Art Alchemy Metallique Wax - video guide

Hi again - surprise!
I was here yesterday with the first Art Alchemy Reveal Video - talking about Opal Magic Waxes and today I'm back with video nr 2! Would you like to learn more about beautiful, rich metallic looking products? Here you can read more about them:

Art Alchemy Metallique Wax is beautiful, metallic, wax-based paste which will turn your artwork into a real treasure while adding amazing, rich, metal-like finish to most surfaces and elements. Great for applying with your fingers, sponges, and soft cloths. Perfect for adding color and finishing touches to mixed-media and home décor projects. Metallique Wax has a permanent finishing cover giving you great, color-filled, shiny results on dark and light backgrounds.

And there is a video of course!
Short but fun guide to colours and applying of my Metallique Waxes. All for you!

Expect one more video coming very soon - and this weekend, when the final video will be posted we are going to start a GIVEAWAY too, so stay tuned!

huge hugs

Art Alchemy Opal Magic Wax Video - tutorial

Hi again my creative friends!
Last Friday I was telling you there are some really cool products coming very soon - and I mentioned my new line of Art Alchemy Waxes! I was thinking it would be good if I could make a video about each kind of wax so you can see them better and hopefully make friends with them!

Today we are starting with Art Alchemy Opal Magic Wax, the one that you can consider to be a sister product to my Opal Magic Mica Powders - so expect a different effect on dark and light surfaces!

Here is the description of Opal Magic Wax:

Marvellous wax-based paste offering you two great effects in one product! Opal Magic Wax has a special opaque, yet permanent finish. It will give you color-filled, shiny results on dark surfaces; and delicate pearled iridescence effects on lighter backgrounds. Both will turn your artwork into a real treasure! Great for applying with your fingers, sponges, or soft cloths. Perfect for adding colour and finishing touches to mixed-media or home décor projects. Works on most popular surfaces and elements.

Ready? Here is the video - I hope yu will enjoy! Let me know what you think!

... and one more thing! 

Expect more videos coming very soon - and this weekend, when the final video will be posted we are going to start a GIVEAWAY too, so stay tuned!

Sending warmest hugs

My Heart In The Land of Ice and Snow

Hello Dear Ones!

I hope your holidays are running smoothly among laughter, warm feelings, delicious food and hopefully some time and space for your creative self-care! :)

In case you needed an inspirational video & a stunning artwork to wake up your creativity - Karolina comes to the rescue! ;) Enjoy and be merry!

Welcome to this crazy Christmas season of overeating and spending time with our families.

For me, this time also means time for creativity and today I'd like to share with you another mixed media work of mine.
This piece was created thinking of you and my wonderful daughter. I made a canvas with my little heart in the winter scenery.

I know I've mentioned my passion for painting parts of the background in black and white to get a different color effect of the same paints. Today I wanted to try something new and I ventured for one more element: Art Alchemy paints with the addition of Light Paste. It turns out this way the paint becomes half matte.

Of course the entire composition was glued with Gel Medium and mostly covered with White Gesso. Next both the composition and the background were painted with Alchemy paints and while they were still wet, I sprinkled some Mica Powder and Glitter.
You will be able to follow the whole process watching my video tutorial below.

I am delighted with the result I got adding the shimmering Mica which gave my work a frosty look.
The black Glitter from Ebony&Ivory set emphasized the composition and allowed the photo to blend in with the rest of the work. The white Glitter in the light of day gives a wonderful iridescent effect of a thousand particles. Personally, I think that the black adds a lot of character and depth here.

Of course I couldn't do without the White Crackle Texture Paste and Snowflake Paste as the final touches to this wintery composition.

I decided to use Finnabair's Stamps to make the whole composition more diversified. I think stamps give a lot of opportunities to create a more dynamic or calm composition, depending on what you want to achieve, but they always enrich your works with this special simple touch.

Here's my video, I hope you'll enjoy it!



Wishing you a very creative New Year. See you later!
Hugs
Karolina

Products used:

Merry Christmas... and some first product sneak peeks!

Hi again my friends!
I'm happy to see ou here again!
I know that for most of us it is a very busy time - we are getting ready to meet our family and friends, make the Christmas food and just getting the whole festive mood on... but I'd like to take this minute to send you our best wishes and say huge THANK YOU to you all!

First of all - thank you for being here, visiting the blog, FB page, social media in general - you make this place full of life and give us all purpose of creating, inspiring, finding new ideas. I'm so proud and happy to see this place grow, fill with beautiful projects and be the source than many people go to, come back on the regular basis - this is what we were hoping for changing my personal blog into Finnabair website with tutorials, ideas and product information. It's hard to express how much I appreciate your support, presence, the constant flow of love I can feel coming our way from you - this is just priceless for me and I have to admit this is the best fuel to make me going!

