Running Collage

Hello! Another sports-themed collage this morning. 

I really loved this quote when I saw it on Pinterest and decided to make something right away.

This canvas background had been languishing in my pile for about two years. I really loved the dimensional paste flower silhouettes, the doily stencil and the spray paint but it felt too... assembled... literal? I'm not sure. 

It didn't float my boat. 

But when I added a runner, and the flowers morphed into speed, or something to add motion, excitement, something to draw the eye  - now we're cooking with gas!

Please click to enbiggan :-)

Available on Etsy

Skull Canvas Bag

I've been totally obsessed with painting canvas and sewing it up into totes and bags. 

This fabric was spray painted through a hand-cut stencil and then  decorated with loads of fabric paint. 

I'm so smitten.

Tip: If you see a trashed purse at a garage sale or second hand store that has cute handles, buy it. You can 'harvest' them (and sometimes other decorative/useful elements like zippers and snaps too) for use in your own projects.

I love how the sides look on this one.

What color of tote would you like to see me make? 

I'll whip one up from the comments.

Warmly,

~~~Nicole

Neon Pink Painted Canvas Tote

So... our new house is under construction due to some very unexpected major issues. 

It has made unpacking tricky to say the least. 

But, as I was opening boxes and seeing what's what I found a huge bin of fabric paint and some white duck cloth. 

SCORE!!!

Within a few hours that white fabric had an extreme makeover. 

Since I need a tote as we've been doing all our errands by foot, I got to it.

What do you think?

As it is my first bag, I'm pretty happy with it. And we ran errands with it and it was super-comfy and held loads of heavy things without a hitch. Yay!

Mixed Media Wall Plaque

Shannon is the owner of Bombshell Stamps and she's one of the coolest, kindest, most generous ladies I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Her tremendous talent brings out the best in everyone around her.

 Today we're celebrating Shannon's Birthday with a surprise blog hop. 

Instead of a birthday card I made a wall plaque featuring her gorgeous stamp, Madonna Woodcut . It's one of my all-time favorites.

For the background I took an old calendar page (nice and thick, great for crafting and it keeps it out of the trash bin while saving you money) and embellished it with acrylic paint, spray paint and splatters. 

The image is stamped with Memento black ink and colored with Copic markers. After coloring, I fussy-cut it out and finished the edges with black marker. The collage is mounted on a plaque I found for 75% off at Michaels in their home decor department. I always collect interesting bases when I see them at a reasonable price as I know they'll be fun to collage on top of.

To see the rest of the hop just follow the list below. 

Bombshell's Blog

Alaine

Alison

Katie 

Kelli

Kim

Marnie

Stempelientje

Susie 

Sharon 

Kas 

Holley

Leslie

Alyssa

You Are Here --->Nicole

Cheryl

Milo 

Alex

Teresa

Jenn

Kathi 

Again, Happy Birthday, Shannon!

May the year ahead be filled with good health, laughter and success.

Warmly,

~~~Nicole

La Calavera Catrina: Mixed Media Day of the Dead Painting

Here's my latest redone canvas. I thought I'd show you the before and afters. La Calavera Catrina is a companion piece to the Shadow Man I posted on Monday. Basically I took an old canvas that we'd painted on years ago, covered it in gesso and then spray-painted through stencils to add a little something to start with.

My next step was to add collage pieces, acrylic paints and pen work to personalize it. Then I splashed alcohol ink here and there to bring all the disparate parts together.

Then I started blocking out the main image and deciding what parts to keep and what t conceal. 

I imagined her as a Painted Lady Calavera so I left her chest designs exposed but covered over a lot of the stenciling on her face.

Her mouth and necklace are two of my favorite parts.

I used caran d'ache neo colors for most of the drawing. They blend into the acrylic paint beautifully and provide their own shading when they smear. 

Her hat is decorated with My TCW Balzer Designs Feather stencil.

This canvas was originally painted by one of my boys in a spider web pattern with thick dimensional paint you squeeze out of a tube. You can still see the raised sections. To highlight the texture, I scraped off the acrylic paint and gesso down to the spray paint. I love the effect.

