My Mind's Eye Blog

Mixed Media with Karen | February 2015

Hi everyone! This is Karen, back with another Mixed Media with Karen.

For this month's entry, I wanted to continue in my code desires notebook which is a collage book that reminds me that I get to choose how I feel and helps me focus on what those feelings are.

For this page, I decided to go with a picture I found a few weeks ago of this woman wearing a really fancy dress and laughing. The photo made me smile right away and even though I am more "stay at home in my PJs" kid of person, it reminded me that sometimes I feel more alive when I go out and socialize with friends.

So I wanted this page to honor the aliveness the photo made me feel. Since she's wearing a shiny dress, I knew immediately that I wanted to couple her with shiny papers and embellishments. I picked some of the blue Necessities papers that I love so much and layered them under her.

And then on the opposing page, I decided to use the large, shiny and awesome letters to spell "YES." Here's how it looked at this point:


Now that I'd tied  the twine on one letter, I decided I wanted to add two more of them to make sure there were three instances of it. I added one to the S of the YES and then put a vertical line alongside of the photo on the left side. I like how it adds a little color and motion.

I liked the yellow enough that I decided to add some more of it. I pulled out different sized embellishments that had yellow bits in it and added some to the left side and some to the right side. I love the splashes of yellow and how it makes the page happier.


As a Final touch before I added the paint, I decided the page needed more black so I added little bits of black paper on the bottom layers, some black and metal hearts and a few embellishments.

Once I put down the blacks, I felt I was ready to get painting. I try not to overthink the painting process. I just pick some of the colors on my page and just go to down. I try to add some paint to the sides of the page to frame it, and some to the layers to make them seem more seamless.

As a final touch I added a few sequins because i like the shine they add. So here's a side look at the final page:

and here's a better look at how shimmery the page is. I love the papers and how they add intermittent shimmer.

here's the clustering on top:

and the magnificent, huge letters on the right side.

There we are. If you're into Mixed Media or Collage like I am, I highly urge you to use the beautiful My Mind's Eye papers and embellishments. And please do share your pages in the comments so I can see them!! Have a lovely February!

Mix and Match with Karen | February 2015

Hi everyone! This is Karen, back with another episode of Mix and Match!

For this month, I was thinking about how quickly time is passing and I wanted to focus on an update for my kids and how much they've grown and who they are right now in their lives.

I also wanted to use more silver since I liked using that last month. I often hear people worry about using pinks on boy pages so I also wanted to show you how I use lots and lots of pink on my pages even though I have two boys.

As far as I am concerned, nothing is unacceptable on any kind of page as long as you like it.

Here's the layout I came up with:




Since this layout is two pages in one, I always think about how to balance the two pages out so it's clear that they go together. In this layout, I used the narrow pink washi tape to join the two sides together.

I love how something so simple can give the feeling of uniformity. Also, since the top right was so embellishment heavy, I added a small cluster to the bottom of the right side page and one to the left bottom of the left page.

To me, these form a triangle that focuses your attention back to the photos and allows your eyes to stay on the page and not wander off.

Here's the top right cluster:




I want to mention a few important things about this cluster. This comes from three different MME product lines and I pulled embellishments apart and layered them to make them fit with my vision and goal for the page.

This is something I cannot mention enough times. You do not have to use the embellishments as they come. All of the MME lines play really well together and you can combine embellishments across lines old and new and come up with exactly what you want.

Here's the bottom left page:




For those of you who are like me and do a lot of journaling, you can still add small, lovely bits of embellishment to your page. These little bits can add personality and color to your page.

And here's the bottom right side:



I have noticed that I use the MME chipboard pieces more and more in my titles. I love coupling them with the small alphabets which then means my title can be super long or pretty short.

I also wanted to mention the stitching. I often love to stitch on my pages because it keeps the embellishments firmly down and it adds texture to my pages. It's also a great reminder not to focus on perfection since I can't stitch straight to save my life.

That's it from me for this month! I hope you've enjoyed this layout and if you have any questions or have or anything you'd like to see more of, make sure to leave me a comment. Have a great February.

Mixed Media with Karen | January 2015

Hi everyone! This is Karen and I am back with my a new Mixed Media with Karen.

Today I have a new page in the You Choose journal I mentioned last month .One of my desired feelings for 2015 is open. I want to be open to receive. Be willing to let people and the universe help me. Be open to signs and messages and kindness.

So I thought this was a lovely way to start my page. I printed this image from Pinterest. I then added layers underneath the photo and put a transparency on the right page. I decided I wanted a million little hearts so I punched a whole lot of them and glued them haphazardly on the right hand side.

Added a few on the left just for a unified look.

 

I then went to town with paint again and added some pen work this time, too. After I was done with it, it looked like this:

 

It's got several shiny parts including a glare from the transparency. But I love that.:

here's a closer look at the layers on the left. I added a bunch of paint to each paper:

and some lines of paint to the bottom right

and top left

I then decided my hearts looked too bare so I traced around them each with a black pen. And called it a day.