I'd like to send huge thanks to a group of very special people who I'm sure you know very good already - my Creative Team Members, from present and past terms who are the most supportive, most talented and inspiring creative souls. I'm truly blessed to be able to work with them and I'm absolutely sure we wouldn't be where we are now if my Team wasn't on board!
This year we have our wonderful Brand Ambassadors joining us too - and I'm so grateful they decided to jump on my idea of making the Finnabair Family bigger. I'm sure you enjoy the classes, tutorials and everyday inspiration they are providing every day.
Thank you so much to you all!

We would like to wish you all a blessed Holiday time - quiet, filled with all that you need. We wish you love and peace, tonnes of positive energy, courage to create whatever your heart will tell you and great people around you who will give you support when you need it the most. I hope you will find time to play, to enjoy whatever you like to do - taking time for yourself is so important!

Here you've got some peeks at the decoration we've made this year - how do you like my rose-decorated Christmas Tree? I had a great time working on this design...

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... and speaking about the designs - would you like to have a look at the first release of products which are going to hit the shelves very soon?

Let me introduce you to Art Alchemy Waxes!

We've got 3 kinds of this beautiful wax...

Art Alchemy Metallique

Beautiful, metallic, wax-based paste which will turn your artwork into a real treasure while adding amazing, rich, metal-like finish to most surfaces and elements. Great for applying with your fingers, sponges, and soft cloths. Perfect for adding color and finishing touches to mixed-media and home décor projects. Metallique Wax has a permanent finishing cover giving you great, color-filled, shiny results on dark and light backgrounds.

Art Alchemy Opal Magic

Marvelous wax-based paste offering you two great effects in one product! Opal Magic Wax has a special opaque, yet permanent finish. It will give you color-filled, shiny results on dark surfaces; and delicate, pearled iridescence effects on lighter backgrounds. Both will turn your artwork into a real treasure! Great for applying with your fingers, sponges, or soft cloths. Perfect for adding color and finishing touches to mixed-media or home décor projects. Works on most popular surfaces and elements.

Art Alchemy Antique Brilliance

Unique, gorgeous, wax-based paste with a difference; offering you two wonderful effects in one product! Antique Brilliance Wax has a special opaque, yet permanent finish. It will give you generous color and shiny results on dark surfaces and antiqued, vintage effects, with a touch of iridescence on lighter backgrounds, turning your artwork into a real treasure. Great for applying with your fingers, sponges, and soft cloths. Perfect for adding color and finishing touches to mixed-media and home décor projects. Works on most popular surfaces and elements

Intrested?
Check out this great video on Live with Prima where Cari was trying this new product live!

Wishing you the best Christmas and sending you lots of love

Winter Wonderland Magic - Altered House

Hi, it's me again!
As most of us now I'm getting ready for Christmas - and as it is really hard to name Ireland a real "Winter Wonderland" (hehe) I'm doing my best to compensate the lack of snow outside by decorating the house, adding nice, winter touches here and there, nice lights, sparkle and all the things that make us happy during long, dark evenings. I took my chance and decided to create some projects just for my own pleasure - last week I was sharing small, but multi-dimensional, rich Winter Tag - this time I've got something, that was waiting for its turn for a very long time - Winter House.

I'm not 100% sure if it is a house at all - it looks more like a chapel or small church, but after giving it my signature look it turned into Winter Fairy-Tale Workshop... well, maybe a bit abandoned and forgotten, but still standing tall!

As my friend pointed out - it looks as if it was taken out of  "The Chronicles of Narnia" - and I'm quite happy to agree as it is one of the book series I love so much. If you will take a closer look you will see I was trying to create the impression this house - once beautiful - is now left empty, with all the mechanisms falling apart and turning into rust... but you can still clearly see its previous charm!

I don't remember when I bought this chipboard house by Melissa Frances - but as I love to alter, it caught my eye. Assembling wasn't easy - but it may be because of my lack of patience and precision... in the end I gave up trying to keep it clean and I simply took out my ultimate glue solution for stubborn materials - Art Basics Heavy Body Gel. When everything was in place - I used the same solution for glueing down the embellishments: chipboards, Mechanicals, pieces of wood and elements taken out of moulds (IOD Moulds by Prima), some pearls and bigger stones.

When everything was dry I painted it all with Art Basics Heavy White Gesso - and then added some more of the rusty Mechanicals, Art Stones and Mini Art Stones - one of my favourite products released this year. I used my heating gun, so it didn't take long to dry and I was ready to add colour!

The final colour palette was done using my Art Extravagance Rust Paste Set - painted and watered down and a generous amount of sprays. I used Lindy's Moon Shadow Mists with delicate undertones in greys and browns.

To add final, snow touches I used Art Extravagance Snowflake Paste - I love the texture that looks just like frozen, granulated snow with a bit of sparkle in it! I didn't want to cover too much, but I have to warn you - this stuff is highly addictive!

I've made a list of the products I used for you - I hope that helps! 

Are you ready for Christmas yet? I have to admit, I'm far, far from it, but I decided to take my time and create something for myself, my home - for my own pleasure. I'm pleased I decided to do so - not only I've got a Winter Workshop to display, but I had a chance to relax, clear my head a bit and take a deeper breath during this crazy time!
Sending you lots of love!