Mix It Up with Mixed Media

Hello friends and a happy July to you! We’re celebrating July 4th Independence Day this weekend and I know it will be hot! I think we’ll be watching fireworks from our TV inside the cool air this year! Hope that whatever you’re doing this weekend that you stay cool and safe while you’re having fun.

Today also brings us to a new challenge over at the Mix It Up Challenge Blog. The challenges always run for 6 weeks so there is plenty of time to enter. The theme given for us this time is: Mixed Media or you can always do the ‘Anything Goes” too. Here’s the card that I came up with for the challenge using the theme:

This was such a fun card to make! I normally do mixed media on my art journal pages or a larger/3D item, but this time I wanted to make a card for this theme. I pulled out some really fun AALL & Create products that I’ve been wanting to use and I thought this would be a good opportunity to try them out! (I don’t know what it is about these wonky characters, but I think the weird eyeballs are so cute!) I’ve used the “Coffee Time” stamp set with the girl, coffee cups and coffee beans at the bottom. I’ve also used a Simon Says Stamp “Sunflower Fields” in the background and the “Sending Sunshine” sentiment.

To create the background: I’ve stamped a very large sunflower image in yellow ink over a white card base. I’ve then used an AALL & Create “coffee stains” stencil with brown ink over top. I then ink blended some more brown inks over the edges of the panel and then splattered it with both brown and white paints. I took a pen and doodled around the edges and then attached it to an A2 top folding brown card base. I had a left over strip from a collection of coffee backgrounds that I’ve made in a previous post you can see HERE and attached that to the bottom where I stamped the coffee beans in brown ink over it. (I thought it would make for a good “grounding” for the coffee girl and cups to stand on.)

I’ve used another AALL & Create product called “Heart Nook” that I die cut some circles from, and I thought looked like coffee stains, in glitter cardstock. I also cut an additional strip of that to go along the bottom strip of the card. I then added the stack of coffee cups, the girl that I colored up with Copics and fussy cut out. I white heat embossed the sentiment, die cut and popped both that along with the girl using foam tape. I also separately cut out her eyeball and popped that up over her for extra dimension.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my coffee mixed media card today! I had fun coloring her up and very happy to use more things from my stash too! Please be sure to pop on over to the Mix It Up Challenge blog to have a look at what the rest of the team created and play along!

Have a wonderful July 4th weekend.

Challenges:

Just Us Girls – #781 Stencil Week (coffee stains stencil)
Crafty Catz – #697 Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – #304 Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2526 – Sunshine (hope sentiment and yellow works!)
Addicted to Stamps & More – Die Cut(s) and/or Stencil(s) – I used both!

Art Journal Inspiration-Happiness, Harmony & Joy

Hello friends! Brr! It’s a very cold start to the week over my way, so that means I’m staying inside the warmth and crafting up some fun to share! I’m really enjoying putting together these pages this month as I get to pull some things from my stash that I’ve really been wanting to play with. This gives me a chance to use things for myself in whatever way I want because I don’t give these pages away and I think I find it to be a bit more “freeing” to do or try things that I may not normally do on a card.

Maybe I can encourage you to try something for yourself! I have more inspiration to share for the “MUSIC” prompt I’m hosting this month at Art Journal Journey:

For this page, I pulled out an AALL & Create stamp set that I’ve been wanting to use “Call the Tune” and I wanted to use the trumpet from the set. I always think of trumpets as a bold and happy musical tune, so I thought flowers and my favorite colors would make me feel happy too!

For the background: I started with an 8.5″x5.5″ watercolor panel and watered down some purple and turquoise acrylic paints so that I could use them like watercolor. Once dry, I attached some musical note tissue paper off the side and I also stamped the trumpet image in black on the top of the page. I then used the flower image and gold heat embossed it on the bottom and top of the page. I then took some black paint to splatter over it. Lastly, I took the AALL & Create Reverse Triangles Stencil and some metallic white embossing paste over it in random areas. Once that was dry, I went around the edges with the black Distress Crayon.

Moving towards the bottom of the page, I stamped the flower image twice, colored them with Copic markers and fussy cut them out to line the bottom of the page. Before attaching them, I splattered them with gold watercolor and white Copic Opaque. I also used the black Distress Crayon to go underneath the flowers before I attached them.

The musical notes were cut from my Cricut Machine with black glossy cardstock. I also attached a few select words from the AALL & Create Motivation Station Ephemera pack and used a black marker to line around each one.

I stamped another trumpet image and colored it with Copic markers and then fussy cut around the colored images to attach over the black image I stamped on the page. I even used a knife to go in between the sections of the trumpet. It was a bit tedious, but worth it.

I finished the page off with some gold Stickles in the center of the flowers for a touch of sparkle because sparkle makes me happy too!

So what do you think? Does this page bring happiness to you? It gets me looking forward to Spring and seeing some flowers grow! I’m going to go check out the fun musical inspiration in the Art Journal Journey gallery and I hope you check it out too! Thanks for dropping by today and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges: