Mixed Media Artist

Welcome to part 3 of our Technique Tuesday series, what the heck to do with tissue paper! There is lots of tissue paper available that is not just plain white! That may be a shock after the last two weeks, where all we looked at and worked with was white tissue, no patterns, no pictures, no nothin’. This week, I want to share a technique with you that is perfect for working with patterned and pictorial tissue, including napkins. If you decide to use napkins, make sure that you have split them down to just a single layer…some of the fancier napkins actually have 3 layers, and it’s easy to miss one. 1. Assemble the materials you’ll need, including a piece of cardstock or watercolor paper to use as your base, patterned tissue paper and/or napkins, liquid acrylic medium, a foam brush, lots of waxed paper, parchment paper, and an iron. I used the piece of black and gold tissue to completely cover my substrate, first spreading a thin layer of acrylic medium and smoothing the tissue over it....

Today we’re going to be looking at how you can use tissue paper to create a paper with inclusions. Your piece will end up looking similar to the handmade papers you can buy with flower parts, bits of text, etc embedded within them. 1. You’re going to need to gather together the items you wish to embed, a sheet of paper to use as a substrate, and some white (or pale colored tissue). Stick down all of your inclusions using liquid acrylic medium. 2. Gently gently gently, apply liquid medium all over your page, including on top of your inclusions. If they are just too delicate for this treatment, you can use spray adhesive instead. But oh, how I hate that stuff! I can never use it without creating a total mess! Anyway, once you’ve got a layer of adhesive down, carefully lay a piece of tissue on top. I like to smooth out most of the wrinkles for this technique, but making it wrinkley like we did last week would give you a whole new set of options. 3. Add any paints that you desire. I prefer...

Here is a tissue paper method that works when you want the tissue paper painted in a crinkled style, but not attached to a substrate. Maybe you don’t want the tissue paper as a background, but want to use a thin layer elsewhere in one of your collages. Use freezer paper or waxed paper underneath this piece so that you’ll be able to release it when it dries: 1. Thoroughly crumple the tissue paper. Smooth it out slightly and pour or spray very thinned acrylics (or thin inks, dyes, or other paints) all over the tissue. Let it dry undisturbed. Peel it up carefully and use it as one of your collage layers. 2. I scanned this piece of tissue after it dried and used it in this digital collage called The Boater . Copyright 2007 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact. Technorati Tags: mixed media , collage , assemblage , digital art , ...

There are so many ways that tissue paper can be incorporated into mixed media work that I decided to do a short series on it! Just like with the last series on image transfers , I really hope that you’ll send me pictures to share with everyone of the work you’ve done that incorporates these techniques. And please use the comments section below to share your own tips! We’re going to look at two really simple textured tissue paper backgrounds today. I’m using white tissue, but remember that you can always multiply your options by using colored and patterned tissue as well. 1. Gather your materials. You’ll need liquid acrylic medium (also called polymer medium) in either gloss or matte, your choice. You’ll also need stock paper or watercolor paper, tissue paper, a foam brush and a sponge, and acrylic paints of your choice. 2. Apply a thin coat of medium to the substrate paper. Place a larger piece of tissue on top, and allow it to wrinkle as you adhere it to the medium. You can pretend t...

Painted Frame Gather your leftover pieces of fabric trims and bric-a-brac. And don’t forget the ric-rac. Don’t have any? Check the bargin bins at your local fabric or craft store. Don’t buy anything too expensive. I bought this one pricey little piece of trim that had glass pearls sewn to it. Guess which was the only piece of trim that I couldn’t get to work properly? :) 1. I used heavy-weight pellon as the base for my frame, and a sheet of felt to add height to certain areas. Other than that, I just gathered up all the trims and ribbons I had sitting around, paying no attention to their color. 2. Cut out a frame with the appropriate sized opening. Using fabric glue, tack down all of your trims and ribbons. I placed small pieces of felt, sometimes multiple layers, under some areas to raise them. 3. Soak the entire piece with watered down matte acrylic medium . While the piece is still wet, paint with acrylic paints mixed with glazing medium , allowing the colors to run tog...

Today I’m wrapping up the series of tutorials that I’ve been sharing on my favorite image transfer methods. This last one, using clear acrylic caulk as the transfer medium, is a really wonderful and very permanent method, but it’s also more time consuming and a bit more physical. You really need to use a strong and heavy base to receive the image, and I especially recommend a canvas board or masonite. 1. Toner copies work best, so I recommend xeroxing your image. Like the paper transfers that we did, caulk transfers reverse the image, so keep that in mind as you prepare your picture. Paint the surface of your canvas and apply any other collaged images desired before doing the transfer. Leave a good deal of extra paper around your image so that it will be much larger than the caulked area. You need to avoid getting any of the caulk on the back side of the paper when you go to do the transfer. 2. Apply a thin but thorough coat of caulk to the canvas in the spot where the transfer is to b...

