Yesterday I talked about Acrylic Paint as my favorite Essential but that is followed very close by Gesso – I looooveee Gesso!

Gesso is like a magic bullet. Seriously. Gesso should be in your craft room….there is no doubt about it! If my Mixed Media Essentials were characters of Harry Potter…Gesso would be Dumbledore …and come one…who doesn’t want Dumbledore in their studio helping with some spells of Love ;)

What I love about Gesso is:

• It can be applied to many surfaces like canvas, fabric, wood etc. and creates a surface that can be painted on.
• It gives  tooth. So you can paint also surfaces where usually paint would not grab on- for example Metal.
• There is thicker Gesso and thinner Gesso. You can find white, black and clear Gesso – there are even other colored Gessos but I would say these are the most used ones. You can always change the color with Acrylic Paint yourself.
• It is an amazing medium to add texture with tools and household items, embedding supplies or by using it with stencils etc.
• It is the cure whenever something went totally wrong…just paint over with gesso ….it is the magic bullet ;)
• White Gesso is the cheapest white paint ;)
• It is amazing to tone down or change colors of your backgrounds or scrapbooking papers
• there is a huge amount of techniques including resist techniques with gesso that you can do -ahhh- happy mixed media land :)

Here are some examples:

White gesso for textured background and on flowers used

treated background with stencils, embedded elements and then spray painted

creating texture with Gesso before using paint media

primed a frame with clear gesso and then used here and there translucent and opaque paint media

Black gesso for texture, torn open to reveal background again

Gesso to create handmade textured embellishments

Clear and white gesso used to create this moody textured background

Embedded chipboard elements in gesso

Just pulling those projects together makes me wanna go into my room and play with Gesso again!

Which Gesso I use:

As always in this series- the answer to this question is based on my preferences, my style and my experiences

• I do use white, clear and black gesso.
• Lately I use Liquitex Gessos a lot- I love the consistency, coverage as they are highly pigmented and their consistence. I have only seen the clear gesso by Liquitex btw. For the black Gesso I used mostly Golden.
• I tend to like the thicker gesso more- I don’t like the liquid stuff- makes sense, because I love texture and you can water gesso down…so why waste money on the thin stuff?
• I used to buy big buckets of Gesso – which makes sense if you use them up in a workshop right away with lot’s of students, but now I buy smaller jars, even with my crazy usage of gesso, I had it dry out after a while and then it was a waste of money.
• When you start out and you just want to get a feel for Gesso – the Liquitex Basics Gesso is a good start :)

Liquitex Basic White Gesso

Gesso White/Clear/Black

Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso

Golden Black Gesso

I hope you had fun with this…next up is…Markers and Pens

huge hugs

Nat

——————————————————————————–

If you want to learn more about gesso- check out my Über*Media Gesso Online Workshop

Nat

That would be my sentence if you would ask me to fill out the gaps. I was inspired by Candy Chang’s Before I die… Project.

I watched this TED speech below by Candy Chang in the evening, after a stupid paperwork load day, a day month of emails that let me question my choice of a profession as an artist, a day week that left me so uninspired that I asked myself “Who are you to think, you inspire others?”, a day that lead to an evening watching a tears-guaranteed chick flick movie and a bucket of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream on my lap (yeah hubs, that is what I do when you are gone ;) – all your fault- LOL) . Yep- I have whiny days …lot’s of them lately…and it sucks and leads to more ice cream…as if that helps ;) . So cuddled in bed (with a tummy aching from the ice cream) I watched this:

[ted id=1553]

And when I woke up the next morning I had this “WHATEVER” happy feeling, cranked up the music and created this canvas inspired by Candy Chang, just for me without any goal …. just trying to be the person I already am. It felt good…it still does…

Before I die I want to become the person that I AM.

Meaning stop thriving to be a different person, stop being a people pleaser, stop sacrificing my goals and my dreams to fulfill other’s goals and dreams, stop whining (might still eat ice cream….), stop doubting myself, stop to wish I had a different childhood, start telling people into their face that they suck instead of smiling the smile of pleasantries because I want to be a better person, start allowing myself to be edgy as I am instead of only allowing it others and being jealous of that they are so true to themselves, start to be happy with all the amazing things that I am blessed with in my life and accept everything that wasn’t roses as part of what makes me ME. Just become the person that I am!

What would you fill in the gaps of: Before I die I want to….?

Nat

Nat

I often get emails asking me about my favorite tools or supplies and I actually love those emails because they make me think of why I tend to use some things all the time.

