Harvinaisen Kaunis Elämä: February 2022

Thursday 17 February 2022

Art Journaling with Winter Tales for Finnabair

Hello friends,

The new Finnabair Mica Powders are one of my favourite mixed media materials ever. For me, to easily and quickly dye my laces to match the colour theme of any given art journal page, right when I want and need it, is The Most Wonderful Thing.

February is a month of soft pinks and hence, I end up using blue, of course, as fitting inside any given box has never been my forte, not really. And it was worth it, as it turned out, the new Mica Powder Set Winter Tales fulfilled my several years long hunt for the perfect sea glass colour.

Here’s how I made my sea glass blue art journal pages…

I started with dyeing the laces, cheesecloth, and silk ribbons with Mica powder. I mixed the powder with a lot of water, and dipped the materials in the mixture, pressed and rolled them between my palms long enough of them to absorb the colours, and let them dry. It was just simple as it sounds.

I had an art journal on the making, and I chose materials that would naturally fit in, so it was Finnish vintage paper for the background, and a bit of white Heavy Gesso for softening. I mixed Modeling Paste and Mica powder, and with Laurels stencil, made the background to match the dyed laces.

Then it was time to create a collage for which I used prints, cheesecloth, linen cord, a button, lace, and so on. I added a layer of Clear Gesso on top of each print, to protect them from absorbing too much paint, as I painted the pages with a mixture of Impasto paints Pitch Black and Dark Chocolate.

It was a simple and quite straightforward process, but somehow, I managed to use 1,5 hours for making It – again. But then, creativity takes time, and when you are a person with a brain injury, it means everything takes double the time you have planned.

The long (only slightly speeded up) vide of the process here: https://youtu.be/3-JM0VU0SeQ

Wishing you softest and gentlest of sea and sky-blue moments,

Emilia

MATERIALS USED:

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-art-basics-heavy-gesso-white

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-art-basics-heavy-gesso-clear

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-art-basics-soft-matte-gel

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-art-basics-modeling-paste

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-art-alchemy-impasto-paint-dark-chocolate

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-art-alchemy-impasto-paint-pitch-black

https://mixedmediaplace.com/prima-finnabair-stencil-laurels

NEW RELEASE WINTER TALES MICA POWDER SET

NEW RELEASE ANTIQUING WAX, CLEAR

Friday 11 February 2022

Art Daily Cafe - February 2022

Hello friends,

This months’ wonderful theme and deliciously, marvelously soft mood board inspired me to create a gentle art journal page for my unfinished vintage style art journal. Here’s how I did it.

I covered the coffee dyed pages with vintage papers and added a soft layer of white Heavy Gesso to make them blend more into the background. I mixed the new Winter 2022 Mica Powder with Modeling Paste, to get a pinkish medium to go with the pink theme and added a stencil layer with Irish Tapestry stencil.

Next, I took some lace, silk ribbon, and cheese cloth, and mixed a tiny amount of the same mica powder with water and dyed them. (There’s a tutorial about this in my blog and YouTube.) Now I had the exact same colour in my lace, silk, and in the pages. Then I made vintage style collages for the pages, added some silk yarn and stitched the silk ribbons in place.

As the pages were so very, very pink and soft, I ended up using no love themed quotes, but I added other gentle and encouraging messages on the pages.