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!

June Art Journal Page-Positive Thoughts and Positive News!

Hello friends and welcome to the weekend! June has seemed to go by so very fast and I don’t know how time seems to keep flying by, but I think keeping busy is the best thing to do to stay in a positive mind set. I also have some positive news at the bottom of this post!

Speaking of positive….it’s our monthly AJ page with my crafty friend Carol (from Crafty-Stamper) who is collaborating with me to “SMASH OUR STASH”! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” JUNE prompt of “ABSTRACT FIGURE(S) or SHAPE(S)”:

I didn’t really have a plan in place when starting my page. I happened to remember these fun nesting dies that I had which remind me of a body of water/pond, but I thought they would work great for the “ABSTRACT SHAPE” prompt for this month. I started thinking of a rock or cave with these holes or crevasses where a rainbow light is coming through and a girl is in deep positive thought where butterflies are floating above her.

For the background: I started with a 8.5″x5.5″ watercolor cardstock and the oxide inks in Black Soot, Hickory Smoke and Pumice Stone. I rubbed the ink pads onto a glass surface, sprayed with water and “smooshed” the paper multiple times after drying with a heat tool in a process of about three times. I then stamped the “IMAGINE” definition text all over the background and went around the edges with black ink.

Each die cut shape was cut from a rainbow paper pad that I lined around the edges with a black marker. I black heat embossed the heart and the sentiment above the girl. The girl was cut from a magazine and placed on the largest rainbow shape so that her feet were dangling off. The butterflies were cut from a printed file and attached randomly over the page. Lastly, I covered each butterfly and the center of the heart with a glitter brush pen. You may be able to see some of the shimmer in the photo.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my AJ page today! Thank you so much for checking out what I’m doing over here! I appreciate your kind thoughts! I’ll be seeing you soon!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – People
Try It On Tuesday – Add Some Text (not one word/greeting)
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge – Anything Goes
Creative Artiste – #116 Anything Goes Mixed Media
Anything Goes in a Card Free Zone – No cards

Positive news! My first grandson was born this week! He’s the most precious thing I’ve ever seen! I didn’t want to leave, so I hope I can come back very soon to see him again!❤️

This is me having a lovely conversation with him. LOL

Art Journal Inspiration-Sing From Your Heart

Hello friends! When it’s winter time, something I miss hearing are those birds happily chirping throughout the day. We get the occasional bird chirp, but nothing like it is when the weather is warm.

So in honor of those singing birds, I have more inspiration to share for the “MUSIC” prompt I’m hosting this month at Art Journal Journey:

I had fun putting this one together with a quirky bird who’s singing with all his heart!

For the background: I started with a 5.5″x8.5″ Bristol Smooth cardstock piece so that I could do some ink blending. With a stencil, I inked over it with Salt Water Taffy oxide and then painted over it with a layer of white gesso. (I was trying to keep the colors soft and light.) I then took a different stencil and sprayed over it with Speckled Egg Oxide Spray and then used the left over from that in other places. I then took Shabby Shutters, Mowed Lawn and Salvaged Patina oxide inks to go over the rest of the stenciled layers until I got the look I wanted. I used a water spray over top and then splattered white paint over the page for more texture.

For the bird: I cut out the body, wing and beak shape in different pattern papers, used a distress crayon rubbed along the edges and pieced it together with the wing being popped up with foam tape. I used a pen to doodle around the bird and create the legs. The eye and heart on the bird were punched out pieces. (the heart paper is from a music sheet scrap)

The words were printed on my computer over some pattern paper. While the ink was still wet from the printer, I clear heat embossed over it. I cut out each word and attached over page. I took a pen to doodle around each section. I also doodled around the edges of the entire page with the same pen.

Lastly, I took some white paint and brushed a “heart bubble” coming from the bird’s beak. I stamped a few music notes inside the bubble with brown ink. I also stamped a few solid hearts around the words in pink ink to finish it off.

