Creative Gym - Exercise #2

Hello, Mixed Media Friends!

Time to stretch your creative muscles again. :)

First of all, you need to know that we were really really thrilled to see sooo many submissions to our Gym Exercise #1! It was such a pleasure to visit your blogs and see you all in our Gym. :)

We are very excited to share the second Exercise in a series of our new challenges.

This month it's Riikka who's hosting it and here's the whole idea:

We live in a world of dimensions, textures and surfaces.

We'd like you to feel inspired by how the play of light and shadow really makes a difference in the piece.

Our challenge is to break out of the 2 D and go 3-dimensional!

How much or how little is totally up to you.

Look around your house and find a long forgotten object that maybe could get a new altered life.

Add a flair button or a resin embellishment to your scrapbook layout.

Play with foam squares.

Go textural and create surfaces with modeling paste, gel medium or texture pastes.

Make some mixed media jewelry.

The possibilities are endless...

We are waiting to see your interpretations and study how shadow and light play in your art!

PS. No need to put the red-green glasses on if you don't want to. ;)

Need inspiration? Here's our Design Team experimenting with forms, shapes, light and shadow...

It wasn't easy to figure out what I wanted to do for this challenge... until I remembered this little birdhouse I've been hoarding like forever.

I started by spraying the body of the house with several Color Bloom sprays. I also added touches of 3D Gloss gel over a stencil. Once dried, I painted it with a mixture of Primary Elements and Soft Matte Gel. I left it to dry in between each layer, then took part of it away with a baby wipe and started over again, until it looked like I wanted to.

I painted the roof with 3 shades of Twinkling H2Os: Poppy, Spiced Pumpkin and Orange Peel. I accentuated the edges with black Archival Ink. The flowers were sprayed with Tea Stain Color Bloom and embellished with touches of pink Art Sugar.
All the metal was rusted of course and to highlight it, I added touches of Glitter.

I think this little birdhouse will now be part of our yearly Holiday decorations :))

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

A broken hand, put back together with Art Basics 3D Matte Gel and “prettied” up with paper from Finnabair's Domestic Goddess range and some metal embellishments. Very little paint has been used… all the shading, the light and dark areas on the hand have been created just using darker or lighter pieces of paper from the one sheet of Domestic Goddess “Ah Whatever”.

A small problem… although the fingers are “articulated” and move up and down, bending at the joints, they do not move sideways or spread out. So, I had to insert a small chunk of wood between the fingers to force them apart to make the peace sign. I’m sure there are more “mechanically” minded people out there that would have come up with a better solution. Anyway, once my fingers were in position, I was ready to collage with Art Basics Soft Matte Gel.

After the paper was collaged, a rub-on was added and some metal using Art Basics 3D Matte Gel.
Rubber bands around the slightly bent metal pieces held them in place while the 3D Matte Gel dried.

Finished hand from the back:

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

This project took me a week to make and my inspiration was to make something beautiful to wear at a costume party. I used a paper mask from Panduro Hobby.

To strengthen the paper and get some extra texture, I covered the mask with Art Basics Light Paste. Then I started to embellish the mask with vintage lace, paper flowers and lots of metal embellishments.

When the glue was dry (2 days), I covered almost everything with white gesso. I could have chosen to paint metallic parts with clear gesso to keep the metallic effect, but did not so.

When gesso was dry it was time to add colors. And remember, it is very important to let each layer of medium dry. First, I painted a thin layer of acrylic paint, then added various sprays like Glimmer Mists and Color Shines (of course drying between each color).

I then painted the parts I wanted to give some shadow to with Silks. As a final touch, to highlight some parts, I used Primary Elements and Twinkling H2Os.

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

Maybe you remember this wonderful blue dress which Agnieszka Anna presented us last August.
Well, I couldn't resist the desire to create one myself. And here is my dress in autumnal colors.

I kept the background of the canvas simple: a few scrap of papers glued and covered with Gesso, before adding more Gesso with different stencils and some stamping. I colored the background when coloring the dress.

I made the dress with some Powertex and used it to add the flower trim. When dry, I glued the embellishments (Flowers, Mechanicals) as well as the Crystal Glass Beads with some 3D Matte Gel. To color the dress, I worked with Primary Elements mixed with water and then sprayed, Silks and Twinkling H2Os.

To add some highlights, I applied some Gold Wax as well as some Gold Glass Glitter.

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

When I was thinking what to create, a painting by Hugo Simberg popped into my head. It's called "The Garden of Death" and it's a really intriguing piece. There's something really beautiful and tender in the piece but at the same time it makes me uneasy.

But what really always catches my eye are the magical, mystical looking flowers in the garden. So I used the painting as inspiration and created my own flower.

I started by adhering tissue paper to Prima wire and created the inmost, delicate flower like that. The wire is sandwiched between two layers of tissue paper. The second flower is made of resist canvas, cut into the shape with a die.

Underneath is a black wire flower using Prima wire and the outmost petals are made with canvas stiffened with Soft Gel and have a wire underneath to support the shape. The stamen are made of wire and Glass Beads. 

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

I love creating things that are useful. I'm also a huge fan of handmade brooches - so the moment I saw the theme of our November challenge, I knew right away that I would create a brooch. :)

I used gorgeous metal embellishments from Finnabair. I love each and every product designed by Finnabair, but this time I would like to focus on the pins that make creating a brooch so easy!!! Before I saw Finnabair pins for the first time, I had always been wondering where I should look for the pins :) When I bought my first set of Prima Mechanicals Pins, the problem dissapeared. :)

Now I can take my favourite metal pieces from Mechanicals series (most of them have a small hole in the middle so it's very easy to assemble them in one piece using Finnabair brads, add some media, some organza and other fabrics or crocheted layers et voila - the brooch is ready. :)

And if you want to add even more interest to your brooch, you can use Finnabair Art Ingredients like glitter, glass beads or glass glitter.

Materials from Mixed Media Place:

Like we said before, we were very happy to see such an enthusiastic response to our first Gym exercise.

Our Design Team had a difficult job choosing the winner but it was a great pleasure to visit all your beautiful blogs and a great joy to have you stretch your creative muscles with us! Thank you so much for joining us!

And the winner of the challenge is...

... Fran ...

with this gorgeous tag:

Congratulations, Fran! :) Please, contact us to claim your price at: store(at)mixedmediaplace.com

So, dear readers, are you ready to do some more workout? :)
We are looking forward to seeing your 3D creations!
You have time until December 20th. Simply add a link to your work using the inlinkz tool below.
Our Design Team will then choose their favorite piece and its author will win a discount coupon to be used in our Mixed Media Place Store.
Have fun!