Karen Fitting | Artful Adventures

Welcome to Make It Monday blog hop! If you’ve come Gina’s site at GinaZee.com, you are in the right place!

Now it’s my turn to show you an idea! If you’ve been following along lately, you know that today is the day that the Creative Christmas Bundle goes on sale! 15 Crafters/Designers – 15 products – 1 low price – for 1 week only!

My contribution to this special bundle is an online Art Journaling Basics class! You can find out about it here, but don’t order from that page, because for a few dollars more you can get the entire Creative Christmas Bundle!

Today, I want to show you a project using Karen Fitting’s contribution to the bundle. Karen takes photos of flowers through the whole year, and then finds her favorites to create a calendar. She has put one each month of the year on a separate photo and save them all as 4×6″ .jpg images. That way, we can use them however we want to!

I decided that I would like to make an at-a-glance type calendar in a 12″x12″ size. I created a digital template with twelve 3″x4″ segments. Since the the original images are in a 4″x6″ size they don’t size down without losing part of the image, or changing the proportions. I chose to size them down as much as possible and then just leaving off a bit of the image. That way the photo and calendar remain proportional.

Images from Karen Fitting’s contribution to the Creative Christmas bundle.

After I got all the images on, I linked them all together and sized the entire block of images to about an 11″x11″ square, and changed my background to black.

I added the “2015” text so I’d know the calendar year. Pretty smart, right? Save it all in a single image and it’s ready to print!

Right now, during the month of November, you can print two 12″x12″ layouts from Close to My Heart’s Studio J, for $5.00. This may be a good time to get some of your photos onto pages, or just print your calendar. You could print the calendar on both sides of the double layout, and you’ll have a calendar to give and one to keep!

Watch how to create the calendar page in Studio J.

CTMH #Z2016

CTMH Item #Z2015

Now, hurry over and check out how Beth Soler from Scrapping Wonders is using the Bundle to prep for her December Daily album! If you’re not sure what that even is, it’s an album to capture all the memories of December in one great place, urging you to capture bits of each and every day in December!

Don’t miss out on the Creative Christmas Bundle!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Welcome to this week’s Make It Monday blog hop! If you arrived by way of Karen Fitting’s website at Photos Kept Alive, welcome! I don’t want you to miss her post because she always has such great ideas, so I’ll tell you how to get back to it at the end of this post.

Today’s theme is Fall/Halloween for the hop. I have had this idea for a little while, and so I saved it for today. Since so many people want to know how to create the mixed media projects they are seeing, I decided to create something with a limited set of products. I chose the Scaredy Cat paper pack and Scaredy Cat Complements pack from Close to My Heart because I felt it offered such a great collection for what I wanted to create.

Halloween Mixed Media Decor Item

This project was done on a 12″x12″x1″ canvas. By painting the edges, it doesn’t need to be framed. If you wanted to, you could use a canvas panel so that it would be thin enough to place in a regular picture frame.

First off, select what you’ll use for the background. I chose the Slate paper for the top or sky, and the black for the ground bottom. I cut a strip off the bottom of the Slate paper and then tore a tiny bit along the edge. That way, the layers ease together nicely. Now, use an adhesive medium to coat the back side of your paper. Turn it over onto the canvas add a layer of your medium over the top to seal it.

slate background paper applied to canvas

Tear along the bottom edge to create less bulk when adding the next layer.

Next, I tore an edge on my Black paper to create the ground. Again, coat the back of the paper with your adhesive medium, turn it over onto the canvas and add another layer of the medium.

Black paper turn to give curves for the ground portion of the project.

Next, you can either add some texture to background or you could just continue to the next step. I like to add a lot of different textures, so I used black StazOn as well as some white paint and a bit of Thistle ink. In the end I was sorry I had added too much of the white, so I grabbed some black paint and gave a squirt into my white paint to make a nice gray. I then brushed this over the sky portion of my background and restamped my texture in StazOn.

After my night sky became too light, I ended up creating gray with my paint and toned it back down.

Now it was time to really start having some fun. Between the paper pack and some stickers from its coordinating set, there was a lot to play with. Since these were the only products I wanted to use, I did a lot of cutting. One of the decorative sheets has a lot to choose from, and the parts that didn’t get cut up from that sheet will still be used to make some other things — cards, treat bag toppers, etc. You can get a lot of mileage from that one piece of paper! Here is what it looked like

Major pieces placed and doors and windows added.

Next I added details with a fine line marker, placed more stickers, and then used a black Pitt Pen to smudge around the edges of everything to give it more definition. A bit more black was smudged into the sky to add a little more darkness. NOTE: You MUST have sealed everything with your medium over the top, even the stickers. The Pitt Pen will smear for a second as soon as you put it on, but it will not smudge if it is on unsealed paper. You have to act quickly, and you may need to dampen your finger, as well.

The last thing I did was use a white gel pen to add some final definition to a few areas. You’ll notice that I didn’t try to make perfectly straight lines. That’s it. Complete! Here are some close ups.

White Gel Pen used to add some details.

Black Pitt Pen smudged around edges.

Night sky with more black smudged in over the Slate background.

~~Here is the final piece.~~ I may go back in and use my fine tip black pen to outline the witch and broom over the moon. What do you think?

Halloween Mixed Media Decor Item

Here is the FINAL piece. I went back in and outlined the witch!

Halloween Mixed Media Decor Item

Easy access to the Scaredy Cat items are below.

As promised, if you missed Karen’s great idea for hybrid Halloween tags, you go back and check it out HERE. Otherwise, next on the Make It Monday blog hop Melissa Shanhun is scrapbooking Halloween and there’s not a costumed child in sight!

I hope you all know how much it means to know you’ve stopped by, looked and read. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment!

Until our next Artful Adventure,