Hello everyone, Christin here today to share with you my first layout with the August 2016 kits. Today I have a little confession…. I needed 6 tries to make the background for this layout….. This is for all you guys out there struggling with mixed media, I too can feel your pain.
In the end I ended up with a light background in colors that I liked using the August 2016 Color Kit with the Prima Oil Pastel. The difference is perhaps that I keep on trying until I am happy. I don’t throw the other backgrounds in the trash, I keep them for later, usually they can be salvaged and improved – often using lots of gesso and stencils – a little bit what I have done here. I can tell you what some of the problems that happened to me is that the colors didn’t blend well in the sense that the colors were too far apart on the color chart or that I mixed too many colors. It’s much easier to make the color transition work if you have colors that blends more seamlessly.
There are different techniques to use with oil pastels, and I can say that one of them I DON`T use is scribble on the paper with the oil pastel and then mix with water, then I never get it all mixed and I end up with a darker spot in the middle like this so I mix the colors before I add them to my background paper. Here is an example. This is because I use watercolor paper as my background, but if you use cardstock and enough gesso it’s easier to use your finger and smudge before you add water.
If you don’t have any nice trays (like ice cube trays or other trays) just use the plastic leftover from embellishments in the kit – they are perfect for this. So don’t throw away any plastic in kits, they are all great for transfering color to your background.
The August 2016 kits is full of both soft colors and black that gives you the choice of either just using the soft colors or making a statement and going for all the black pieces in the kits from Dear Lizzy/American Crafts and Crate Paper.
On to the topic of my layout… Anyone else bit by the Pokemon Go bug ?? I tried very hard to keep my kids unaware of this since my oldest phone is too old to install it on, but after seeing friends he just had to and here the kids are on of our little trips to visit different local Pokestops at Verdens Ende (a place called The End of the World). The kids really wanted to go see things, not that we haven’t gone hiking earlier – the kids walked up to a spot at over 1800 meters. (without Pokemon go….)
For the title I mixed different material – chipboard, wood and acetate. When I have lots of mixed media and different layers with different colors I sometimes like to add a neutral background under the acetate so you really can see the title – it might otherwise get a little lost.
