Mixed Media Mayhem - Tea for Me

Tea for Me

Isn't tea the antidote for whatever ails you.  My mother made it for me when I was a child and served it with cinnamon toast...but only when I was sick.  

I always have several journals working at once.  This page is from my "Use it Up" book where I clean brushes and stencils and collect ephemera and detritus from other journals.  I wanted to use up the blank left over after I punched out an alphabet, so I stuck them down to a page where I had cleaned up from some Dylusions.  

To try to unify this mess I dry brushed with heavy white gesso, a favorite art supply.

What next?  Looking at my confused color palette led me to my paper stash.  Every time I go to Paper Source, I buy some of their beautiful paper...then just look at it.  I decided in my "use it up" mood to cut up one of the vintage tea wrapping paper and paint over the cups to match my background.   I added the tea pot from the packaging of the Publix tea bags, and the steam from a piece of chipboard.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Koffee Klatch

This journal entry represents the jagged edge that I get from my daily dose of coffee... that tattered, hyper feeling I get from one too many cups.

What do you get from a pile of Restoration Hardware catalogues?  Hundreds of images of texture.  What is my favorite technique for using magazine images?  Gel medium transfers.  Images of rugs, drapes, upholstery laid face down on the wet medium and peeled off before completely dry give a gronky background spread over two pages. 

 I liked the rough, textured results so I added another transferred layer of faces from People Magazine.  On my way to somewhere.  

A theme developing.   

Dangerously near my daughter’s home in Studio City, Ca, sits an inviting Paper Source store.  I walk past it every time I walk the dog or go to Starbucks.  I can’t resist their paper.  One of my recent purchases included Tea Cups Wrapping Paper…

beautiful enough to frame.  I cut out several repeats of the cups, adhered them to my textured spread, and added my own marks to them to own them.

The idea of tea seemed too placid to go with the expressions on the faces on my page, but coffee definitely had the possible impact.  I Googled for images related to coffee including the chemical makeup, the botanical, and various health reports.  To place all these pics on the pages while preserving the background, I printed them on transparency, then cut and glued them with medium.  

Finding the right snippet of words finishes off the spread,

  A peak at my work space with the invaluable Ranger Craft Mat.