Mid Month Guest Designers - April Showers

Welcome back to another Mid-Month Guest Designer Post! We have two amazing projects today: one from our April Guest Designer, Zuzu and one from a frequent MMMC player, Georgie!

First let's take a look at the gorgeous piece that Zuzu made using materials from DecoArt. She actually created this art piece using the BACK of her original April Showers canvas!

This is what Zuzu had to say about the meaning behind her reverse canvas: "It's what came in to my head when we were told the April Showers theme. I did nesting birds as it's April. I added rust because showers in the garden make rust, and the crystal drops are representative of the rain drops and drips you see in the garden after a shower."

I really love Zuzu's reverse canvas, it's such a fabulous idea and also just plain gorgeous! Thank you to Zuzu and DecoArt for being with us throughout the month of April!

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Now let's look at the lovely Project and tutorial by our frequent player, Georgie...

Hi there!!

Before I start I’d like to say how honored I am to be invited to guest for this amazing challenge blog – thank you so much for having me.

When seeing that the theme was April Showers, straight away I knew I wanted to use hot glue to invoke the pattern of rain, and of course the quote ‘April Showers Brings May Flowers’ kept buzzing through my head. But I wanted to go a little abstract and modern rather than shabby chic.

It’s no secret that I love up-cycling and will take the opportunity when I get the chance, so I thought creating a vase from a glass bottle wood be perfect for my ‘May Flowers’.

Firstly I dripped hot glue down the bottle.

Then painted over with white gesso.

Next I used micro beads, as I just love the texture these give, which I thought just suited the feeling of rain.

Then I flicked up black gesso from the bottom to ground the bottle.

Next came a really fun part, using some Lindy’s sprays and pure dripping madness!!! I started with darker colours of greens and turquoise…

Finishing up with oranges and yellows…

(…And some Silks, Twinks and Treasure gold – sorry forgot to pic those parts, I was sooo lost in creating that the camera just lay abandoned)

I hit the raised areas with the treasure gold so it would have some extra sparkle.

Next I gathered some ‘bits’, and played with the layout. When I found the set up I liked, I used blue and gold paint to ‘tint’ the items. (I didn’t end up using the flowers as I they didn’t seem to fit with what I was going for in my head.)

Here you can see the colours and the drip/rain effect loads better. I had to use my camera phone for the other pics in a room with not very good lighting.

The last thing was just adding the dew drops

I’ll finish up here and I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any questions please do give me a shout and I’ll be happy to help.

Have a lovely day

Hugs

Georgie xx

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Thank you Georgie for being our Mid-Month guest and thank you Zuzu for creating two amazing projects! 

CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR CURRENT CHALLENGE: APRIL SHOWERS! Our amazing Sponsor and Prizes are courtesy of DecoArt! You have until April 30, 11:59PM EST to enter! Good luck and have fun :)

March 2015 Winners!!

Please click here for our  "April Showers" Challenge

It's time to reveal our winners of our March "Birds of a Feather" Challenge! We had so many amazing entries last month, it was really difficult to pick the winners! Thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate your support. Check out all of the March entries in our gallery here.

The winner of our March challenge is #84- Arnoldo L. Romero with his stunning ATC! Arnoldo, please grab you winners badge below!

Arnoldo

Here are our March Honorable Mentions (in no particular order). Pick up your badge below!

Kathy

Irma

Athanasia

Jennidee

Rebecca

Our random winners of the Gelatos Prizes offered by Faber Casetell Design Memory Craft are Mayoori and Julie! Please email Rachel at rwkrafts(at)gmail(dot)com with your mailing address to claim your fabulous prize!
Mayoori

Julie

Thank you to everyone who joined in our challenge! We look forward to seeing all of your gorgeous projects in our "April Showers" Challenge

Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #11 - April Showers

Welcome to the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #11

"April Showers"!

For the month of April, we ask that you create something having to do with rain. This could be umbrellas, rain boots, clouds, rainbows, etc.... use your imagination and get creative! Be sure to tell us how you incorporated something "rainy" into your project!

We are SO excited to announce our amazing April sponsor and prize! The generous people at DecoArt are offering fantastic DecoArt product prize packs to THREE lucky winners! We would like to thank the generous people at DecoArt who so graciously provided all the members of our design team with loads of fun DecoArt Mixed Media products to use on the projects they created for this month's April Showers Challenge. 

Here is a little more about DecoArt Media Products:

"Anyone can create beautiful mixed media art. DecoArt's Media program includes products formulated to work seamlessly together to create amazing mixed media art.

Included in the line are fluid acrylics, antiquing creams, misters, gessoes, mediums, crackles, varnishes, and textures. Made in the USA."

