Give Peace a Chance

Hello everyone!  Alison here again, and I'm absolutely delighted to be introducing our guest for April - Susi of Froebelsternchen.

I'm a huge fan of her beautiful work... she's an absolute artist with paint effects and layers, and her art journalling is stunning.  She's constantly exploring and evolving - and I find that hugely inspiring.  If you've never visited her blog, I heartily recommend it.  Keep an eye out for the brilliant MOOs - they pop up all over the place! - and so many other wonders.

Take a look at her absolutely gorgeous creation for Our Creative Corner, inspired by this month's challenge theme: With a Song in Your Heart...

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I am so excited and honoured to be invited to make something for the theme "With A Song In Your Heart".  I chose one of my lifelong favourite songs for this event and tried to express my feelings and inner pictures to this song.  I am sure everybody knows this timeless world-wide hit written by John Lennon - here is a link to hear it:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZC7sqImaM 

  In my mind this song is a beautiful statement of love and hope. 

I made some step by step photos for you to see my progress.

I started by gluing random pieces of old bookpages on an 8 by 8 (21 x 21 cm) piece of thick cardboard. I used cheap white schoolglue and a stiff brush for this. The next step was to brush a thin layer of the same white glue all over the surface and let dry this.

(I always use a heat tool to speed up the drying time - but I keep distance to the glue otherwise it will bubble.)

I aged the surface then with dark brown acrylic paint -

I applied a generous amount of paint with a sponge - sprayed with water and wiped away the most of the paint soon after with a rag. While the ground was drying I prepared three torn stripes of homemade colored papers of mine, (I always use acrylic paints and sprays for this, so they don't smear when liquid glue is used) drew a starfish on a sprayed piece of paper and cut it out.

This pieces were arranged on the background and glued on with the white glue by gluing the back and the front of the papers - that seals very good. 

Now it was time to stamp some random designs with matching colors of waterproof inkpads and bring on a touch of white over the whole design to tone  it down a bit ( I took a white colored ink spray - you can also use a simple white wash with water-thinned white gesso or white acrylic paint.)

I coloured some areas with pastel sticks and defined the starfish and all edges with a charcoal pencil.  To get  the pastels and charcoal pencil permanent I sprayed a coat of spray fixative (some artists use hairspray for this).

Then I cut out the letters I needed from a sentiment stamped with black archival ink on white tissue paper and glued it on my starfish with gluestick (a pair of tweezers is very handy for this).

I stamped on white accents with white acrylic paint and let it dry.

I applied a layer of white glue on the starfish - let it dry overnight and wrote my message with white correction pen on the piece and outlined each letter with charcoal pencil. With white oil pastel crayon I made some accents on the starfish. As a last sealing I sprayed two layers of fixative over the entire piece.

I hope you like my creation and maybe you can give the techniques a try to create such an 

Mixed Media Piece - it is so much fun to do and the progress will move and delight your inner artist! Believe me!

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Thank you so much, Susi - a beautiful artwork, and some great mixed media tips and techniques.  It's lovely to share in your creative process with all those photos too, thank you.

If you've been inspired to create With A Song In Your Heart, you have until the 28th April to play along.  Don't forget, we'd like to see either the lyrics or the title of the song which has inspired you on your creation, and let us know the name of the song in your post.

You'll find all the challenge details and rules here, along with the fantastic song-inspired projects of the Design Team.  Do come and play!

Alison xx