Holiday Mixed Media Arts & Crafts

Besides writing for mixed media art Shari Welch is currently a blogger for DecoArt. Her passion of mixed media art led her into being featured in Mixed Media May, and has been in a number of art shows in her hometown of Denton including GDAC. Helping others discover their creativity is something she adores. She is known for using reuse and recycles materials in her artwork like she was able to achieve the project below – the altered domino project.

• Attach the domino, dotted side up, with a clamp to a flat table surface leaving some hanging over the edge.
• Use a hand and with every safety precaution required, drill with a small bit and drill a hole through the dot of the domino.
• Make a few sets of stringed beads while attaching bakers twine to the one you will want to use as the top and set aside.
• Use glue to attach the paper to the domino, let dry, then add a dimensional effect product over the top of your paper surface.Leave them sit to dry completely.
• Insert a ring through the top hole in the domino
• Attach the beads onto the domino and you are done.

Shari Welch uses an online company that sells images and this saves time for her. Another plus is that the images are already sized for her project. To sum her passion for mixed media art, she volunteers for SCRAP Denton where she is on the education committee, teaches workshops, art camps, and performs art demos.

It’s really Fun to Create Mixed Media Projects!

Melanie Statnick has an illustrative and whimsy style of her art and being a published artist/writer, she likes the mixed media art because of the numerous amounts of different surfaces you can use to paint or alter. As she does her creation from her private studio, she thinks embroidery hoop is a fantastic idea and it steps away from the average square shape of the canvas.  This is how she does it:

• Using a loose sheet of canvas fabricTrace the inside hoop using a pencil. Gesso the inside of the circle and dry well.
• Paint shapes with acrylic paint.
• Pick your favorite stencil and stencil in images and/or write words.Because your surface is primed with gesso you can accomplish the same effects as you would on a regular square canvas.
• Dry well and spray with a matt finish. Flip your artwork over to the back side match the gesso circle you made.
• Push smaller hoop through the inside. Cut remaining fabric off.

From Melaniestatnickart.com you will get to learn more about Melanie and you will also find a lot of her artwork in art galleries and shops extensively in NC with international private collections. Creating id fun and can only be achieved if you do it with passion and positive drive.

Happy creating!

Gum Ball Machine and Creativity

Kim Kelley loves mixed media art because one is free to go beyond your comfort zone, using your imagination and exploring on anything.  She is obsessive about her crafting and art whereby sheloves to reuse and repurpose products.Just seeing how she can change the look of something with a little paint and spackle makes her smile. With this in mind she tries to create two projects using gum machines and the first one will use a snowman theme, using a plastic and metal machine.

• Clean each part of the machine and dry completely using gesso on the bottom base, base, collar and top I let them dry overnight.
• Using a mixture of red paint and Golden crackle paste go over the base 3 times. Making sure the green is not going to show through. Golden’s crackle paste does not really crackle, especially with paint added, but leaves it with an almost spongy, velvet look and feel to it.
• Use a mixture of gloss gel for the pieces and parts; a bit of iridescent glitter, sponging it on to create a lot of texture.
• The ball of the machine, being plastic, actually comes apart and makes it easier to put everything together.
• Glue the ball together and then glue everything but the top together so it can be all together without the metal rods running through the ball.

Creating is all fun for Kelly as she loves to learn and explore new techniques and hopes that any art she creates leads someone to find their inner creative artist.

Ideas in Creating Wall Hangings

Tamara Dinius believes mixed media allows for a broad range of styles and anyone can find success in this form of artistic expression. With her love for mixed media having taken her over most aspects of her creative journey, she gains a lot of support from her two grown up daughters whom she claims are supportive, embrace her work and that they are amazing people in their own right.

From her positive attitude and view of creativity, she showcases how to use Pan Pastels and rubber stamps to create an aged background for use in your mixed media artwork. She will do anything to put her creativity to cause and no matter what it will cost her, she will still build on her willingness to go the extra mile. Her creativity will lead her into using the most and locally available materials while being able to maintain simplicity.

From her website countrycraftersusa.com and the Etsy shop, you will get to learn what more Tamara is likely to be doing. You will also be able to read the mood if her creativity. She says creativity needs no school. It all about passion and going for that which you want to build your passion on. There is a lot to learn from her and her work.

Mixed Media Image Transferring

Cecilia Sanchez Peralta gets her creative motivations from her three sons whom she says inspire her with crazy ideas. She discovered scrapbooking, digital first and then the traditional one a few months after the birth of her twins in 2006. She is more fascinated with the Art Journal and Mixed Media, and she does not imagine scrapbooking without getting her hands dirty.The art journal is a real diary for her, because sometimes she needs to express feelings with colors and shapes.

The good thing about Mixed media techniques is that you can use everything you have at your fingertips, and you can do all kinds of jobs. She loves learning and discovering new techniques and materials. It’s only a month ago when she launched her collection of digital stamps a project she has been working on for a long time.

Materials:

Fabrics, digital stamp, printer, gel medium, beads, flowers, stickles

The process:

• Paint the digital stamp with photoshop and print as a mirror image to make the transfer.
• Get several scraps of fabric and cut the pieces to form makeup case.
• Put a layer of gel medium on fabric and over the printed image.
• Carefully put the picture face down onto the fabric and press to stick it everywhere; let it dry for 24hrs.
• Wet the paper with a sponge or “flus flus”
• You have to remove all paper using fingertips gently.
• Decorate a little: A string of beads, some dots with Perfect Pearls, some Prima flowers with a brad … and everything you want.
• Sew the different pieces of fabric to complete your make up case.

