A Mixed Media Crafternoon

Whilst I have lots of online crafty friends, none of my local friends are crafters, but I thought I'd have a go and a "crafternoon" session with 3 of them yesterday, with added prosecco as an incentive, not sure if it was the alcohol but they seemed to have a good time!

I threw them in at the deep end and planned a mixed-media background with and then whilst that dried, we put together some BotaniCuts to fill a vase that we finished the day with by doing a little marble foiling.

We started with the background - lots of the stuff we used were from my old personal stash so I can't provide links to the website, but you can take the idea and use either stuff we have in store, or your own stash intsead.   We had a thick piece of packing card (the stuff I sometimes include in your do not bend envelopes - its great for heavy inking techniques) and took a red rubber background and stamped and embossed it in the middle.   Once that cooled, I gave them their first taste of ink blending using oxides - we started pale in the centre and worked out in various shades (4 per pic) to the edges.  Buffing off the embossing with a paper towel once finished.   You can see the deep concentration in this photo...

Next we set about covering some of the area around the edges with washi tapes - tearing them roughly and scattering them randomly.   As a CAS crafter on the whole, I still find mixed media difficult but I was able to attend a workshop a few years ago taught by Mr Holtz himself and his best advice when i was at this stage and unhappy with my placement was to just keep going.  The idea is to keep putting layers of pattern and texture on top until you are happy and to trust it will work out in the end and that the middle stage is ment to look crappy!  

For the next layer we used stencil paste and embossing powders to add more texture, colour and sparkle.  I added some of the new mixed media embossing powders to the corner of mine, in this case lime - its the first time I've played with them and I like the thick texture and speckled detail you get from the mixed colours in each one.   I added some more texture with a couple of Altenew dies - Tropical Leaf Mix and Linear Crossroads.  Finally adding some copper embossed swirls to fill in any gaps that didn't seem balanced (yes even in messy mixed media, I like some balance - with my main elements I stuck to 3s, so 3 bits of stencilling, 3 bold embossed areas etc)  These photos show the texture in more detail.

For the focal point, we used the inner die from The Greetery's Jumbo Jar Die cut from white card and then used the Exquisite Marble Foiling Plate from Altenew to turn it from plain to fabulous marble using my Glimmer machine.

To fill the vase with flowers we cut the Lavender and Pussy Willow Botanicuts from felt (for the flowers) and card for the stems.  For the Bluebells and Hollyhocks we used all card.  I added a fallen rose to the side of my vase using the Rose Flurries die from Altenew.

They all enjoyed the afternoon, and despite the number of bottles of fizz we opened, they even managed to take home a finished picture.   Here's what they made and a close up of one of them.   Not bad to say they'd never done any paper crafting before!

Hope that inspired you to give mixed media a go - or get together with some friends to craft as group crafting is great fun.   My friends want to do it again for Christmas so I'll have to plan another workshop soon!

We're not expecting much in terms of arrivals this week - we will get the Art Impressions finished but other than that, it will be the quiet before the storm later in the month.

Happy Crafting

Tara