Foxglove's Mixed Media

Hello again, everyone!     I am back with a bunch of mixed media inchies to show you!   If you are not already aware, an Inchie is just a 1-inch by 1-inch square that is arted up in some way.   If it was a 1-inch circle, that would be called a “Rinchie”.    I do have a video on this, so if you’d rather watch the video, scroll to the bottom of this post or follow this link .   (I will warn you now...I need to redo it.  The video wouldn't play back correctly on my laptop, so I wasn't able to edit it right.  It's super fast in parts and the subtitles are...well...I would have done it differently if I had know how it looked in the end.) In this case, I joined in a swap where the host provided 8 inchies she punched from various scrapbook papers, and we had to art them up.   Then we would mail the finished inchies back for the host to swap out.   As of this post, I haven’t received the returns yet, so I am waiting on pins...

Hello, everyone!  Today I have number 3 of 4 Valentine's Artist Trading Coins to share with you!  This coin features a pair of pink hearts.   I also have a video at the bottom of this post and at my YouTube channel here . I started off by punching out the coin shapes from mixed media paper and book text.   I glue the two together and put a light layer of gesso onto the bookpage.  I ended up covering it all with the paint, so in the end, using the book page as a layer was a moot point, haha.  I also cut two hearts ono printer paper, cut them out, and then used them as a template for cutting the hearts out of mixed media paper. I pulled out my Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists in "Cherry" and "Pink Bell" and spritzed them onto the hearts.  I rarely ever use any of my sprays because I am guaranteed to make a mess, but this time I put the hearts into a cardboard box before spraying them, which really helped contain the mess!  I wanted my hearts to...

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...

Hello, everyone!  I am back with a couple of more artist trading coins for you.  If you're new to "coins", these are 2.5" circles that you art up and trade, just like the artist trading cards.  These two were quick to create and uses mostly Tim Holtz products. To start off with, I mushed various Distress Ink colors into my craft mat and spritzed it with water. For the tree/sunset, I laid the ink down in rows: first a yellow, then pink one, and last a red one. (Forgive me - I made these weeks ago, and I don't remember the exact colors I used.)  I spritz with water and moved the mixed media paper through it with one smooth, slow swipe.  For the blue on the right, I laid down colors in various blues and blue-greens. I dried everything with my heat tool, and then pulled out some background stamps by Seth Apter and Bo Bunny and stamped randomly with archival inks. From here, I pulled out stamps that I felt would make a nice silhouette.  The red/ora...

Hello, everyone!  Sorry - I couldn't resist the urge to throw in a Wizard of Oz reference.  :-) Today, I have an artist trading coin, four inchies and four twinchies to show you.  For those who don't know what these are, the "coin" is a 2.5" circle (you may also hear the term "artist trading circle", the inchies are 1" square, and twinchies are 2" square.  I do want to apologize in advance - I don't have has many in-between photos today.  I use my phone to take pictures of my projects in progress, but for some reason, the phone doesn't always save the pictures.  They just disappear.  I don't know what's going on with that, but it's getting pretty frustrating.  Anyhow...moving on... I will start with the coin - I used my 2.5" circle punch to create the circle from Canson mixed media paper. I pulled out my Distress Inks in Iced Spruce and Peacock Feathers and mushed them onto my craft mat.  I spritzed them ligh...

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 again!  I am back, this time to show how I made the Artist Trading Coins pictured below.  The Coins continue to be all the rage amongst the mail art traders, and I personally really enjoy working on a round shape. Aren't they cool?  I love how they turned out! (I say that because most of the time, I don't know where I'm going when I start a project, so sometimes there's no telling how something will turn out!) Anyhow, I started with a 5x7 sheet of Canson mixed media paper and Ranger's Tim Holtz Distress Inks in various colors of blue and the Iced Spruce color.  I mushed one, two or three colors onto my craft mat, spritzed lightly with water, and dragged the paper through the wet colors.  By dragging the papers, I get a nice smooth blend of colors.  Because I had so much ink left over, I pulled out some blank Artist Trading Card mixed media paper to sop up the extra inks.  I dried the papers between each layer, did another drag-through w...