There you have it! Happy Creating!

Taking your Artistic work to another Level

Janelle Nichol the passionate mixed media artist has this understanding that many of us have an inner need to create.  With her passion to create, her focal point is around women and children and her style which includes collage and paints has been described as abstract folk art.

Janelle’s go-to materials include the full range of mixed media materials, with gesso, paints, tissue paper, gelato’s, intense blocks, sprays, Distressed inks and stains all being part of her collection. Anything that adds texture also features; moulding paste, sequins, glass beads and all sorts of unexpected ephemera can be seen when looking closely at her pieces.

Basically she will start with a sketch and a vision that includes the images and the mood, feelings and colours of the piece. She will then create the background, which can take on a life of its own but will stick to the colours and feel in her vision.

Janelle regularly exhibits which gives her a chance to engage with the public, as well as meet other artists and customers love seeing her work in “real life” as all of the depth and texture always looks better to see a piece of art in person. Janelle’s head is full of ideas for new mixed media paintings and calendars and so many projects and opportunities are in the process but not ready to reveal them to the world yet.

You will love her pieces of work because they have distinctive look that combines mixed media with fine art painting.

Expressing your Passion with Creativity

Marilyn Harris Mills is passionate, creative, eccentric and a published artist. Creating mixed media feeds her soul. When she needs to immerse herself into creativity and inspiration, she reaches out to her supplies that are beckoning her to discover fresh ideas of using them.   She creates based on her intuition and chooses the colors of her paints & the mediums firs then the supplies that will add the meaning to the project. Thereafter, she brings harmony and cohesiveness in the project using embellishments a step that should not be overlooked because it is very important. She has embellishments that she collected over the years; it is fun to combine them into an art piece.

Each project is as they say “a labour of love”. However according to Marilyn, it’s not only about labour but she also uses her inner muse and soul. She utilizes all the opportunities of expressing with art what she cannot say with words while she gets a lot of joy from creating. She creates with passion and one of her favorite quotes is “I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment!” This keeps her going. Something you did not know about her is that she at one time tried knitting but she gave up as a result of not being able to remember the stitches.

Mixed Media Artist

Anjuli Johnson is intimidated by the awesome art I sees around her. However, she has grown in courage and a comfort zone that is getting bigger and bigger and being a scrapbooker she is constantly trying to push through her fears to discover and develop her talents, meet new people, and learn from those around her.

Anjuli made her first scrapbook at 12years with her mother helping her around. She used plastic sleeves to hold all my paper treasures- school awards and church certificates, hand-outs with quotes, pictures of friends and all different kinds of ephemera. It is when she was in college that she developed a scrapbooking craze and as years passed and her talent improved.

She began to develop the strong desire to use her artistic talents in other ways. Creative thinking, care, and time seemed to be a huge part of the work that she was seeing all which intimidated her.  Having moved east and left all her supplies she missed her engagement in the creative process and it is until when the supplies were returned to her that a new dawn came her way and began to work every day only to realize that she was creating with a purpose. Her talents were developing and ideas were flowing more regularly.

According to her, it’s been amazing to realize how important and sacred the act of creation is.As we create, we become artists, but even more we can become better people, and we help others do the same.

Learning to be Creative from an Early Age

Ann Strecko Koeman has learnt to love and hate the gooey sticky stuff since she was allowed to use paste from a young age. As a child she used that yellowy syrup sticky liquid, looking like clear honey or diluted maple syrup, but it did not smell yummy.The stuff was messy and wet, but it worked for her construction paper crafting.After all it was the ’70’s! There was less care about acid free and archival quality.

Over the decades she has learnt different types of arts and crafts that all use a variety of adhesives; some smellier than others and some more convenient than others. She has also learnt that glues could be used as more than an adhesive when it comes to art making. It is only recently that she purposely started playing around with hot glue gun.  This is because whenever hot glue drips, drizzles and is left to dry on a hard non porous surface such as tile or a silicon mat,it tends to lift off easily when it is completely cool. She has purchased a better quality glue gun that has a precision tip, is dual temperature and can be used without its long electric cord for short periods of time.

There is even glue like sticks that contain resin that can be melted in your glue gun and shot into these moulds to make super cute embellishments. Ann is pleased with all her experiments as their effects are so interesting.  The possibilities of being creative for her are endless.

Principles of Composition in Mixed Media Art

Elegant mixed Media Art is always determined by good design and composition. According to Marilyn Harris Mills who is a published designer and artist, the following are some of the elements you can consider for your art work:

Confidence

Your work should speak confidently to the viewer. Know the reason behind choosing the subject matter that you use. Confidence will show in your final art piece and the viewer will be appreciative of your artistic art message.

Moods and Emotions

Design elements need to contribute to creating a mood or an emotion within the viewer. The elements all need to work together to evoke a certain mood or emotion the artist wishes to convey to the viewer.

Remembrance

Creating an art piece that will be remembered is hard to accomplish. Have a style that will be captured in each of your paintings so that your art will be remembered. Create in your own unique style…then both you and your artwork will be remembered.

Composition

This refers to the arrangement of all the elements of a design. You can arrange the pieces in a few different ways but first you must choose a focal point.

A successful art work will encompass all of these elements and principles of design. Don’t expect to get it right the first time but be different than other artists. You will have to go through the Trial and error phase.