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Mixed Media Journal Cover - Nancy Sheads

Mixed Media Journal Cover with Art Foamies

Hey Art Foamies Fans! I'm Nancy Sheads and I'm this week's guest artist. Today I'm featuring a project that was actually a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law. She has always kept a journal so I decided to get her a journal and a nice fountain pen. Since the cover was plain, I decided to jazz it up a bit so I pulled out some Art Foamies stamps and acrylic paint and got to work.

Today's project features:

 

Mixed media journal cover with Art Foamies

 
Since my SIL will be writing in the journal, I wanted to keep the cover flat so I had to design something without multiple layers or embellishments that might make writing inside the journal cumbersome. In addition, the journal was soft-bound so I decided against any sort of texture paste, embossing paste, etc. for fear that it would break off from the cover with use.

I cut a piece of Canson XL watercolor paper to be slightly smaller than the cover size and rounded the corners on one side to match the journal cover. I chose watercolor paper because I wasn't quite sure where I was going with the design and wanted something that would hold up to paints as well as ink. The texture of the watercolor paper was an added benefit.

I decided to use acrylic paints instead of inks. I had several tubes of Liquitex Basic Acrylics on hand so I started with a color palette of pink (Medium Magenta), turquoise (Light Blue), and lime green (Brilliant Yellow Green). All of the paints were too bright and/or dark out of the tube so I mixed each color with Titanium White to make them more pastel. Using a wide brush, I applied each color randomly to the paper, creating blocks of color that covered most of the page. It looked pretty bad at this point, but I've learned that the secret to mixed media is to keep adding layers of color and texture so I just kept going. 

For the next layer, I used various Art Foamies stamps and additional acrylic paint colors. I squeezed a small amount of paint onto my inking palette and used a brayer to spread it out. Then I patted the stamp into the paint and stamped as usual. I started with one of the stamps in Sarah Matthew's Kente Cloth set in Light Blue (full color, no white), followed by Gypsy Soul | Harlequin Backdrop in Brilliant Purple; Gypsy Soul's Honeycomb Foam Stamp in Primary Yellow; one of the stamps in Kae Pea's Microcosms Set in Brilliant Yellow Green (full color, no white); and Balzer Designs' Dino Skin in Titanium White. I applied the stamps randomly and allowed the colors an designs to overlap.

For the focal stamps, I used one of the stamps from Einat Kessler' Woman Power and the "Create" sentiment from Gale Nation's Dream, Believe, Create by Art Foamies. I stamped both using Liquitex Acrylics in Mars Black.

Mixed media journal cover with Art Foamies

Originally, I was going to use a Posca Pen to doodle a border, but decided instead to dip the edge of an old credit card into the black paint and add various lines as shown.

 

Once everything was dry, I glued the watercolor panel to the front of the cover to complete the project.

I'm happy to say that she loved it!

That's all for me today! Hope you found some crafty inspiration!

Nancy


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