My First Mixed Media Project

Arts and crafts are great therapy, and I've always enjoyed them.  It's fun, it's relaxing, it feels good, it gives you a sense of accomplishment, and it's a great escape :)  My medium of choice for artwork is either plain old #2 pencil, or watercolor, but when it comes to crafting... anything goes!

In an earlier post I mentioned that I wanted to make a mixed media painting; well, I finally did it, although I didn't use my affirmation as I originally planned, I'm pretty happy with it as my very first mixed media piece.

I began painting a sunflower in watercolor (I usually don't paint flowers because I'm usually disappointed in the outcome LOL), and progressed into painting the background. I got the texture in the center of the sunflower by sprinkling table salt onto the wet paint. I continued with watercolors, slowly adding more color and detail in between drying times, then I started added some scrapbook paper with Mod Podge, and then used a stencil with metallic acrylic paint to add some flare, some lace, ribbon, buttons, stickers, letters/words, and then I painted a dragonfly (my first one ever).

Because I had never painted a dragonfly before, I was too chicken to paint it directly onto the canvas, so I cheated a bit. I painted it on watercolor paper instead, then cut it out and mod podged in place. I was skeptical of my dragonfly ability LOL, but I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out.

the dragonfly :)

 (1) the finished product (2) a close up of some of the details (3) and another close up :)

In various places are the words: joy (upper left corner), courage (left edge), Love Life (above sunflower), and strength (inside the sunflower's center), and of course my signature (botton right), which I had a bit of an issue with so it's a bit sloppy, darn it. Oh well... with time I will improve.

I may not have used my affirmation, but I did throw some positive words in. These particular words were chosen with my current depression in mind. I wanted it to be a reminder to be strong, have courage, choose happy, and love life. Now... where am I going to hang it? I think I know just the spot :)