Marilyn Gossett Designs: Clearsnap + Smoothfoam Blog Hop

Easy Mixed Media Wall Art with Clearsnap and Smoothfoam

Materials:

Clearsnap: ColorBox Spritzers Dye Ink Spray: Mermaid, Lemon Drop, Pinkolicious
ColorBox Pigment Stamp Pad: Brown

Smoothfoam: 12" Square Scrapbook Mount; 2

DecoArt Americana Decou-Page: Matte, Paper glue sealer
Paintbrushes: Large Flat (or sponge), medium Round, 1/4" and 1/2" Shaders
Tissue Paper: white (several sheets)
Watercolor crayons: (I used 24 ct. Lyra Aquacolor)
*For Kids: Use regular Watercolor paints
Old book or stayfast printed material
Primo euroblend Charcoal pencil
Craft glue
Scissors
Hotwire Foam Cutter by Marvy Uchida

Instructions:

For the paper art; owl & flowers:

1. Draw or trace pattern for line drawing on printed page. I used a blending Charcoal pencil. Choose watercolor crayon and color in around the inside edges using the darkest shade of desired color. Color in the inside portion of the pattern with lighter colored crayons and highlight with White.

2. Dip a paintbrush in water, apply to colored lines, blending all of the colors together. This is fairly forgiving, so have fun with it. You will improve as you get the hang of it.

3. After watercolor is dry, cut out all of the shapes leaving a 1/8" border around each one.

*Prepare Smoothfoam surfaces:

4. Wad up a couple of pieces of the tissue paper. Apply Decou-Page to the entire surface of the Smoothfoam. Smooth out the tissue paper and press it into the prepared surface of the Smoothfoam. Clouds & Grass: Follow directions given for Foam Cutter and cut out. Spray the grass with Lemon Drop and Mermaid to make green. Lightly mist the bottom edges of the clouds with Mermaid. Spritz the top of the clouds with Lemon Drop. Blot. Use this technique on the main surface and on each piece of Smoothfoam you have cut for the design. This will add the textured paper surface you will need to apply the Ink Dye. Allow to dry thoroughly.

5. Spritz the prepared Smoothfoam surface with Mermaid, Pinkolicious and Lemon drop. Blot surface to blend as desired. Allow to dry thoroughly. Position and adhere the clouds and grassy hills to the Smoothfoam board as shown below.

6. Adhere the owl and flowers to the Smoothfoam. Smooth and allow to dry thoroughly. Shade the edges with Brown ink using the wedge sponge to finish.

* Close-up view:

*Finished project shown below:

*Note: Further embellish the project by adding Glitter to the clouds and rhinestones, buttons or other small adhesion's to the flowers. To hang on a wall; adhere a ribbon hanger or piece of appropriate hardware to the back of the finished board. Enjoy!

I hope you have discovered how easy a few of the right products can make your art. With a little adult supervision, this is a totally do-able project for a young person. Magazine art or other ephemera can also be applied to the tissue covered surface. Please leave comments and/or questions. I would love to hear from you!

A variation shown below:

Owl in Moonlight

Thank you for stopping by!

Life Life with a Flourish,

Marilyn

PS. I am aware that the spacing is messed up in this blog post. It looked fine in editing, but when I published it, there was a problem! I need to find out if I can fix it. Please excuse the way it looks. I hope to get to the bottom of it!

Here are the links to continue on this blog tour!

Hop List:

Smoothfoam Blog

Clearsnap Blog

Suzanne Austin – What’s in a Lousyananut

Julie McGuffee – Life in the Craft Lane

Jennifer Priest – Hydrangea Hippo

Lisa Fulmer – Lisa Liza Lou

Meihsia Liu – Simply Paper Crafts

Anita Scroggins – The Flamingo Chronicals

Steph Ackerman – Live Laugh Scrap

Carmen Flores Tanis – Flores Tanis Studio