The Story of the Best Day

So yeah.... I am just lllloooooovviiinnnggg the new Maggie Holmes Flea Market collection. Love the colours - pink and teal are my all time faves. And the gold features are such a highlight. I love the fresh funky vintage theme of it all. But sometimes you want your layout to look different from all the rest right? You want to put your individual spin on things and customise it just enough that people won't automatically go 'oh that looks like all the other Flea Market layouts'.
That's where a few simple mixed-media techniques can come in handy.

Now I know the term 'mixed-media' sends chills down some people's spines. It seems arty and funky and you need to do something fabulous with it or don't even try. But at the core of it all it just means using different mediums on your page apart from paper. When you break it down into the idea of using paint or stencils or stamping on your page then you probably realise you already do it!

And if you keep all your mixed-media techniques and tricks to the background then you don't even need to worry about destroying your pretty papers - which I know is the other concern we all have! Here I've taken a piece of Vanilla Cardstock and added gel-medium, gesso, stencils, mist, pen and paint. And then layered on the patterned paper and embellishments on top so they still shine.

Do you want to know one more secret about mixed-media? If you put down a layer of paint for example and it doesn't turn out quite like what you imagined.... then you cover it up with another layer of something else and you call it a technique! Oh yeah.. you'll see what I mean if you watch my video. I didn't like the orange swirls so I put a layer of gesso over the top. Then the gesso smudged everywhere so when it dried I outlined the design with pen. You think I planned it that way? No way!

So now you've heard me talk about it enough, sit back and watch the process happen...