a fresh start

I’ve been wanting to give mixed media a go for a long time. I even started a canvas but struggled with getting the layering to do what I wanted to, and thus did the logical thing and shoved it in the cupboard and forgot about it. But then a lot of poking and prodding and “oh em gee you should start an art journal”ing, and a flutter of Pinning, and I decided to give it a go. I pinned a stack of pieces I love to my mixed media board to study and try and tease out their secrets. I also pinned a few YouTube tutorials, and after much humming and hawing, I decided a good starting place would be to follow along. I was overwhelmed at first – I don’t have stencils! And mists! And Gesso! And lots and lots of stamps! But I decided to at least attempt it, and so, starting with this tutorial as my inspiration, I flicked through my meager stash. I don’t have all the bits she used, but I thought it should be easy enough to work around, and make the flags myself.

I have a little pad of 4×6 Sizzix papers in my patterned paper pile, that I bought a few years back. I’ve never really used them much, and these days they don’t really suit my scrapping style. For this exercise though, I thought they’d be perfect. The sky actually took two layers of paper after my first layering of paint turn it a muddier blue than I expected, so I just glued some more paper over the top, and started again. The joy of mixed media. After the background was down, I started to feel more confident, and was ready to move away from following the tutorial too closely. Maybe a house would be cute? I knew I wanted to use some text underlays/peeks, and then inspiration struck. What if I did a girl (a bit cliche in mixed media, I know), and used her to showcase one of my favourite Bible verses? My inspirations were this faceless girl by Julie Nutting. I loved the idea of a person as a blank canvas, which led me to the verse I chose – a long time favourite we once came across in Bible Study, and dubbed as part of “The Bible for Mamas”.

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23)

So aside from the pinking of her cheeks, I left her faceless. Each day is a fresh start. The day before is done and past, and a new day sees a new chance to be made in His image, to start again, to be renewed in His mercy. Without a face, also, she has no expression. She’s not sad. She’s not happy. She can be whatever I as the viewer want her to be. She is everything all at once, and regardless of the emotions of each day, the next she is renewed, energised and uplifted. I do love this verse, I find it encouraging when I struggle with a healthy dose of mummy guilt (heck, who doesn’t at times?), I know that the next morning is a fresh start and a chance to do things differently.

Things I love about this piece – most of it! I especially like the yellow colouring on the pieces of the heart tree stamps (more noticeable in the blue sky, but also show in the second picture in the green grass. And the way the text turned out, very happy with that. I love that I didn’t have to buy a thing, and that I managed to get some interesting effects (and probably stretched my creativity!) but being forced to use what I had!

Things I don’t love – the heavy outlining of the girl. I had outlined with a dry Derwent Inktense pencil, but after seeing how nicely the red Inktense worked when wet (around the highlighted verse), I decided to redo the outline in wet black. Yeah, not a huge fan.

Supplies used – scrapbooking paper, acrylic paint (mixed with flow medium to lower the opacity to help show those cute papers!), a smidge of water colour paint, craft glue, owl and heart-tree stamps, small scattered blossom stamp, scrap of lace, Bible passage scanned and printed on regular printer paper, Derwent Inktense pencils, Copic markers, chalk pastel pencil, assorted paintbrushes, sea sponge. All from stash.

Yeah, I’m addicted. I loved playing around with different techniques and various mediums to get the different effects. Next on the cards is a mixed media bookmark I’ve got an idea for…

{shared with Essentially Jess for I Blog on Tuesdays}

This is project number three (one of at least two in October) in my “totally pinspired” challenge to turn my pins into projects. We are aiming to complete a minimum of two pins a month. For all my Totally Pinspired projects, click here. You can find my Pinterest boards here, and my completed pins board here. If you’ve been totally pinspired as well, I’d love to see what you’ve been making!