Mixed Media Art is one of our favorite visual art forms; it’s unique, fun, and never the same. Think of a collage of photos, but with many different art materials. Beads, cloth, wood, buttons, different metals, and crafting materials, you name it, and you can find a way to use it in your DIY masterpiece. You’ve probably seen a few different mixed media pieces in your favorite stores that have been mass-produced, but you can do it all by yourself and make it your own, DIY style! We’ve got a few ideas up our sleeves for beginners and non-beginners alike. Let’s get creative!
More Than Just a Colored Pencil
If you’re using more than one form of art material or art medium within one piece then you’re employing mixed media in your artwork and crafting project! But it can also be more than just mixing watercolors, colored pencils or even beads into the mix. Think even more outside the box! Use the physical colored pencils as pieces you can actually glue onto your canvas, with beads, and other crafting materials or whatever you plan to create your DIY creation on!
Cut them (safely) into different sizes or keep them all uniform, dependent on what you decide to create! Think of something as simple as a butterfly outline, and use different shades and sizes of colored pencils, beads, and your other crafting materials to create the outline or even the inside of the wings on the butterfly. The first DIY step is always to create the outline of the thing you plan to create so you have the shape and right size down in order to fill in your mixed media art piece.
Recycle Your Old Papers & Fabrics
Most of us creative jewelry and craft people have a bead stash, with those leftover odd beads, charms, and irresistible special bead finds just waiting for a new project. Have leftover fabric hanging around that you’re not sure what to do with? Or even old clothes, books, school papers? With mixed media, you can take those pieces of scrap or something you thought you would just throw away and creatively upcycle them into a DIY crafting masterpiece.
Juliette Belmonte, a well-known Mixed Media artist does just that, as she writes “I incorporate found objects, fabrics, gold leaf, and organic elements into my current paintings. I like the physical layers they help to create and feel those layers act as metaphors for times past.” Her main focus is portraits, especially of those representing the Victorian and Edwardian Eras. (This picture shows one of her amazing mixed media portraits.)
Whether you have fabric, beads, or other items that may be of importance to you, but you hadn’t yet found a way to use or place them, mixed media is the perfect DIY art form to express yourself and your uniqueness, while also creating a beautiful work of art from crafting.
We have a few recommendations from our own collection, that would work well with many styles of mixed media art creations. Our Steampunk collection at Solid Oak, Inc. includes a huge variety of parts, from gears to pendants and beads, that can add texture and style to your creation. Looking for a classic, antique-looking paper? We have printed Art Sheets, that fall right into that realm. They’re carefully assembled collections of artwork in different themes, sized for our Indi-Pendants - but they can also be used in other ways - especially mixed media art. Available collections are as follows: Nature, Travel & Places, Block Letters, and Script Letters.
If you have photos of your beautiful mixed media creations, especially ones with our products, make sure to tag and follow us @solidoakinc and use #solidoakinc, and we might even share it!
