I’m trying my hand at both acrylic skins and learning new mixed media painting techniques on canvas. This isn’t the best to turn out for a first time but it’s better than my worst could have been! I like working on wood picture frames much better and may be sticking to that instead, most of my joy comes from using old stuff to create an image so there you go. Creating the acrylic skin was easier than I imagined… will be playing with that a lot more too.
I was lucky enough to read an article on Martha’s blog where she shared a video on painting knives. This is a must see for anyone interested in creating Mixed Media art on canvas.(That’s on my to-do list.. maybe you’ll be surprised to see a finished canvas uploaded to my blog one day!)
This week has been interesting! First off the good news that my shrine is completed and it came out better than I expected my first would look like. Have to say I wrote out plans of what I wanted, even drew diagrams of what went where, and also wrote a checklist of step by steps… so I think that helped to get it done quickly. Well, quicker than I thought it would at least!
On Sunday the family was bored so I decided I’d pay the 16 year old $20 to help me move out of my office/art room… then move me back in after I’d cleaned things up a bit. We didn’t finish until.. well most of it is finished.. just a few straggling boxes left in the living room… holy sheesh if I never have to organize more altered art supplies I’ll forever be grateful. The new setup has my work desk with computer at one side of the room (yay! no art stuff to distract me) and a dedicated art area to the other side that isn’t strewn about with work folders. This is truly a winning combination!
Last that happened was on… I think Monday… I contracted a virus from a program I downloaded online. Ick it was a nasty one… two anti-virus programs couldn’t lick it so today I had to wipe the drive and begin again new. Thank God for my portable drive, I remember when having more than one hard drive was unheard of but now I have five! Watch out for any… never mind if you have this virus you know it… but here’s the name: PAV or, Personal Anti Virus. It’s horrid.
Here’s some photos of the shrine… ready to take a trip to the Las Vegas Altered Art group on Saturday. I’ll be making a paper one then… looking forward to that too!
(Click on photo for close up)
Cheers!
I’m working on an Altered Shrine and needed some flourishes for the side made out of polymer clay. Because of the slight bend in the wood, I had to bake the polymer directly on the wood in the oven and this is what happened. I’m not sure if it was the wood varnish already on the wood piece, the polymer clay reacting to the wood, the epoxy resin I used to fix the top arch a few days ago or the acrylic paints I used to touch up the small “dings” here and there but it bubbled up and left a brown tinge to the rest of the polymer clay creations I had baking in the oven at the same time. Whatever it was I couldn’t repeat it if I tried, lol… and it gave the wood a great distressed look to it. Read below for some of the other things I made in Polymer today… so love that stuff!
Here’s the flourishes I made for the sides (funny THEY didn’t turn brown and were baked on the wood itself while everything else did turn brown that I had on the parchent paper, hmmm) a neat leaf and a few round doo-dads I can use on other future projects.
I saw the cutest buttons on another blog website this morning… so wish I had pretty vintage buttons and not all the ugly, plain ones in my collection. So polymer to the rescue… they still have to be painted but with some pearlescent and metallic paints they’ll be a knockout.
I ran some polymer through my paper crinkle hand tool thing and it made some neat textures! The polymer stuck to it like white rice on paper but the effect’s pretty cool. I think I’ll save these for a mixed media canvas I’m thinking about.
I’ve been dying to make atc’s out of polymer so I made a base sized at 2.5 x 3.5 inches. What I do with it I have no idea, but that’s for another day. I also made a few small square pieces to use on other projects and too neat… I ran my sheet of prepared polymer into a “stamp” shape punch-stamp and it worked! The impression came out beautifully. The second one didn’t align to the edges correctly and I only got 1/2 a stamp out of it, but it looks old and torn which is more than perfect.
That’s it for my polymer creations…. have to get back to my Altered Shrine and see what to do next!
I found this artist by accident as I was trying to locate different examples of tryptych shrines. Ok now seriously, I want to grow up and do art just like she’s accomplishing… holy cow its fabulous! Here’s an example and a link to her blog, be prepared to drool
Link: Nora Johnson – Mixed Media Artist
I found Manon’s blog… she has several posts showing how she creates texture on her mixed media canvas pieces. She also shows her blopper videos for all to see.. so nice to see a person willing to show their mistakes! I’ve subscribed to keep up with her… suggest you take a peek too.
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