Category Archives: art tutorial

art tutorial, craft, handmade card, mixed media

Mixed media greeting card tutorial

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Mixed media cards are easy to put together. I have so many fabric and paper scraps that I could wallpaper an entire house! I often think about what to do with them as I don’t throw much away, especially the hand-painted fabrics. I have used most of them, so now I have mostly scraps. Why not make some handmade cards and give them along with the gifts to friends?

Two benefits from that: You have fun making the cards, and then passing on the joy (hopefully.) If they don’t like a handmade card, they can “gift it forward.”

The Queen of hearts

I came up with a combo of fabrics and paper to make this Queen of Hearts card. I have many watercolor paper pads, and I don’t paint with watercolors so I’m using the heavy-duty paper in many other ways.

I cut one 9×12″ sheet in half, and then I used a bone folder to press the two pieces of paper into cards. You can also buy blank cards with envelopes at the craft stores.

mixed media base: watercolor paper
Mixed media base

I flattened the card and covered it with a paper background on one side. I like to use cool colors to create backgrounds, so I chose blue tones.

mixed media background
mixed media background

I used an old rubber stamp I have of a female face to print onto tan cotton with Stazon deep purple ink. The face looks grayer in the pictures.

mixed media face
mixed media face

To frame the face I needed bolder tones, so I layered some paper outlines. I started with black, and then used some gold wrapping paper as a halo. I added some paper light beams in yellow for more drama.

Mixed media background
mixed media details
mixed media details
mixed media details

I used some hand-painted fabric for the gown and attached it along with the face that I cut from the fabric.

mixed media card
mixed media card
mixed media embelliishments
mixed media embellishments

It’s all in the details!

I added small touches, like a red /pink heart, some “wings” and some do-dads at the bottom. I also decided to cut out a small bird from a piece of paper to attach across the top circle.

mixed media embellishments
mixed media embellishments

Added drama

I used black Stazon ink to color the edges to give the card a faint frame. I used a light touch. I also outlined the bird and the heart with a ballpoint pen to make them more pronounced. As you can see, the red bits gave some spark to the card.

There she is, the Queen of Hearts. It’s a good idea to stamp some words inside the card or write a personal message. In my opinion, it makes a great gift to someone you care about, but I might be biased, haha. A suitable caption might be; “Queen for a day, Happy Birthday!”

I used the same watercolor paper to make this simple art journal. Check out the tutorial in this post: Make your Own Art Journals.

If you are in a crafty mode, check out my tutorial on how to make a Spirit Box.

If you feel like making a Spirit Doll, I have faces for sale you can use. They are available in my Etsy shop: Earth and Faery.

Have a great creative weekend!!

Lots of love,

Maria

art journal, art journaling, art tutorial, texture

Creating texture using only paint

Creating texture is easier than you think. Here is a picture tutorial I made using only paint to make some texture for the background on this art journal page.

I used these tools:

Paint, an old credit card, hair pick, wall texture dodad, nib of a pencil, baby wipes or tissues.

This is the end result.

This is how I made it:

I had no plan for this page other than creating texture.  First, I took some unbleached white and spread it liberally on the page.  I used the edge of a credit card to make some grooves in the paint.Then I used a pencil to dig more marks into the paint.

After that I used a hair pick to get some thinner grooves.

On top of that I used a dodad from the paint store and made some wider grooves. You need to wet the paint to make it pliable.

After that I used the corner of the credit card to slice some smaller grooves sideways over the others.

Now I let it dry, and then I chose a green paint to rub over part of the surface with a tissue.

As you can see, it’s kind of messy and the green covers more the top than the bottoms of the grooves. I took some dark umber on a stiff brush to dig the paint down into the grooves.

Now you can see the grooves well, so the rule is, use dark colors to enhance the grooves if they are important to the project.

Then I decided to add some red paint, which I smeared around with a tissue.

The grooves at the top of the page are not as deep, but it makes for a good contrast. (The white spots is sunlight through the blinds in the window.)

Close up of all the grooves when the paint was laid down. I did add some red paint to the depth of the grooves.

To soften the effect I added more of the original unbleached white over the other colors. Applied carefully so it wouldn’t get into the grooves.

Then I saw a face and decided to enhance that with markers and more paint.

The black marker was pretty harsh so I softened that a bit. I also used a Crayola brown to draw the contours. I softened the effect with my fingertip.

I then gave her a blue top and you can see the markings I made on that and on the pink background that I added.

The girl with the flaming hair was born!

How do you like to apply texture to paper?

Here is another blog post of a painting with mixed media and lots of texture, What Jane Wanted.

Try some texture in your art today! Easy peasy.

xo

Maria

P.S. Looking for a unique Valentine’s gift? I have some mosaic heart plaques in my etsy shop, ready to go. Earth and Faery.