It's still a bit chaotic than I'm looking to create for this project but I am learning and that's all that matters. I am open to my instincts as I create the page. Thank you for letting me share! See you in February!

Mix and Match with Karen | January 2015

Hi everyone!

Happy 2015. I am Karen and I am back with a new Mix and Match layout.

This month, I decided I wanted to celebrate my oldest son, David. He has recently started taking guitar lessons and I absolutely adore listening to him practice. I can't play any instruments so it brings me a lot of
joy to see him learn.

I asked him whether he wanted gold or silver on his page and he chose silver. Since my instinct is to always go with gold, it was a fun challenge to accommodate his request.

Here's what I ended up with:


I love how wonderfully the chipboard from Jubilee - Sherbert integrated into my title seamlessly.


and it's so shiny (so is the paper behind the photo):


Since the guitar is made out of wood, I decided to primarily focus on brown, yellow/orange, and silver for this page. I used the wood flair from Jubilee Tangerine on top of the whitespace in my photo:


and then a little wood paper on the opposite page:


To unite the pages. I also used these small white enamel dots all over.

I also created two small clusters. One on the top left:


and one on the bottom right


And that was it.

Here's the long journaling from this page.

In the end, I loved the silver page. Sometimes, it's fun to ask others to pick a main color for your page, or some embellishment that they definitely want you to use. It helps you get outside your comfort zone and try new things.

I hope you try something new this month, too!

Mix and Match with Karen | December 2014

This is Karen, back with another Mix and Match for the month of December. If you're anything like me, December is a very busy month for you, too. Between work and the holidays and working on my December
Daily, I rarely find time to do anything else during this time of year.

However, this time of year is also a very reflective time for me. I like to look back and the year I'm saying goodbye to and look forward to the year I'm welcoming. I like to come up with my word of the year and some
specific projects and goals for the year. And another tradition I started last year is to think about my desired feelings for the year.

This is how I want to be feeling throughout the year. Here, you can see my layout on this from last year.

So, instead of doing nothing, I wanted to challenge myself to see how quickly I could make a layout. I wrote my journaling, which was the important part for reflection. I grabbed a recent photo of myself, which was a core goal for 2014 (get in the photos more) and then I sat down at my desk.

I put the photo down somewhere on the page that felt pleasing to me. Then I took out all the My Mind's Eye tape that I love and makes me happy and just put it down on my page line by line. I let it seep into my other page a small amount to create the feeling of connectedness between the two pages.

I added one big 2015 and spelled "here i come" in little alphas and stitched all around my two pages. And I was done:



I know it looks simple but it also makes me really, really happy.

See, I even look happy in the photo:



You can read the full journaling here.

I like playing with product as much as the next scrapbooker and sometimes I love tinkering with my pages forever or coming up with something creative. And then, other times, I love being able to create a page that makes me happy in minutes.

It's good to have both in my box of tricks.

If you've got some tricks to make super-fast pages, I'd love to see them!

Mixed Media with Karen | December 2014

This is Karen, back with another Mixed Media with Karen.

As the year comes to a close, I often start thinking about my projects for the following year. One of the projects I'll be doing this year is called You Choose.

This is a Moleskine squared journal where I will be collaging images that remind me of the way I want to feel this year.

It's a book that will be a year-long inspiration for me and a reminder that we each get to choose how we feel in life. How we feel every singe moment in the day.

I am not so great at collage which is why I picked it as my theme for this book. I decided it will give me a lot of opportunity for practice. I also decided I wanted to experiment with making sparse pages. Let's see how it goes.

For this page, the first thing I did was to pick some papers and embellishments that I liked and layer them underneath the photo of me. I then used similar papers on the facing page and added little butterflies on top. I stamped my word of the year "brave" using a stamp I carved myself. I then stamped the four other feelings I want to have next year.



Here's another look so you can see how shiny it is:

Once I had my collage layers, I decided to just go to town with the paint. I added pink and red and gold to the outer edges, I underlined my words with gold paint and red. I painted over the papers to make them seem seamless.

And I ended up with this:



So much for clean and sparse.

Here's a closer look at the left side:



My words are: brave, abundance, open, alive, and serene. Here's to a year full of them.

Finally, one more look so you can see all the shimmering gold:


So here we are, attempt one at mixed media collage. Here's to a wonderful 2015 and getting to choose our feelings!

Mixed Media with Karen | November 2014

Hi everyone!

This is Karen, back with another Mixed Media project. This month's project was inspired by Carissa Paige's Life Book lesson about home.

I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and all of my family is still back there, and I consider it my home. But I moved to the United States when I was 17 and have now been here over 23 years. My husband is American and I have two boys. So I consider the US my home as well. Sometimes, neither feels like home. Sometimes, both feel like home. Most of the time, it's confusing.

