Tervetuloa kurssille: Kangas, sakset, paperi!

Hello! Today's post will be in Finnish, about my coming workshops.

Moi! Opetan taas tänä keväänä mixed media -askarteluja Vantaan aikuisopistossa. Kurssiohjelma on uudistunut ja ajattelin siksi tehdä pienen esittelypostauksen kustakin kurssista erikseen.

Kevätkauden ensimmäinen kurssi on nimeltään Kangas, sakset, paperi! Tämä kurssi on toista kertaa ohjelmassa ja se sopii sekä sekatekniikka-askartelun aloittajalle että pidempään harrastaneelle. Mixed median perusasioista mm. leimailu sekä sabluunoiden ja akryylimaalien käyttö tulevat viimeistään nyt tutuiksi, jos et ole tehnyt niitä aiemmin!

Kurssipaikka on Vantaan opistotalo Tikkurilassa, Lummetie 5, ja kurssi-illat ovat maanantaisin 21.1.−11.2.2019 klo 17−21.



Kurssilla tutustumme eri tapoihin käyttää lankaa ja kangasta oman askartelutyylin lisämausteena. Kerroksellisuuden rakentamista ja yksityiskohtien lisäämistä voi tehdä oman mieltymyksen mukaan ompelukoneella, käsin kirjoen tai helposti ja nopeasti liimaamalla.





Alla muutama kuva kurssilaisten töistä!

Tässä syntyy minialbumi päällystämällä suodatinpusseja itse koristelluilla papereilla. Pussin ympäri siksakkaus ompelukoneella tekee saumasta kestävämmän ja aukko muodostaa kivan taskun, johon voi tallentaa lisää pieniä muistoja.



Tällä kurssilaisella oli upea vanha puutarha-aiheinen kirja, johon hän päätti valmistaa taskuja vanhojen kukkapostikorttien kokoelmaansa varten.





Tässä on käsin kirjoen koristeltu tasku journaling tägille ja muita yksityiskohtia, tyylikkäästi vintage-kuvan kanssa yhteen sopien!



P.S. Villin lännen tytön kuva on The Graphics Fairyn sivustolta, josta löytyy valtava valikoima ilmaiseksi käyttöön ladattavia vintage-kuvia!



Seuraavan kurssikuvauksen julkaisen maanantaina 14.1. ja se kertoo kurssista Ystävänpäivän ja kevään kortit mehiläisvahatekniikalla. Sitä ennen voit tutustua kaikkien kurssien tietoihin myös täällä blogissa Workshops-välilehdellä! Lämpimästi tervetuloa kursseille!

Secretive: An Art Journal Page with Image Transfer

Hi everyone, and happy Friday! Happy November, too, since this is my first post this month. The darkest time of the year is falling upon us but I have a pretty bright journal spread here to cheer it up.



Inspired by the October Challenge at Wanderlust Class 2017, I tried image transfer with acrylic medium for the first time. I have previously tried packing tape transfer and found it fun. Here, I was excited to see the image lifting directly onto the page, whereas in the tape method the tape remains visible and you need to glue it down.

The images I have used here are inkjet printed and my medium was Liquitex acrylic matte medium.



You can see I have used two different sized transfers of the same vintage image, showing a mysterious woman with daisies and a veil.



I had prepared a background on my square Dylusions Creative Journal collaging bits of gelli printed and die cut book pages, and then added acrylic paint.

What happened with the transfer was that it seemed easy at first but then I did rub too hard and lost quite a few pieces. This was my first try, directly onto the journal background. Luckily, I had printed a smaller version of the same image and tried it on a separate painted paper, and it worked better!



I didn't want to give up my background and taking a second look at it, I came to think that the smaller image on the orange piece of paper might look cool mounted on the side of the more broken image, so this is what I did.



At the same time I was trying to learn from a recent lesson by Kasia Avery at Wanderlust 2017, about the use of Black and White as Contrasts, and how they can work to calm down or unify a page with many colors. I think the final spread is still slightly too busy/colorful for my mood at the moment, but I didn't have time to work it any longer, wanting to make the challenge deadline.