Each of our 3 Random winners will receive a prize package similar to this one filled with DecoArt Media Products!!! 

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Meet Our April Guest Designer - Zuzu - A member of the DecoArt International Design Team

"I am a trained therapist who's hobbies are crafting, hill walking and playing musical instruments (see how i missed out addicted to the XBox despite me spending more time on that than anything lol) My dad was an oil paint artist in his spare time and for as far back as I can remember, I have always been creative too; making items for my Doll's house and taking up tapestry at the age of 10. I started card making about 11 years ago and soon got tired of it and slowly advanced through various papercrafts towards altered art and mixed media. My preferred style is "vintage, distressed, shabby, grunge".  I love texture and I love rust, but I do like to break away from it now and again and do clean bright colourful things." 

We adore Zuzu's "April Showers" project she created for our challenge using the awesome DecoArt Media products. We are so excited to let you know that Zuzu actually created 2 projects for our challenge, they are very different from each other. Check back on April 15th to see Zuzus' second take on our "April Showers" Challenge. Thank you, Zuzu, for joining us! And, I also want to thank Andy Skinner for helping us out so much with this challenge and introducing us to the amazing Zuzu!!

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And now for some inspiration from our Design Team...

DONNA

Donna used lots of DecoArt products on her project including: Media Fluid Acrylic Paints, Media Misters, Crackle Paste, Gesso, Americana Writer, Matte Medium, Craft Twinklers, Americana Birds Stencil (from Michaels)

RACHEL

Rachel used these DecoArt Materials on her canvas: Matte Medium, Media Fluid Acrylic Paints, Media Misters, Liquid Glass and Crackle Medium 

LYNN

Lynn used these DecoArt products on her project: Matte Medium, Crackle Paste, Gesso, Carbon Black and Burnt Umber Fluid Acrylic Paints

MELANIE

Melanie used these DecoArt Products: Fluid Acrylic paint, Crackle Paste, Gesso (White) and Interference Paint.

KAREN

Karen used DecoArt Media Misters, Media Fluid Acrylics, Gel Medium, Gesso, Media Interference Paint, and Antiquing Cream on her project

ASTRID

Astrid used almost entirely all DecoArt Media Paints and 
Mediums on her project.

DEBBIE 

Debbie used DecoArt Crackle Paste, Media Fluid Acrylic Paints and 

Media Antiquing Creams on her project

Make sure you visit each designer's blog for step by step tutorials on how they created their beautiful projects! Be sure to leave some comment love for them... we LOVE hearing from you all!

We don't have many rules, but ask that you do follow the ones we have. *Mention in your post how your project was inspired by "April Showers". 

* Your post must link back to the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge post
** Add a link to your direct post, not your entire blog, a YouTube Video or a Pinterest Board**
* You can combine with as many other challenges as you want.
* You can enter up to 5 times, create whatever you want, and HAVE FUN!

You have until April 30, 11:59pm EST to enter! Remember... TWO random lucky winners will receive a DecoArt Product Prize Package!!

An InLinkz Link-up

You Still Have Time to Play!!

You still have time to play in our March "Birds of a Feather" Challenge 

We would like to thank all our players for your support of our 10th Challenge. Our gallery is filled with beautiful and inspiring mixed media creations that follow our "Birds of a Feather" theme. 

We just wanted to remind you that you have until midnight EST on Tuesday, March 31 to play in our March "Birds of a Feather" Challenge.

Two random winners will receive a Gelatos Kit from our sponsor Faber Castell Design Memory Craft. Our design team will pick a winner and several honorable mentions who will be able to proudly display our graphic on their blogs. Winners will be announced on Sunday, April 5.

Our new challenge will start on Wednesday, April 1 and run through April 30.  Be sure to check back then to find out what our new theme is and who our new sponsor and guest designer are.

Also, did you know that we are on social media?? Here are all the places you can follow us for mixed media inspiration, techniques and challenge reminders. And, be sure to follow our blog!!

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mixedmediamc
Twitter - https://twitter.com/mixedmediamc
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbaaS2uV_xR-MR98X0N1upA
Instagram - mixedmediamc

We look forward to seeing your amazing "Think Pink" creations and having you join us for our 11th challenge starting Wednesday, April 1!

Mid-Month Guest Designer - Ingrid Kristina V

The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge is starting a new mid-month guest designer post! We'll be inviting some frequent players to come join us for the 15th of the month to share a new project and tutorial with us all.

Our first mid-month guest designer is INGRID from Ingrid's Craft Corner! We love what she created and we truly thank her for sharing her work with us!

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Welcome, Ingrid!

