Foxglove's Mixed Media

Hello and a Happy New Year everyone!  For those who celebrate, I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. For today's post, I will show you how I made angry, geologically active alien planets using acrylic paints and crackle medium. These cards were so hard to photograph, and the pictures below have been manipulated a bit so you could (hopefully) see more details in the planet's surface.   I have to say, I am in LOVE with how this turned out!  You can watch the video on this too by scrolling to the bottom of this post. To start, I used a circle stencil to lightly trace partial circles onto my cards.  You can use any circle shape or even free-hand it, but I used Donna Downey's "Bubble" stencil. My next step was to paint in the partial circles with reds and orange fluid acrylics.  I didn't bother to mix or blend the colors, since I knew most of it would be covered up, but I wanted some variation in colors for those areas that did show through the crackl...

Mixed Media ICAD, Using Scrap Papers From My Stash Hello, everyone!   I am back with another ICAD – this time, I was determined to use up some of my leftover bits of papers and used postage stamps.   I will apologize up front, as some of the photos aren’t very clear, but I used the ‘snapshot’ feature on some of them using a video editing software, and the images became blurred when I made them bigger.  Yes, you heard right!   I made my very first YouTube video!   Whoot, whoot!    I’m doing the jiggy dance as I type this – soooo…I still have areas that I need to improve on, but hey, you never learn if you never ‘do’, right?   If you are interested in the video, you can find it here or find it at the bottom of my post.   That being said, I don’t think I will use photos from the video anymore.   They just get too fuzzy when I enlarge the images.   Lesson learned for next time! As I mentioned above, I have too many left...

Hello all!  Happy Wednesday!  Today I am sharing three artist trading cards, all using washi tape. (Because if you hadn't read my last post, I LOOOOOOOVE washi tape!) I also have to apologize - these photos are taken with a phone, and some of the pictures I take disappear somehow.  I KNOW I've taken them because I see the little thumb image, but when I go to search for it later, the image is gone.  Right now, I don't have a more professional set-up, but I am hoping that by Christmas, I will have the ability to make videos, and hopefully better photos. Anyhow, these three are part of a swap on ATCsforall.com, where players make ATCs based on a person's profile.  (See my previous post for the first two cards I made for the same swap.)  Person 1 liked bare trees and an night scene with a moon, Person 2 liked flowers and whimsy, and Person 3 (the person hosting the swap) likes mixed media with a lot of texture. So - back to the ATCs!  I'm sure y...

UPDATE -- The Halloween ATC was one of the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Winners!   Thanks to the SSS Design Team! Happy weekend, everyone!  I hope you are enjoying it - they never last long enough. Today, I am sharing two ATCs for a swap.  If you are new to Artist Trading Cards (ATCs), these are little works of art that are 2.5x3.5 inches.  Basically, they are the size of a baseball card or a poker card. The themes for these were based on the profiles for two different people.  One person liked blackbirds and Halloween, and the other liked the color turquoise and the Tim Holtz crazy dogs.   These are the cards I came up with: I started both of these cards the same way: I glued bookpages from an old book to Canson watercolor paper.  When it was dry, I lightly brushed gesso over the bookpage to push it to the background a bit.  I don't want to cover up the page completely, and you can still see the text peeking through. On...

Hello, and welcome back!  Today I am showing four artist trading cards I made with the theme of "Proverbs."  Two are mixed media and two are mostly watercolors. I didn't take pictures of these cards in process, unfortunately.  I was enjoying making these cards and just sort of...forgot.  "Turn your face to toward the sun and the shadows fall behind you. ~Maori Proverb" For this card, I put down a layer of watercolors in shades of yellow, orange, blues, greens and a bit of bright pink. I was a little worried that these colors may make mud, however, everything turned out great in the end. Once the watercolor was dry, I added some stamping with a script stamp, a Seth Apter background stamp and archival ink.  The Seth Apter stamp is that swirly circle one that you see inside the silhouette. I sketched the figure lightly with a pencil, and painted around the figure with watered down acrylic paints. For this, I used the Dina Wakley acrylics as they were m...

Hello, everyone!  Sorry for the disappearance.  I went on a sort of working vacation, but I'm back with another ICAD! I was still tired from my trip, so this card was a quick on.  I did my usual background of gessoing over some bookpage scraps I had glued to the index cards, and it was dry, I dabbed some green fluid acrylics in Green-Gold (Golden) and Veridian (DecoArt) onto the bottom of the card and spritzed it with water.  I used the stick end of a paint brush to help spread the paint around, and dried it with my heat tool.   I added some washi tape at the bottom and randomly on the card, and then moved on to the critters. The cat and bear were fussy cut from a paper doll string that came with my Flow Magazine for Paper Lovers, and were created by Tokyo artist Aiko Fukawa.  Aren't they cute?  This was actually a long chain, as you can see below, so you'll be seeing the rest of the parade at some point. The animal parade had a border ar...

