The Place of Memories

Hello Dear Reaers!
Get your paints ready, here comes Karolina with stunning mixed media inspiration! :)

Her new artwork is absolutely magical and I'm sure you'll feel tempted to follow Karolina's tips and techniques she's sharing in her tutorial and have a wonderful creative weekend!

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Hey everyone!

With winter and frost still reigning in the place where I live, I just can't help but feel inspired and reach for a cold color palette. :)

I usually prefer to reach for warmer colors but in this mixed media collage I started with cobalt and silver and really enjoyed working on it, especially that I decided to break the "chill" a little by adding some warmer contrasting shades.

I love this effect - a thrilling meeting of hot lava and a cold ocean. ;) This combination has such great strength for me...

I started by priming my fancy shaped board with Heavy White Gesso and then painted with Cobalt and Snow White Impasto paints. The colors mixed beautifully creating the first layer of my collage. When these Art Alchemy acrylic paints dry, they remain permanent so it's safe to play with all kinds of mixed media on their surface.

While painting, add a little bit of water to distribute these dense creamy paints more easily.

I also couldn't wait to play with Finnabair's new Plaster Paste - it's opaque, has a matte finish and is just amazing to create an illusion of handmade paper!

Plaster Paste let me create a wonderful porous surface that I sprinkled with different colors of Mica Powders - love the effect, you should really try it!

I also applied some of the paste to a piece of gauze to make it more structural and hardened when dry. I arranged the shape that I had in mind on my board and glued it with 3D Gloss Gel. 

To make my background even more textural, I also added some beautiful Platinum Crackle Paste and later, when my composition was ready, accents of wonderful pattern from the 'Lace' stencil used with Graphite paste additionally sprinkled with Art Stones.

I arranged my main composition with new Mechanicals flowers, a lovely vintage image from Finnabair's Vintage Collectibles Ephemera and other pretty metal trinkets from my stash.

They are super easy to attach thanks to one of my favorite mediums - 3D Gloss Gel. It's a quick and permanent adhesive and super economical especially when you buy a larger package.

You will see in my video below how magical working with Mica Powders is. :)

When my whole collage composition was ready, I simply sprinkled it with cool shades of Pale Silver, Frozen Lake and some golden shades of these powders (all the links below!) and simply sprayed them with water - the effect is breathtaking...

I finished off my piece with some warm tones of Metallique paints to add delicate shimmer and some lovely shiny accents here and there.

The finishing touch were splaters with watered down Black Gesso to complete the whole look.

Please enjoy my video tutorial and I hope you'll feel encourage to try out some of the magical Finnabair mediums! ;)

I love creating with vintage photos - it's always both an adventure and a challenge.

I really enjoy inventing different stories about people from the photographs and trying to express those tales in a visual form.

Just like with traditional scrapbooking layouts, the photograph here is my focal point and all the embellishments, colors and textures are here to only make it look more special and unique.

 
I hope you're feeling inspired -
Happy creating!
Karolina





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