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.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Where Next?

Today's journal entry presents a long standing dilemma - Where next?  It’s a question my friends always ask when I come home from an adventure.  Like everything else, there is no long range plan. Something pops up and it becomes a destination. I have not been to Sub-Saharan Africa so this page is a possible answer to the dilemma.  

What’s more fun than a bunch of new tools to try.  An entire book of textured wallpaper with shapes ideal for Gelli printing and a new assortment of stencils gave me stimulus overload. Focus, focus, I chose the circles and ovals for positive and negative printing with Pebeo Studio Acrylics Iridescent Orange.  

Once the Gelii plate is on full speed, I can’t stop so I made a lot of prints on deli paper that I could use for collage.  Some of the deli paper became the translucent circles that I glued on top of my original prints.  

I loved my background and left it unadorned for weeks.  

When my Grand Circle Travel brochure came, I found the images and message I needed.  I fussy-cut the animals and strung together the message.  

The final touch was an old gelli printed mask of a giraffe I had used in one of my classes.