As we are nearing the end of the month, and therefore, the end of our March challenge, I wanted to let you know that we'll be giving away a copy of The Art of Personal Imagery by Corey Moortgat very soon. If you'd like to be in the running, remember to upload at least one image to the March 08 Challenge folder, located in the Public Gallery for this group. The image should be an example of how you worked with this month's challenge and should also include your name in the caption. On March 31, we'll randomly draw a name from everyone with art in that folder, and that person will be sent a free copy of the book! We want to see what you've been up to, so please share!
It may be nearing the end of March, but it's the start of a new week, and that means a new free project! While this week's project doesn't feature the use of personal imagery, in her book, Semiprecious Salvage, author Stephanie Lee does have a few projects that sport her own personal imagery and I know she'd love to see how you incorporate your own images into handmade jewelry.
The project you see here was completed using an image I took of my frosty front yard, after an ice storm moved through the Ohio Valley. It's hard to tell from this photo, but I printed my image onto shrink plastic, then encased it in a little plexi box. So as you can see, incorporating personal imagery can go well beyond scrap booking or collage and can also be done with jewelry.The possibilities are endless!
For more adventures with our March Mixed-Media Challenge, I decided to start with another favorite vacation photo--and I know what you're thinking, but no, that's not me in the white nightie. :) I chose an image I snapped through the gate of a gorgeous antebellum home in the heart of Charleston, South Carolina--whenever I look at it, I think back to that perfect spring day, strolling the streets and taking in the sights.
I also jumped at the chance to use one of the vintage book covers I blogged about a few weeks back (Click! You can download one too!), and was happy to discover that my small collection of vintage ephemera contained an old card from inside a library book that tied in perfectly. I loved the red of the carpet on the book cover, so I used red paint to trace the intricate design of the gate in my photo, and the rest of the work developed from there.
Today marks the official launch of MyCraftivity.com. If you have been a member of our community through these weeks of testing and tweaking the site, thank you for you participation (and, of course, for your patience)! If you are a new member: Welcome, welcome, welcome. We sincerely hope that here in MyCraftivity you will find a community that enriches your craft. And if you like what you see, we hope you'll spread the word!
Starting today, we will have a new free (yes, really! free!) downloadable project every week here at the Mixed-Media + Collage blog. This week's curious download is from Altered Curiosities by Jane Wynn. For the free download--and to learn more about the project (and the book)--click here!
Don't miss out; the project will be free this week only. The good news, of course, is that next week another will take it's place.
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.
