Art Recipe Wednesday: Autumn Greetings!

Hi there folks! How are you doing?

I'm back home from the great classes in lovely Stockholm - it was a great chance to see friends, familiar faces of students from Sweden and Finland and meet new wonderful people who wanted to join me on my messy artistic journey. For this weekend I was again 100% in my element - I love creating and I love teaching - thank you so much for making it possible!

Today I've got a brand new Art Recipe for you: the project is not complicated at all and nice add-ons of Glass Glitter and Art Sugar make it quite pleasing, I suppose!

I hope it will be encouragement for those of you who believe that mixed-media and grungy, messy style in general has to be demanding and hard to create. Let me tell you - it is all not true!

I really believe anyone can do it: step-by-step, adding more layers, textures and colours you can create rich, multi-layered effects and make something which may surprise you in the end!

To start - you can always try with something small and simple such as Riikka's ATCs or dimensional, a bit rustic in style greeting cards - perfect for last days of Autumn. Ready? Here we go!

I always emphasize - I'm not a card-maker at all.

I truly appreciate any handmade cards, tags or any similar small projects I'm lucky to get from my friends. I'm always amazed  by their creativity, skills, precision, ability to put just the right amount of elements on such a small surface...

Yes, here is the reason of my problem with cards: there isn't enough space for me to "play" the way I'd like to. I tried a couple of times - and the effect is usually the same: because of the small size of the card I keep building it and filling with layers and elements until it gets far too dimensional to put in any kind of envelope or even a box (!). The same happened this time...

The whole card is a marriage of fabric, kraft paper and metal with a delicate touch of paper leaves and two kinds of glitter: Art Basics Glass Glitter and Art Sugar. You can see delicate sparkle on the leaves which I created using Soft Matte Gel and White Art Sugar on the detailed photo below.

After adding a bit of colour to it, the effect matches almost any style of the card - it looks almost like a touch of frost on a cold Autumn morning!

The middle of the composition is decorated with Mechanicals Bottle Caps filled with Glass Glitter glued with 3D Gloss Gel. You can use this idea to add more shine and interest to any kind of  project - after drying Glass Glitter is really hard to remove!

The final look of the card and the colour palette was a matter of last minute decision. In fact, I was planning to keep it really neutral, just whites, browns and metal but it looked far too cold for me.

I sprayed it green, brown orange and gold and added a beautiful little feather I got from Andrew a couple of weeks ago.

Looks like I'm not mentally ready for the Winter and Christmas season yet... but you can totally imagine this card in delicate, cold blues and grays, right?

Here comes the Art Recipe and Step-by-step for you - enjoy!

1. I started the whole project with cutting 3 layers of fabric and kraft paper (from an old paper bag) for the background of the card composition. I checked the size of my kraft card base and I cut the bottom layer 1 cm smaller than the base, then the next layer a bit smaller and again next layer - smaller than the previous one.

I used Prima Elementals Resist Canvas - Honeycomb and Polka Dot for the bottom and top layers and kraft paper for the middle layer. I glued them together but I left the card base aside until the end of the project - just to keep it safe for the time of spraying or glueing.

2. I gathered all the important elements for my composition: a doily, a doily cut-out, some white thread, couple of  Mechanicals - including bottle caps and a large pendant cap, paper leaves, canvas and lace elements.

I placed the smallest bottle cap decorated with a pretty crystal in the bigger one using 3D Gloss Gel as my glue and sprinkled 2 tones of Glass Glitter (Sterling and Gold Rush) mixed together around the small cap. I left it to dry and continued with other elements of my card.

3. Using Soft Matte Gel as my glue I decorated the leaves: after applying the Soft Gel on the leaves with a brush, I sprinkled White Art Sugar on the top of them - the effect was wonderful. I carefully collected leftovers of Art Sugar and dried the leaves with a heating tool.

4. Now it was the right time for layering my elements on the prepared background: On the top of my fabric and kraft paper I placed my doily, doily cut-out, some white thread and one or two glittery leaves.

I used 3D Gloss Gel to glue my metal, canvas and lace elements together, creating the final composition. I added decorative wires and a pretty feather and dried everything before I started spraying.

5. When all the elements (except for the kraft card base) were together I used shimmering sprays in tones of brown, gold, orange and green (Primary Elements mixed with water) to add a bit of colour to my composition.

It took just a moment and after a bit of drying and adding 3 wooden "berries" I could glue it on the card base - my Autumn Greeting Card was ready!

Very easy isn't it? I hope it will be useful for some of your projects!

By the way - if you are looking for more "mixed-media" based cards for this season you should check Prima Marketing Blog - they just started great Inspirational Series "12 Days of Christmas" with loads of wonderful projects and challenge for you to join!

Here is a list of product I used:

I wish you all a great creative time - check us out on Friday for the next great project by my talented Creative Team - these women never stop to amaze me!

Sending you all hugs and warm Autumn Greetings!