Hi, it's me, Christine. I’m really a scrapbooker at heart, so using personal imagery in my art (the March Challenge as set forth the Mixed Media team earlier this month) wasn’t the hard part for me. The hard part was to not make a scrapbook page but a mixed-media masterpiece. OK, well, I didn’t do that, but I did stretch beyond my norm by first starting with a canvas covered board (12 x 16 inches) and an 8 x 10 photo.

I took Jessica’s advice from my previous blog post and painted the edges of the photo to incorporate it into the background. I then added layers of paper (Anna Griffin), more paint, more paper (BoBunny Designs), the rub-ons (Making Memories), more paint washes (to kick back the darkness of the rub-ons), some pencil scribbles, some pencil journaling which I then wrote over with ink (once the ink was dry, I tried to erase the pencil lines underneath, but the eraser also took away some of the ink, which I liked the look of very much) and a little more paint. Whew.

I guess that’s the difference between what I do when I’m scrapbooking and what I do when I’m mixed-media-ing. When I’m scrapbooking I’m content with just a few pieces of paper, my photos and a bit of journaling. With this, I just wanted to keep adding more—more layers, more playing, more stuff until I was happy with it. And on a lazy weekend with no set agenda, it was the perfect project for me.

Until next time,

Christine