Hey, y’all! This week I broke into the January Mixed Media Kit, grabbed up some mould pieces and Mechanicals from my stash, and created my “Cordis Gelida” (“Frozen Heart” – Latin) mixed media panel. You could call your piece “Hiems Amo” (“I Love Winter” – Latin) if you are the type of person who loves winter. Actually, it’s your artwork, you can call it whatever you want or nothing at all!
After you’re done checking out the photos and reading this overview of my project, come and join me over on YouTube where I talk about what I did, expose my hoarding of Finnabair Mechanicals, wonder if my obsession with adhesion is genetic, babble semi-coherently, and ask the tough question, “Do New Year [I’ll use what I have] Resolutions apply to crafters and artists?”
Have you seen the mood board yet this month? It’s filled with beautiful winter-scapes and wonder – which matches perfectly for the twist “Winter Wonderland!” I happen to love winter – well, I love looking at winter. From inside. Where it’s warm. If I could figure out how to be warm without 42 layers of clothing, I’d love to sit out at a frozen pond enjoying the quiet tranquility. There is a line from a made-for-TV, two-part movie series (well, when I saw it in the early 2000s, it was in two parts) that came out in 1997, True Women, and my favorite line from it is “Snow makes even ugly things beautiful.” (Side note: Is it strange that the line I remember all these years later was spoken by not a main character, that [the character] was not a…“good person”…? Why did he get the line I remember?!?!) Anyhow, back to the project! Which is why y’all are here, right?
Overall, it wasn’t a terribly complicated project. I used crackle paste with my Finnabair Machinery stencil for one texture/style, then stenciled on some snowflakes with the lava paste. That was the basis of my contrasting textures – “hard” angles and edges, and soft fluffy snow!
I grabbed up mould pieces and Mechanicals from my stash that I thought I would want to use and just started playing around with the layout. I didn’t pre-plan the entire thing – I worked “in the moment” and went with what looked and felt right to me! And, somewhere along the way, I added in the spoon and little pipe from the kit.
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Once I had everything adhered and it had time to dry some, I gave it all a nice coat of white gesso. Now it was time for the real messy part – adding some color!
I mixed the Cosmic Shimmer powders with some matte medium or Liquid Color Fluid Medium so they would stay in place after drying, allowing the colors to layer and not keep reactivating. After I had my colors down over the entire project, I came back with the powders in a more concentrated form – using them more as heavy body paint than the “poured on” method I had used for the initial coating. This allowed me to use those powders to add extra dimension to key areas.
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Once I had my powder paint where I wanted it and had given it all ample time to dry, I used a round brush to add some of the wax from the kit to the surface. I didn’t add wax to every nook and cranny, I didn’t want to make everything a uniform color, I just wanted that wax mostly to sit on the surface of everything.
The final step was dabbing on some of the lava paste and, using the low heat setting on my heat gun, activating that paste and creating my snow clusters.
Thank you for joining me here today, I hope you enjoyed this mixed media panel and it gave you some ideas of what you can do with the mediums in this month’s Mixed Media Kit!
Stay Crafty, Friends
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In addition to this month’s Mixed Media Kit (from previous Tres Jolie Kits), I used:
Ranger Opaque Crackle Texture Paste, TCW “Snowflakes” Stencil, Finnabair “Machinery” Stencil, Finnabair Moulds: Steampunk Hearts, Stars and Moons, Love Machine, Pieces of Underworld, & Cogs and Wings, Finnabair “Vintage Flowers Metal Trinkets” and “Mini Roman Numerals” Mechanicals, Finnabair White Heavy Gesso, Soft Matte Gel, 3D Matte Gel, Liquid Color Fluid Medium, Texture Powder, Mega Art Stones, Art Stones, Mini Art Stones, JudiKins Diamond Glaze, Liquitex Matte Medium
C.J.'s Corner Scraps 