Thanks so much for visiting. Have a great weekend!

Voodoo Man Mixed Media Canvas

During this year's season finale of Grimm we met a zombie raising vow-doo man. I love the iconic, inspiring imagery. 

From Grimm:

Here's the villain from Disney's Princess and the Frog:

And this picture was too amazing to pass up.

So I took a crack at my own Shadow Man.

I started with an old canvas and gessoed over the previous picture. While the gesso was wet I etched words and marks into it. You can see the water-reactive colors coming through and tinting the gesso. Yummy!

Once dry, I spray painted the whole thing. Lately I've really enjoyed painting a background entirely and then blocking out sections with a solid color until the picture emerges.

 A few close ups:

It's the first time I've tried flowers and I'm hooked. You'll be seeing more of these.

Here's how that texture worked out. I love etching into wet gesso. 

It creates so much visual interest.

The playing cards might be my favorite part :-)

My husband took this canvas and hung it in his office as soon as it was dry. What a sweet compliment !

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

Warmly,

~~~Nicole

Art Journal Page Featuring Stampotique

(click to see this full-sized)

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Hope your week is going well. We're busy unpacking and getting ready for our trip back to Canada next week. It's exciting to see the house coming together.
I'll share pictures as soon as I can find my camera ASAP

This week Kim picked the challenge over at the Stampotique  Designer Challenge Blog and would you believe it's their 100th challenge? Huge congrats to everyone involved. It's one of the few challenge blogs I can't wait for each week and I play along with regularly.

The  SDC Challenge 100  theme is, "Anything Goes" and I LOVE being able to just mess around and see where inspiration takes me.

It took me to my art journal. Surprise. Surprise.

On the left side I used Beauty Verse on a mixed media tag that features spray ink, stenciling, french dictionary text and messy stitching with black thread. 

The base of the page has layers of paint, stencils (fragmented flowers is one), stamping and Neocolor II and I brought it all together with a tiny bit of striped wash tape. 

For the right side, I built the base up with paint, stencils, spray and music paper. 

 I stamped Heart Throb on a Handmade layers tags from Elle's Sudio and colored him with copics. Stamping on pre-made (printed) tags is one of my favorite short cuts. What you lose in control over the paper you more than gain back in the illusion of complexity.

Doesn't it look like the red chevron at his feet is washi tape and the blue dotted 'stamping' to his left is also the printed tag. The "no. 12' too. In reality, all I added to the tag was Heart Throb and the red splatter. 

Isn't Heart Throb just the most loveable stamp? I'm smitten.

To match things up nicely I added the other half of the ripped piece of striped washi tape above the focal image. I think that sort of symmetry brings a lot of balance to an art journal page.

Speaking of balance, did you notice how the two sides are very different but the weight of the images is about the same, the colors are repeated (blue on the left in amongst the orange and red and the yellow on the right)

Also in addition to the striped washi tape,  I had manilla tags on both sides as well as red paint splatters.

Sometimes art journal pages can get a little crazy - and that's awesome - but if you are looking for something a bit more calm to look at, or you want to make sure your quote gets as much attention as your focal image, you can do that with weight and symmetry and you don't have to sacrifice fun painty layers. 

Thanks so much for popping by.

Warmly,
~~~Nicole

Surrender to the Wind: Mixed Media Painting

This might be my favorite painting to date, but you've all heard that before. It's funny how attached we become to our art. Then a new shiny thing comes along and the new one is the most favorite. 

This one though - it feels like I was sharing a part of me. And that is what I've been working toward.

Before:

And After:

I love how the funky background made each flower so unique.

This was my second attempt at block letters. They are both harder and easier than you'd think. I bet practice will make a huge difference... and confidence.

I may turn this project into a class. In my opinion, it would be accessible to everyone from motivated beginners to advanced crafters. 

What do you think?

For me, I love a piece that is easy enough to do but looks wonderfully complex.

Have a GREAT weekend!

Warmly,

~~~Nicole