

Give us a follow, here is the link :)