I sat down with a bunch of altered paper pieces and made this stylized scarab one afternoon. After the glue was dry I brushed lightly with Lumiere paints and painted on the legs, which I believe he must be missing a pair but maybe not. Paper mosaic is a technique I return to again and again when I am in the mood to do something that can be “fiddly”…patience is definitely a requirement and I do not always have it. There isn’t any journaling on it yet but probably will be one day. This, as most all my a j pieces, is worked in my big altered mapbook.
Posts Tagged ‘mixed media’
Paper mosaic scarab art journal page
Posted: April 2, 2012 in art journalTags: altered book, art journaling, mixed media, paper mosaic
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Stitched mixed media
Posted: March 31, 2012 in New Mixed Media artTags: mixed media, new art work, stitching
The second piece in the series of stitched mixed media textiles. This one uses a scrapbook paper altered with spray ink and a gold seal with a birdcage stamped on it. Embellishments include an old handwritten sermon fragment, wedding dress applique, lace panel and linen, the foundation being a plaid napkin. The series of four are now hanging at the fabulous ARTpool Gallery in St. Pete, on repurposed wooden hangers.
Salt dough ornament
Posted: March 27, 2012 in New Mixed Media artTags: mixed media, new art work, ornaments, salt dough
I got a wild hair about six months ago to make some salt dough and play around with it. Great fun! Totally non toxic and no worry about fumes as it cooks or any of that stuff that comes along with other clays. Plus, it cooks benignly in your kitchen oven, although the cooking time for ornaments is very long (around 10+ hours at a low temp) and not conducive to Florida in the summer. However, that is the only drawback I can see to it. This ornament was a thickish slab of clay, hand formed and then hand stamped with a deeply etched rubber stamp. After the baking and cooling, I glazed it with brown umber acrylic paint which I wiped off and left in the impression so it would show up against the neutral colored clay. I strung all my ornaments of various sizes onto a handmade bamboo branch armature, sort of abacus style, with the addition of only small commercially made ceramic beads. Very primitive.
Spiritwalker necklace
Posted: March 23, 2012 in beadworkTags: jewelry, mixed media, necklace, new art work
The star of this necklace is the gorgeous hand cast bronze petroglyph pendant by Nancy Young which I purchased from her probably around 1995 or so. The large beads are charoite, the purple cylinder beads are lepidolite and the chips and buttons are ameythst. I do not know at the moment what the yellow-green faceted bead is but I hope to find out. The two charms were found earrings. I am a huge fan of Nancy Young’s work and wish I had bought more of her castings when she sold them to the public because I believe now she produces them only for her own use. They are gorgeous work.
Nightlife silhouette
Posted: March 22, 2012 in New Mixed Media artTags: found images, mixed media, new art work, painted canvas
The most recent in my silhouette series on 12″ canvas. Free spirit out for a night on the town. This was a fashion magazine ad originally, cut out with a craft knife, painted with black gesso and matte medium to place it on top of the acrylic and gesso background. There was also an edge of scrapbooking paper still showing on the left side. This canvas was repurposed from one of my previous paintings. If stuff is around here long enough and I no longer feel it I have no problem painting over it. Enjoy your day!
Love in silhouette
Posted: March 19, 2012 in New Mixed Media artTags: art journaling, found images, journaling, mixed media, new art work, painted canvas, silhouettes
Graffiti inspired background with magazine cut out silhouettes and white gel pen journaling. It’s not easy finding magazine images with the proper bold character for these mixed media pieces. So far fashion magazines are the best yield. Guess what? After 70+ postings on this blog, nearly each day (except for Saturdays usually) since late December, I am running out of completed art. Don’t turn that dial yet, though, still have a few things up my sleeve and goodness knows I won’t run out of photos anytime soon, but I know you like variety, or at least I suspect you do. What’s a girl to do? Make more? Well, I guess I could, as evidenced by the last few days but we’ll have to see…
Roly poly companion art journal page
Posted: March 14, 2012 in art journalTags: altered book, art journaling, mixed media, new art work, painting
The roly poly guy I drew in the upper right corner on black is in direct contrast to the long tall shadow dude featured in yesterdays entry. These are facing pages in my journal. The color scheme and background texture technique carried thru but the artwork is all handdrawn on a black surface. I like using postage stamps as a background. The little perferated edges produce a good texture when glued to the page and painted over. There are also office supplies on it and randomly cut shapes. Paint was applied with a credit card to get a streakiness I like. Won’t be any journaling added to this page because I like it the way it is and in combination with the facing page.
Long tall shadow art journal page
Posted: March 13, 2012 in art journalTags: altered book, art journaling, journaling, mixed media, new art work, painting, photography, shadows
Remember those vintage pipe cleaner, felt and styrofoam head figures peeps used to make? I found one at an estate sale and had to have it. It had big ole’ shoes, gloves and a pointed hat in felt, some sort of nose and a little tunic looking shirt over it’s upper body. Pretty hinky but full of old craft magazine memories. One day I was outside early and noticed that a ray of super bright sunshine was beaming down on our white shed and got the idea to shoot some shadows. There was Mr. Hinky Elf, in all his splendor. I think he made quite a silhouette, all long and lanky. So I shot him for awhile and a few other things and printed them out. When I sat down to make this page I was interested in texture and layered on many cancelled postage stamps and some small labels, etc. I also put a hand drawn womans face and my Shadow Man on there and then painted over it all several times with a credit card. Lots of texture, plus an odd focus image. My kind of page. This one is finished, I won’t put writing on it because I like it the way it is.
Paper mosaic dragonfly art journal page
Posted: March 6, 2012 in art journalTags: art journaling, journaling, mixed media, mosaic
The picture is a tad crooked because the altered map book journal I use is so big it hardly fits on the chair seat without falling off. Sorry about that. This page features one of my favorite processes which is paper mosaic. I like to use either colorful magazine pages or my own colored/textured surfaced papers. Can’t remember which this is, but it was watercolored over after gluing, I can see that.I think the orangy-red in the center might have been printed at one time with a styrofoam plate print and watercolor washed. This page doesn’t have any journaling yet. I usually work ahead visually in a book and then as the mood strikes to write I decide which page to use and try to find a pen that will actually print over top all the process work. Most likely that will be a Sharpie of some kind, or a white gel pen if the background is dark enough.
Day of the Dragonfly
Posted: February 28, 2012 in art journalTags: altered book, art journaling, journaling, mixed media, new art work, stamp, stitching
Last summer we had epic rain which resulted in the spawn of mosquito larvae on our flat roof which was holding puddles of water. About this time, dragonflies reached all time highs in populations and record breaking sizes and colors. I even saw a rare for this area bright red dragonfly; most of them here are an iridescent greenish-blue or brown. It was not unusual to see dragonflies last summer the size of birds, and in packs of 50+ swarming the backyard. If I had an ounce less of dragonfly love it would have been positively creepy and The Mist-y. I commemorated one dragonfly filled day with this journal page. I have a ginormous dragonfly stamp and did a lot of coloring with marker over top of already pretty scrapbooking paper. Patterns and lines were made using a white gel pen and I found a cute tree frog in a magazine to paste onto a wing looking like he was getting a free ride. Whee! I sewed around the edge of the page when it was finished with a blanket stitch. I love this page because it reminds me of a real day in the backyard enjoying nature and because of all the summer colors in it.
Crickyn 