Hi there, my name is Ingrid Kristina V. I’m in my early 30’s and live in London with my Fiancé and our two little girls. I have always been a crafty soul and enjoy cardmaking, art journaling, creating fine or mixed media art and more, which I share regularly on my blog Ingrid's Crafts Corner. My cardmaking style is clean, simple and contemporary, with bold and bright features, as well as artsy, grungy and fun. My art could be described as grungy, textured, vintage, but I also like to play with colours and visual textures. I have an enormous passion for mixed media and love the creative freedom it gives me. I also love to experiment and often develop new techniques that I share with excitement with my blog buddies. 

Winner of the UK national competition - The Card Designer 2014 - Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine, also a Designer 2015 for the magazine.

Designer for GlitzCraft. 

Designer for Eclectic Ellapu challenge blog. 

Owner & designer for the Mixed Media World challenge blog. 

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Firstly, I'd like to thank Rachel and her team for inviting me to guest design for the fabulous Mixed Media Monthly Challenge blog. It is a great honour! 

I had a real fun creating my project for this post. I wanted my artwork to be textured (otherwise it wouldn't be me), I wanted it to have an organic feel and have soft pastel colours. I think I achieved all of the above. 

It all started with Gesso base on a grey board, followed by a layer of a site pretty lace trims to the left. I added layers of masking tape, tulle fabric and some torn natural twine arranged into organic patterns around the edges. 

The entire piece was treated with a bit of Gesso.

I formed a heart on top of my lace area using my Light Modelling Paste by Liquitex and let it dry. This was frustrating, you can't heat dry modelling paste as it will puff up. Or can you?!:) and so I did! I wanted to. It was nice and puffy when I used my fingers to pull the upper 'skin' of the paste to create wrinkles. Then I let it completely dry. I also added some of the White Crackle paste by Prima, covered some areas with the Glass Beads by Galleria and when dry covered all in a layer of Gesso again.

It was time to add colour to my project. I decided to use my beautiful Aquarelle Pencil set by Faber-Castell knowing they are very pigmented and the colour choices are endless. I'm proud to say I just HAD TO buy all 120 of them :) My name is Ingrid and I'm a Craft-a-holic! They are awesome! I chose these gorgeous shades of peach and pink. I wanted to highlight and shade only around the edges of the layered lace so the pencils were perfect for it. I thought about using my Big Brush Pitt pens by Faber-Castell, but the pencils did the job beautifully! I used my water brush to distribute the colour. 

Now you will think I'm a bit crazy... My Mum certainly was when I asked her to pick some dry twigs there. She certainly thought I was bonkers when explaining I wanted to make a bird nest :) I elaborated further that being a mixed media artist means using various media and materials bringing them together into one masterpiece. Mixed media at least for me means an absolute freedom of expression and that's the way I create. That's why I love Mixed Media style. So to continue.. Now I had a half of a dry bush inside my kitchen, a great reminder of the fact my garden needs trimming (I wonder if this was my Mum's intention..), I selected a few tiny twigs and literally glued them into my project using my Mod Podge Matte. I simply left it under an acrylic block for a while. All covered in Gesso again, lightened up the heart too… 

Ok, the base was ready. Out came the Hazelnut Distress Paint and the Calypso Teal diluted Dylusions spray. I added a colour here and there diluting it and drying it as I went. When happy enough I added some of the gorgeous Rust Distress EP by Tim Holtz and the yummy Shabby Blue and Shabby White frantage by Stampendous to a few corners and edges. I love creating a contrast using glitter on top of my grunge. I personally came up with a name for this style - 'Glam Grunge'. Catchy, right?!:) 

I sponged around the raised areas and edges using the Archival Potting Soil ink and highlighted the raised areas in white Gesso. Added some Glimmer Glaze by Tattered Angels. 

I added my embellishments - the birdie, the cage (Tim Holtz die), these were inked with Distress Inks and crackled using the Picket Fence Crackle paint by Tim Holtz. I added a few buttons, some are vintage like the cute little round ones on the front. I 'rusted' a few metal buttons simply by embossing them using the Tim Holtz rust EP. Do not touch the metal buttons immediately after heating the powder. Guess how I know?! I finished the piece off with a few paper flowers by Glitzcraft and added some gesso on top. It needed a little extra colour to the flowers so I used the Aquarelle pencils taking the colour with a wet brush.. 

I added some half rusted metal rings from my stash and a self-made badge to the top left corner too. Masterpiece done!

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Isn't her canvas GORGEOUS?! I love how she gathered twigs from her garden to create a bird's nest! Thank you to Ingrid for joining our March "Birds of a Feather" challenge as a guest designer! Make sure you visit her BLOG HERE to see much more from Ingrid!

CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR CURRENT CHALLENGE! Our sponsor and prizes are from Faber Castell Design Memory Craft!! You have until March 31 11:59PM to enter!