I also used some lace and machine stitching as effects. The (originally white) lace had been used as a stencil in Gelli printing, so it already had those cool darker and lighter areas. Then some Gelatos around the edges, plus some black stamping, marker and white paint pen. I love the image, she reminds me of a good fairy with a secret that makes her smile!



The image, by the way, is printed from The Graphics Fairy, who offers thousands of good quality copyright-free vintage images for free. (There is also a paid Premium membership option, but I haven't felt the need for it so far. It would especially benefit someone working digitally, since it offers a lot of special effects for editing programs).

This site is a great resource for finding images for transfer techniques, and its search engine helps to find images in the theme that you want.



I am also linking my project to this week's challenge at Take a Word. The theme is Family Albums, meaning the use of old photos to create some altered art. Photos from other sources are ok, if you don't have family photos, says the challenge guideline.

Happy weekend everyone and thanks for taking a look!

Fearless Graffiti Art Journal Spread

Hello! Here's my art journal spread inspired by the September challenge at More than Words.



I am constantly inspired by the GRUNGY look of graffiti and the way the bright colours pop out in an asphalt and concrete landscape. But graffiti is not just a style, it's also a way to spread out a political message + a voice of rebellion, and that's the kind of graffiti I was particularly thinking of when I created this mixed media collage. I admire the FEARLESS work of graffiti artists, many of whom have had to work in circumstances where the authorities are very hostile towards street art. I've been happy to see in the past few years that many towns and cities have began to value street art in a totally new way!



This spread is a part of a new junk journal I'm working on. I'll post more about it later!



I'm also joining the challenges at:

Sandee and Amelie's Steampunk: Anything Goes with Steampunk or Industrial, and

Art Journal Journey: Colour In My World



Thank you so much for your visit and comments, as always!

Mini Journaling with Moodiversary and Art Marks Summer Challenges

Hi! Today I'd like to share with you couple of fun summer challenges that I can recommend for anyone who feels inspired to art/journal but maybe has just a few minutes for it daily, which was often the case for me this summer!



DeeDee Catron and Jenn Engle's Moodiversary uses the same mood board for the whole month, but there is a new link-up for prizes every week. My link is to Week 3, which will expire within a day, but you'll find Week 4 in DeeDee's blog when the time comes.

The delicious Moodiversary Board is here and the reason for the challenge is to celebrate the first year of DeeDee and Jenn's monthly inspiration posts called Mixed Media Moods. So the inspiration will continue after this month, on their blogs and YouTube channels.



I was inspired by the organic forms of the skeleton leaves and the tree on the bottom row, and the door one row up. Plus all the colours of the challenge, but particularly the yellow paint shade, Pollen, and Royal Fuchsia and Desert Turquoise.



Rae Missigman's Art Marks - A 30 Day Summer Challenge has a prompt word for each day, and the challenge encourages you to only use a set time, say 5-10 minutes, to "make your marks" each day. You can find the prompts list at Rae's blog.

I've been catching up with the prompts in no particular order - maybe some prompts felt more ready than others to emerge from the different backgrounds of each side in my mini book, actually!

Here's Day 9, Free Form:



Day 20, Scratched:



Day 16, Mirrored. This is not in the same 3 1/2x3 1/2 inches mini album as the others. I wanted to experiment with a slightly larger format so this is another junk journal, about 6x8 in size.



What could suit the Mirrored prompt better than this good old way of printing on both sides of a spread/folded paper, that many have surely have done as kids! I added some pencil and carbon on the one side of the spread to make my butterfly not completely mirrored, to reflect the idea that a mirror does not show everything there is.

Day 17 prompt of Dripped is the last for today!



I made my mini album specifically with these quick challenges in mind. It is an accordion book and the page size is 3 1/2 inches. I'll be back another day to show more of how it looked in the beginning, what different papers I used for backgrounds, and so on!

On the pages next to Free Form, you can see that some background papers are more finished than others, and I may want to keep them as they are. But more about that later.