Hello everyone!  I am back with my eleventh ICAD.  For this index card, I was inspired by the Simon Say's Stamp Monday Challenge.  This week's theme is "Transport It."  You can find their Monday Challenge Blog here . I started off this card by using a pink paper from the massive Flow Magazine For Paper Lovers.  If you haven't heard of it, the Paper Lovers book has over 300 pages of papers, tissue paper, wrapping paper, stickers, tags....if it's paper, they probably have it. Anyhow, I glued down the paper and scrapped a thin layer of gesso over it.  I allowed some of the pattern to show through, though by the time I was through with the card, you can only see a little bit in the upper left corner. Next, I watered down some DecoArt acrylic paint onto an acrylic block and splotched it onto the card here and there.  Normally, I would do this on my craft mat, however I am a huge clutz, and my craft table is a mess right now, so I didn't have m...

Hello, everybody!  I am back to show my 10th index card, a flamingo. Ain't he cute? I am SO happy with how he turned out!  I started off the way I almost always do - gesso over a book page. I scraped the gesso on with a palette knife, but I tried not to be too even with it and made sure the book text showed through here or there.  When the gesso dried, I sketched the head and neck of the flamingo. I don't have any pink acrylic, so I mixed DecoArt fluid acrylic in Titanium White with just a touch of Dina Wakley heavy body acrylic in Fuchsia to create a rich pink. For the background, I spritzed the paper with water and scraped Phthalo Green-Yellow acrylic along the edges and let the color bleed and run.  I dried the color with my heat tool, and then re-spritzed with water to add some touches of the Fushcia. I finished by outlining him with the stabilo marks-all, but instead of spritzing it with water and letting it spread, I just blended it a bit...

Welcome back, everyone!  I have two projects to show you today.  The first is a star-themed artist trading card, and the other is an abstract landscape artist trading coin. First off, the star-themed artist trading card: I began this card the way I do a lot of my cards - I glued down a bookpage and gessoed lightly over it.  I then added a light wash of fluid acrylics in Payne's Grey and Ultramarine Blue (DecoArt).  When it was dry, I added stars to the background using the Tim Holtz star stencil and Distress Oxide in Faded Jeans.  Lovely!  I set the color with my heat tool, however, the Oxides are reactive to water in the same way the Distress Inks are, so I wanted to do something to keep the ink from rubbing off or getting smeared, so I pulled out my Art Basics 3D Gloss Gel by Prima Marketing.  I used the stencil to go back over the original star shapes.  Because the gloss gel is a "wet" medium, the Oxide color blended in with the gel....

Happy weekend, everyone!   I hope you all have a nice, fun, creative weekend!  I have been catching up on some creative projects, one of which is my ICAD for day 7.  I did not follow the prompts, and instead I did my own thing - back to the messy abstract-ish style I've been leaning towards. I started off the way most of my project start - I glued down a bookpage with Mod Podge and scrapped gesso over it with a pallet knife.  I didn't really have a direction at this point, but I was in a mood to use earthy colors, so I grabbed a grey and a red iron oxide color and loosely scraped them over the wet gesso with my pallet knife.  When I was satisfied with it, I went to dry it with a heat tool.  I ended up leaving it alone for a day. When I came back to it, I could see a landscape in the mix...maybe a hill looking off to the distance, or a sandy dune by the sea. So I added a wash of green for the land and a wash of blue for the sky using my Derwent Inkt...

Hello, everyone!  I am back with a pair of sun-themed Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and to show my failed ICAD for Day 6. (There will be a surprise cameo from on my fur-babies, Chubby!) I will start off positively, with the pair of ATCs.  These are for a swap on the ATCSforAll.com trading forums.  If you are interested in trading ATCs, I encourage you to check out this very friendly site! I started off with the way I start most of my mixed media projects - by gluing down bookpages, this time with mod podge (sometimes I'll use soft gel medium.)  I covered the ATCs with a good layer of the mod podge to seal the cards, because I knew I would be using a lot of water later on.  For once, I didn't cover the book text with gesso. After the mod podge had dried, I spritzed the cards with water and dropped yellows and oranges onto the card using DecoArt fluid acrylics and acrylic sprays.  I let the colors mingle by tilting the card and gently swirling the ...