I hope you like my page today and have been inspired to play along with us this month! I have enjoyed seeing all of the wonderful inspiration so far in the gallery! Thanks so much for stopping in and I’ll be seeing you soon!

Challenges:

Anything Goes in a Card Free Zone – No Cards
Art Journal Journey – Music

Rainbow Chicken

Hello friends! Hope you’re enjoying your week so far. We’ve been having some really hot and dry days lately, so I’m trying to get some motivation going and have some play time for crafting!

I have not played along before, but I decided to grab this fun digital freebie from the Beccy’s Place Challenge and have a go at it because it really made me laugh when I saw it!

Isn’t this such a fun image?! There was an option of different pre-colored images, but I decided to print out the lined image to color in. I colored the chicken in rainbow and then added a pair of die cut glasses in silver mirror cardstock that I had on hand. (I already had the glasses cut out from another card I made that was laying out on my desk, so when coloring this image, I thought it would be fun to add!)

The layout came from a sketch challenge that she’s also sponsoring. (see challenge list below) I thought that I was going to leave it as just black and white to make the rainbow chicken stand out, but I found some fun rainbow papers and decided to add one panel to go with the chicken. I came up with and typed out the sentiment underneath the image and printed them both together.

For another part of Beccy’s challenge, there is an optional theme she included which was “doodling”. So I took a white gel pen and added some lines for highlights on the chicken. I’ve also taken a black marker pen to make some squiggle lines around the image panel too. I blended some grey ink around the edges and then used a distress tool for the distressed edges.

After adding the glasses, I covered the eyeballs with some crystal effects for shine.

And this one has been sent off to hopefully make someone smile! I hope you like it too!

Thanks so much for dropping in and I’ll see you again on Saturday for another AJ page!

Challenges:

Beccy’s Place Challenges – June Challenge using Beccy’s Place image with optional doodling
Cheerful Sketches – June sketch
The Diva’s That Cut..Paper! – Use a Critter
The Corrosive – Anything Goes
Crafter’s Cafe – Humorous
Crafty Catz – Anything Goes optional: FUN
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes

Starting With Some “Warm-Ups”

Hello there! It’s weird starting up another new blog and especially with a format that I’m not used to! (I’m learning as I type here too! LOL!) So glad you are here with me and I’m a little anxious to get started with this too! I know it sounds weird for those of you that know I’m actually an avid crafter AND an avid blogger as well, but I “feel” new to this for some reason!

I still have quite a ways to go with posting, but I hope you will follow along as I post and get comfortable in my “new home”! Since I have tested out a new post, then I also need to test out a new photo too:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I know this is a bit of a weird photo to start with, but it is a starting point and a good one to share of what’s to come and where I am going! I find these practices you see here actually helpful with my creative process and a place to just begin.

These are my “warm up” doodles for the up-coming ICAD soon to start!

If you are interested in what “ICAD” means, you can check out the full description in this link here: ICAD Base

Basically, the challenge is to use the prompts given for each day and use a simple index card (nothing more/nothing less) and create with it once a day until the challenge is over. It starts June1 and lasts until July 31st. I found this last year and so enjoyed playing in new and creative ways that it really jump-started my inspiration and I actually got excited to go in my craft room and create! I have decided to do it again this year and take you along with my creative process doing it. There are “warm-up” prompts on the blog here: Warm-Ups 1-3 and here: Warm-Ups 4-6 I have done all of them shown above. I really had fun getting out all of my creative “writing tools” and just doodling and adding water to them and smudging them and so on. It was just fun to doodle and play!

I may just use some of these “warm-ups” as a background or part of something during my ICAD journey, so I hope you will enjoy the experience with me here on my blog or even as a fellow “ICAD-ian” and join in the challenge! I have a badge along the side of my blog here in case you want to check out the details some other time as well.

Thanks for stopping in and checking out my new beginnings here. I hope you enjoy the journey with me!

Don’t forget to share some smiles today! 🙂