Welcome to Make It Monday! Spring is probably my favorite season. I love how everything springs back to life with gorgeous colors to declare that winter is over. Flowers and blossoming trees are such a glorious sight when you’ve seen nothing but bare branches and brown, or blankets of white snow covering everything! One of my favorite sights of the season is the crabapple tree in our back yard, which is the inspiration for this mixed media canvas. Today’s techniques can be used for mixed media, art journaling, or even scrapbooking.

Spring blossom 8″ x 8″ mixed media canvas.

This particular project was created on an 8″x8″ canvas. Heavy body acrylics were used with a plastic card to spread the color. For scrapbooking, you can start with a piece of card stock and use various inks, sprays, or colors that do not add a lot of moisture to the paper.

A canvas, heavy body acrylics, plastic card.

After spreading the color, I added a bit of a bright green.

Another bit of color added to the mix.

More color applied with the plastic card.

Texture lines were added with black paint, by just using the edge of the plastic card.

Texture lines added.

Sewing pattern tissue paper with a twist.

I like to keep sewing pattern tissue to use for various things and decided to use it by twisting it, creating a branch. Once it was twisted, I applied some liquid matte medium on it to help it stick in the twisted state, and to adhere it to the canvas. Other papers you could use for this would be lightweight kraft color paper often used in packing, or a paper lunch bag. Try various widths to create a branch which is a good diameter for your project. A scrapbook page may only need a bit of twine so that you are not added so much bulk to the page.

You may find the next step to be reminiscent of childhood crafting. I really debated using it on a project to share with you, but I just couldn’t help myself. It just seemed to scream that it was the perfect way to achieve my crabapple tree blossoms! I grabbed some colored tissue paper and tore it into pieces about 1″ square. You could easily do the same thing with bits of any paper that is not too heavy. Patterned paper would create interesting variations in the blossoms. The shapes where shaped into little shapes, and a dab of glue was used on the outer tip to apply it to the branch.

Colored tissue paper torn into small little squares.

After all the blossoms were added, a cardboard tube section was snipped and shaped into a leaf shape. The edge was dipped in black paint and used to make leaf outlines.

Blossoms applied and leaf shapes added.

A bit of a darker green was lightly painted into the leaves, and a bit of detailing was done with black.

Leaves painted and detailed.

The bright green was dabbed into the centers of the blossoms with a tiny paintbrush. ‘Spring’ was written with acrylic paint which was watered down to create an inky consistency.

Blossoms completed and the word ‘Spring’ was added.

Here is the completed project. I plan to create one canvas for each season and hang them together.

Spring blossom 8″ x 8″ mixed media canvas.

Okay, now comment on this post and let me know that you remember using some variation of this tissue paper technique while you were growing up!

Make It Monday Blog Circle

• You may have landed here from Karen Fitting’s post at Photos Kept Alive where she discusses joining the Planner Craze, showing us her planner.  She’s also sharing her custom page as a free download. Don’t miss out.
• Next up following me is Alice over at Scrapbook Wonderland. This week, Alice has a unique and creative approach for scrapbooking a game.