Happy Mother's Day!
I will post about the making of this layout soon...It was created in celebration of motherhood for the Mother's Day Flower Show at Featherstone Center for the Arts on Martha's Vineyard.
I just want to wish all the moms and all the nurturers out there a beautiful and loving day!
With Love, Enikö
So I promised you a post about how I turned my mixed media angels (see previous post) into Christmas cards and tags. It's Christmas Eve day and I still have to finish wrapping presents, but a promise is a promise, so here's my Christmas gift to my scrapbooking friends...
After printing off multiple 3"x5" copies of my artwork (taken from photos), I trimmed the images and adhered them to blank cards that I purchased at Michael's craft store. I added lace or ribbon trim and embellished the angels with pearls and crystals...each one a little different, as the mood struck me.
Next, I added sparkle to the snow on the evergreens and the ground, trying several variations of Stickles by Ranger, and made some with crystal snow. Sometimes I even applied some to the angel's wings.
Don't you just love the sparkle? ...Makes me yearn for a white Christmas.
Here are the Noel Angels, which were adhered to gold cards instead of the silver:
I printed some of these in a little larger size by selecting "fit image to size"...I like both sizes for different reasons. The Noel Angels received embellishments on their halos and on the bells...some on the dresses. I stamped sentiments on the inside (I think these acrylic stamps are by Tim Holtz...love him!):
...And even cutomized a Martha Stewart stamp to personalize the cards:
I printed some of the angels in wallet sizes and turned them into tags:
So there you are...that's how i turned my mixed media artwork into Christmas cards and tags! Some of you may have already received your card in the mail (they kind of went out a little late), but I'm still sending out greetings, so if you didn't get one and you'd like one of my cards, leave a message below and I will send one out to you.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! Enikö
I've been playing around with mixed media for a while, now...using scrapbooking papers and scrapbooking techniques, but just in a different way. I was originally inspired by Christy Tomlinson's She Art on-line workshop, and have since taken my artwork in a new direction. I designed these two pieces for Featherstone's Holiday Gift Show, but fell in love with them instantly and decided to use them to make Christmas cards with.
The paper artwork is applied to 8"x10" Gessoed canvas, layer-by-layer, then painted, inked, and altered. So the first step was to adhere pretty background scrapbooking paper. I chose a sky-blue paper with dots of "snow" and a deep purplish paper with a plethora of stars: I decided that one of my Christmas Angels would be a "Snow Angel" and the other would be simply called "Noel Angel", and I went about to find the right papers for the angels' dresses and used a punch to cut out circles for halos the word "Noel" from a very pretty Christmas-themed scrapbook paper.
The heads and arms of the angels were cut out from old Dictionary pages. I knew I had some lovely dried leaves and velum leaf stickers that would make perfect wings.
I used sparkly white paper to create the ground-snow on one, and a pretty Christmas-y paper for the ground of the other. After sealing everything with Mod Podge, I painted on the hair and colored in the faces and the arms, and added dimension to the dresses with acrylic paint. I happened to have the perfect Jolee's paper evergreen stickers for the Snow Angel, but of course, needed to add some snow with Snow Stickles.
I also added some glittery Stickles to random flakes of snow:
In case you're not familiar with Stickles, basically, they are a line of designer glitter glue by Ranger Ink and are loved by the scrapbooking community for ease of use and consistantly superior quality.
I used some scrapbooking and mixed media techniques to apply ink with a variety of rubber stamps, painted the edges of the canvas with metallic paints, and even added cabochons at the necklines for 3-D embellishments. I absolutely love the way they turned out!
I'm finding it impossible to pick a favorite, but I may be partial to the Snow Angel because of the trees. They are great as seasonal Home Decor pieces, but I'll be turning them into Christmas cards in my next post... So which is your favorite?
(I hope you let me know in your comment below.)
Wishing you Christmas Joy, Enikö
In 2008, while my dad was recovering from hip surgery at my home on Martha's Vineyard, we opted have a quiet, relaxed Thanksgiving...just the three of us...my dad, Jim, and me. It turned out to be one of the more pleasurable of Holidays. -No traveling hassles, no hoopla; just a fabulous feast and an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. I wanted to capture the essence of that dinner...focusing on the feast and the three people who shared it.
There are many approaches to layout design. My method is generally very organic. I select the photographs I wish to scrapbook and I allow them to spark my creativity. Usually the colors that are most predominate in the photos determine the color scheme of my layout, other times, my paper choices might be motivated by the theme. Once my papers & pictures are laid out, an artistic spark ignites, and I scurry about, gathering embellishments that might support my layout. I am driven by story telling, and inspired by my passion to tell the story concisely and well in a double-page spread.
I've seen scrapbook classes that teach sketch-inspired layouts, and have seen scrapbook layout sketches in magazines, but never quite understood why anyone would approach scrapbook layout design in that fashion. Certainly, I have sketched other designs...room design, for instance, jumps into mind. While working as an assistant interior designer at Island Interiors, LLC, sketching was an integral part of designing, but pre-sketching for scrapbooking? Hmmm... Then I stumbled upon a website called Sketch Inspiration, where they post a new sketch every Sunday in an attempt to inspire their followers. There's always a nice little scrapbooking gift offered by a sponsor to add enticement, so I decided to step outside of my comfort zone & give it a try for the Thanksgiving layout. This week's challenge was Sketch #247: Because I'm used to creating double-spread layouts, the idea of using only one 6"x4" photo was truely daunting. I could do it if I had the right photo, but none of the images from that day where sufficient to tell the story of our simple, but bountiful three-person feast. -So I found a way to follow the sketch, and to incorporate all of the photos of that day that I wanted to include, as well:
Well, what do you think? How'd I do?
I'd like to wish you all a Blessed Thanksgiving and a bounty of inspiration...wherever it may come from!
With Gratitude, Enikö
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