And the covers, oh, they are such a fun idea even if I say so myself. The size of 3 1/2 inches might ring a bell to folks around my age or older, that is, those of us who already used a computer before the year 2000. Let's see if anyone can guess what I used.

Thank you for popping in and commenting, as always!

Mixed Media Summer ATC Swap

Hello! Here's what I made for an ATC swap here in Finland, themed Mixed Media Summer and organized by Taru.



I had plenty of gelli prints with summery colours, so I began to work my backgrounds from them. I also added some mists in different shades of green, and was happy with the colour palette that reminds me of a summer evening just before dark.

For inspiration, I had several challenges, starting with Mixed Media Place and their gorgeous mood board, also with a feel of a summer evening.



The mood board has some delicate white flowers and seeds, and I decided to decorate my ATCs with lily-of-the-valley shaped chipboards from Wycinanka.



Before glueing them in place, I gessoed the chipboards to make them completely white and heat embossed them with an embossing powder that has a particularly lovely golden white shade. It's called Angel Wings Gold by Lindy's Stamp Gang, and it is indeed white with a hint of gold. The colour was very hard to catch in the photos, I'm afraid. But try them if you get a chance. I only have a couple of Lindy's powders but they both are this kind, shining in two different colours and with a high gloss, enamel-looking finish.



At Art-Piaskownica, the challenge theme was Stamping.



The stamped part in my project are the dark blue leaves. I first stamped them on a tissue paper, tore pieces of it and glued them in place with acrylic medium.

I have previously used stamped tissue paper on my beeswax collages, and recently I realized they are a cool thing to add to other mixed media projects, too. The white tissue paper becomes invisible and the stamp shows very well, even on uneven surfaces where it would be harder to stamp directly. You can also prepare these papers in advance, if you feel like trying some new stamps but can't think of a project just then, for example.

Like this:



I'm also joining the challenges at

Craft Stamper: Anything Goes
and Mixed Media Monthly: Altered Embellishments

(For the Craft Stamper magazine, I hope my submission counts as one project, since this is a set of very similar cards. If I were so incredibly lucky to be picked as the winner, I do have three of the ATCs still left that I could mail for publication.)



A few more photos to follow...







I'll end today's post with the full set of 12 cards, photographed with my unfinished acrylic painting as background!



Thank you for popping in and commenting, as always. Welcome back next week to see another post with the cards I received in this Mixed Media Summer ATC swap!

Mixed Media Greenhouse ATCs

Hello springtime, flowers and greenery! To welcome the new season, I enjoyed joining a Greenhouse swap at ATCs for All. This was a mixed media swap and another cool twist was that the cards were to be actually house shaped. They were so much fun to make and I can't wait to see the returns I get!



I was inspired by the following challenges:

The Artistic Stamper: Springtime
Crazy-Lab: Spring Feeling
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Layer it Up!
We Love 2 Create: Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes



For the spring themed challenges, the inspiration is quite obvious, I guess! As for Simon's Layer it Up challenge, I actually tried something new with layering. I'll get back to that a bit further down!



In all the four cards, I began cutting the background and roof from different papers. I included both DIY papers, like Gelli prints, and scrapbook papers and magazine pages.



I then added collage elements like postage stamps, washi tape, magazine cuts...



And some colour with Gelatos and Crayola crayons.





And then to the last layer! I had done some stamping on tissue paper and other nearly see-through papers earlier this week. I've been wanting to build a pre-made stash for beeswax collage, which is where I have previously used stamping on tissue. The thing is that the paper becomes invisible with wet media, and only the stamping shows. This is a cool way to add stamping on surfaces where the stamping ink alone might not show very well, or might bleed, depending on what you're going to add next.



I usually only make beeswax collage when I can dedicate a whole day or longer stretch of time for it, since it takes a while to take the supplies out and clean afterwards. Mainly it is that I use the same ironing board that I use for clothers so I need to cover it properly before I get started. Anyway, I'm glad I thought of using the stamped tissue in another way! And acrylic medium worked in a similar way as beeswax - the paper seems to completely disappear.

Remember that for both beeswax and acrylic medium, the stamping ink has to be permanent! I always use Staz-On.



Thank you for your visit!