As my first foray into traditional mixed media, I just kind of threw a lot of things at the paper and called it a day. I don’t love this, but it included a lot of techniques and different media, so it gave me a nice lesson on what works, what doesn’t, and where my own style may lay. I also used my clear gesso to reinforce the paper, which helped a lot.

You might recall the centerpiece from a post where I was first learning how to make photographs look a little nicer on the computer. A decade or so later, I still can’t care enough to do much, especially with blog photos in my dark cave-like house, but I do make the occasional attempts, I promise. I worked hard in this piece to let the colors inspire me, but I found I just had to include a peachy feel regardless. (Considering Pantone named Peach Fuzz the color of the year, I think I am well justified, surely!)

I used an alphabet stencil my brother gave me with markers on a used dryer sheet that tore beautifully. On top is an old circle circuit leftover from a scrapbook project that I painted. I came up with the phrase myself – I just wanted something with text and I felt like the bird could be speaking. It reads, “Come away to the sea; fly away with me”.

I added a small cutout from a magazine that reads, “Back in 5 minutes” and drew sketchy outlines over it. This is where I saw firsthand that gesso can work as glue. Cool! On the left are some teabags and a small fraying selvage strip of a shiny white fabric (painted with pink). I also dyed cheesecloth and threw that over the whole thing. To weigh this corner down, I had a woodcut fence I painted and outlined, and then a small strip of burlap trim.

This corner was rather empty until I decided to add a landscape design. Teabags, dryer sheet, tissue paper, and cheesecloth, all over top of some scraps of paper. I also used a stamp – this was the foamy wrap a pear came in that I rolled up. I liked that a lot!

Then to weigh down the bottom right, I piled on some shells, and added reindeer moss anywhere there was glue, and a small tuft of raffia grass I hoarded from some shipping material.

Overall, even though I am not in love with this visually, I had so much fun just learning how crayons, pencils, pens, paint, and so on would work with each other. It looks nothing like the work of Laly Mille, a blogger that set me on this mixed media course, but maybe some day I can take a workshop of hers.