Contact paper transfers, aka packing tape transfers, are a very handy method to have in your repertoire. They are very easy to do and use cheap materials. As if that weren’t enough, this is the one method that does not reverse your image!! Toner copies from a copy machine or text and images from magazines work the best. Inkjet prints will be very faint, so you’ll want to print out your text in bold face. Experiment and see what you like best, but my experience leads me to take my inkjet printouts to a copy machine before using them! 1. Place clear contact paper or a strip of clear packing tape over your text/image. Smooth it out and burnish it well. Cut it out to whatever final shape you will desire. 2. Soak the tape in warm water, and rub the back gently but thoroughly. The paper backing will rub off, leaving the pigment behind on the tape. You will probably have to rub and re-rub several times to get all the paper fibers. I've been told that baby wipes perform miracles in remov...

As we saw in the last post about t-shirt transfers to fabric , the transparency transfer method yields a more delicately colored and transparent image. Here's how to do it: 1. Print out your image on the rough side of an inkjet transparency . Prepare the receiving cloth, ironing it flat if needed. 2. Apply a thin but thorough layer of polymer gloss medium to the fabric. Position the image and burnish it well. The fabric will probably be slippery, so hold your image down carefully. 3. Remove the transparency carefully, and top the image with matte medium to cut the shine if desired. This post contains affiliate links Copyright 2007 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Last week I talked about a couple of my favorite methods for transferring images from one paper to another. Today I want to look at transferring to fabric instead. There are two methods that I use more than any other, and I want to start by showing you side-by-side what the final results look like: The first is a t-shirt transfer , and the second is a transparency transfer. It’s easy to see how much more pigmented and opaque the t-shirt transfer turns out to be. Both of these methods will reverse the image, just like the ones we saw last week, so keep that in mind when you are printing out your inkjet picture. We’ll start with the t-shirt transfer method: 1. Print out your image onto the transfer paper with a bit of extra saturation of color. Prepare the receiving cloth, ironing it flat if needed. 2. Use parchment paper to protect your iron and board. Iron the transfer in place, following the manufacturer’s specific directions for heat and time. Peel off the transfer paper....

Photo paper is another alternative for paper image transfers. You will generally get a transfer with much more saturated and even color than with plain paper. This method also reverses the image, so keep that in mind before you print out your picture. There are only a few differences in method from the steps listed above: 1. Print out your image on gloss or soft gloss photo paper. 2. Apply polymer gloss medium in a thin layer to both the image and to the receiving paper. Position and burnish as explained before. 3. Peel off the image paper and clean it up as explained before. Top with matte medium to cut the shine if desired 4. The finished piece, Never Doubt . Copyright 2007 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact. Technorati Tags: mixed media , collage , assemblage , digital art , photography , altered books , art journals

This is a collage piece from one of my art journals that used a ghostly-looking image transfer of a young woman. Some people ask why anyone would want to use a transfer rather than simply collage the actual picture or a copy of it into the work. The usual reason is because the artist is looking for that transparent, irregular quality which simple cut and paste cannot achieve. Look at the image again and notice how you can see right through the woman. This piece was made with an inkjet printout on plain copy paper…nothing fancy, not coated paper or even particularly heavy. This type of transfer will give you the most irregular and ghostly results. In fact, the results are almost always a surprise! This transfer method reverses the image, so if you might want to reverse it in an image editing program if direction is important, especially if there is text involved! 1. Prepare your receiving paper by painting it and adding any other images that you might want to be underneath your ...

There are so many ways to transfer images to your collages, altered books, and other mixed media projects. Every artist has favorites, and I thought that I would do a series of tutorials for you on the 7 methods that I like the best. I invite your input and comments during this short series: please share any additional tips that you can think of, your favorite products, your successes and failures. Or send me pictures of your work using transfers! Polymer medium transfer films are fun to use in your work. Since they need to dry overnight, it’s a method that you can’t use when you’re in a hurry. But it’s a great method for preparing batches of images to store for later use. Magazine images and fully saturated printouts work well, and the process will not reverse the image, so writing can be included. Store them between sheets of parchment, freezer, or waxed paper. 1. Liquid polymer medium (the gloss style) works best for this technique. Use a sponge brush and apply 5 thin coats of mediu...