Is it laziness? What is it about these items that make me grab for them whenever I create a Mixed Media Project?

One of the answers that came up for almost all of them is “I use them because of their versatility of usage” . That is an easy guess for an answer- LOL- since I named my favorite Online Workshop series Über*Media playing on the fact that you can use some items so MANY different ways.

But let me take you the next couple weeks on a little journey on my favorite Mixed Media essentials and explain why I could bathe in them and show you where I used them. I hope you will enjoy my new little series starting tomorrow :)

Wishing you a creative monday !

Nat

Nat

9 ….years it is that my husband and I are married. 9 years ago in Hamburg, Germany surrounded by a semi-small group of family members and friends. Well…semi small because we were actually planning on maybe 10 peeps and then a bigger wedding the next years in the States. It ended kind of semi big…because nobody wanted to be left out although a lot of them were coming to the States for the wedding there anyway ;) And it was AWESOME both times !!! :)

We celebrated this year at the harbor here in the city…we were in a posh place for some cocktails…the view was paying off the snobby semi-friendly peeps working there and then we went for a wonderful dinner and nice little walk back home. Perfect!

So, why you might ask, do I have to throw psychedelic circles onto this beautiful, romantic music paper? Because I can….LOL-

NOOOOO – just kidding ;) Because hubs studied music and loves to spent his free time playing and composing music and I love to spent my free time playing with paint. So …there you go ;)

I created the circles with Liquitex Pouring Medium- so much fun! I teach this technique in the Über*Media Acrylic Paint Online Workshop and these were some of the samples I made and I finally wanted to use :)

Supplies: Heidi Swapp Vintage Chick Beautiful Songs paper, Liquitex Acrylic Paints, Liquitex Acrylic Inks, Liquitex Pouring Medium, Manila Shipping Tags, Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L Crafty Power Tape and MyStik Permanent

Which two elements/embellishments or media on a project could reflect you and your loved one? 

Nat

Nat

Are you ready to take the second floor this time? If you have no clue what I am talking about- read all about it here  The Second Floor Challenge

So today is our 8th Second Floor Challenge: Use 3 different stamps

Click here to see what Julie did

Whatever that means to you or however it inspires you.  The prompt is simply meant to get you started.  The level of challenge you aim for is entirely internal and up to you.

Ha – I was looking forward to this challenge to use 3 different stamps- not because I thought I would be really challenged, but because I had just bought a couple stamps in July that I haven’t used yet. Time to get those out.

I decided to take it to the second floor by using different ways using those stamps. so first I stamped on paper colored with an Derwent Inktense Block.

Then I stamped on grey tissue paper which I later applied to the above background with gel medium.

I stamped the coffee mug on top of a piece of Scrapbooking paper, colored it in with Liquitex Inks and Derwent Artbars.

Then I cut out the cup of coffee, and created a heart on the background paper, which I cut out and created this Scrapbooking layout.

It was a quick layout but I had fun using some techniques with it – it felt of like art journaling but instead of painting on a piece of paper it was creating a layout.

Supplies: Pink Paislee Paper, Watercolor Paper, Tissue Paper, myStampBox Stamps created by Karen Ellis, Stampers Anonymous Stamps, Liquitex Gel Medium, Derwent Inktense Block, Derwent Inktense Pencil, Liquitex Acrylic Inks, Derwent Artbars, Ranger’s Archival Inks, Posca black marker, Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L MyStik and 3D Foam Pads

What I learned from this challenge:

1. Sometimes when I create for a manufacturer it bothers me that I have to be triggered by the product for an idea for a project. But as I had bought those stamps because I surely loved them when I saw them, it felt totally ok to be triggered for an idea by the coffee mug created by Karen Ellis for myStampBox.

2. I usually use white tissue paper for the infusing technique when I stamp – I really like the grey tissue paper for this technique I learned- it tones the colors down but of course…it just makes it a shade – nice one- with some texture.

3. You really need to mix the Liquitex inks– otherwise you get an smudge image- which is not really bothering me here on the coffee mug- but I need to keep that in mind. Why be so lazy with a tiny bit of shaking (gosh..I ‘m so lazy sometimes- LOL)

4. I forced myself using unusual colors for me and I liked it. I need to get more out of my color box  again – I used to do it … why did I stop? :)

5. Stamps always give an handmade feel to a layout, even if you use them in small amounts- I love that. I need to use stamps more on my work- and not solely for backgrounds ;)

If you’d like to leave a link showing off what you did in response to this challenge, here’s the linky list:

hugs

Nat

Nat