So I decided to make a project about how I need to remember that home is not necessarily a place.

I grabbed a bunch of my Mixed Bags from both Jubilee and Just Sayin' and emptied them on my table. I took a photo of me and my sister from when I was a kid and one with my husband and boys now. I honestly didn't know what I was going to do but I told myself not to overthink it and just start picking things that spoke to me and glue them down.

There was no rhyme or reason to my process. I just went on until I thought I had enough. This is where I stopped.


I didn't worry too much about the colors because I already knew I was going to paint all over the page. I still had no plan at this point except that I knew I was going to draw an earth. So I went to Google and wrote "globe" and pulled up image results.


I looked at the one with the yellow in it and drew outline of the shapes as best I could. I didn't over-worry. I wanted the idea to be clear but it didn't have to be geographically accurate. I drew right in the middle of my page with my Stabilo All pencil.


I then painted the oceans blue and while it was drying, I painted the outside of the globe with orange and yellows.


I feel the need to note that I still didn't really have a plan for how this was all going to come together and I wasn't crazy about what I was seeing so far. But I kept going because I knew it always works out in the end. I added in the green and brown to my earth. I put one more layer of yellows on the outside and I knew I was going to eventually journal all over this page so I added some white with a palette knife. Then I wrote out my title. I ended up with this:


Title says: Home is where the people you love are.

Here's the left side:


and the right side:


Had I thought this through some more, I would have put my sister and I on the right page and my boys on the left one since that's where the US is. And I probably would not have drawn the globe right through my son's
face. But, alas, I didn't plan this page, I just went with it.

What I love is that the collage pieces are sticking out here and there and definitely giving a feeling to the page. And also adding a lot of texture:


even subtle ones:


So there we are. It all came together in the end. And it's a great reminder that, when confused, home is where people I love are and my home is all over the world as the people I love are spread throughout the world.

Mix and Match with Karen | November 2014

Hi everyone! This is Karen and I am delighted to be back with a Mix and Match for November.

In my ten years of scrapbooking, there have been some trends I really wasn't crazy about. I'd see the embellishments everywhere and I couldn't wait for the trend to pass.

But then there's gold.

I am perfectly happy if this gold trend stays here forever. I just can never seem to get enough of it and I love love love the way it shines on my pages. It's not messy like glitter and requires no drying time like Stickles but it's shiny and makes me happy.

So when I was making this month's page, I knew I was going back to my happy gold. Instead of using the tape this time, I cut off the wide gold strip from the awesome Garden Party paper from the Just Sayin' line.  Once I had that down, I was feeling so much happier that it almost didn't matter what else I put on my page.

I like pairing gold with black and since my photos had so much blue in them, I didn't want to add a lot more blue. So I decided to use pink, black, gold and a little blue on my page. I pulled out some Chalk Studio II chipboard pieces and stickers. Some heart enamels and tape with blues and pinks in it. I used hearts all over because why not.

I had already decided on my journaling which was about how my boys pout before they go to swim class and how I've always worried that they were having a horrible time but for this one week, I ended up being the one
to take them to class and I could see with my own eyes how very much they actually love it. So I pulled out the perfect "Just Sayin'" diecut from the Mixed Bag  and decided to couple it with some alphabet stickers for my title. I had my journaling, photos, paper,  tape, stickers, and hearts. I was all set to go.

Here's what I ended up with:


You can read the full journaling here.

People sometimes reach out to me to ask how I feel about using pink or hearts or flowers on my boy pages. I feel like these pages are mine and I do them for myself. I also feel like hearts, pinks and flowers are not  reserved for girls only. All shapes, colors and patterns are for all of us. So I do whatever I want to do and haven't had a complaint from my boys yet. This page has so many hearts, it's almost ridiculous. But they are all a little different. I have it on the tapes, the enamel, and the rubon.

I tried to put my hearts on three corners of my page and in threes (or ones) to have them visually interesting. I started with the upper left where I only had a bit of space:


And then to the lower left where I had even less space. I made one of these a rubon just to have the rubon and the gold in one more place on the page:


And then the lower right. I had two hearts on the title right by there already so, here, I decided to do just one and then added an arrow to go with the arrows on the tape below and added some more gold and made my
heart blue to add some color.


I just love love love how shiny that is.

As I was rubbing on my hearts on the photo, one of them got slightly messed up. After I was done being frustrated, I decided to 'mess up' the other two as well so they could look like they were distressed hearts.


I don't know if it worked but three messed up hearts bothers me a lot less.

And then I pulled out my sewing machine and stitched around the photos, the tape, the little letters and I felt like I was done. I stared and stared at the page and found myself wondering what it would look like if I stitched around the diecut. I am not the smoothest stitcher so I was chiding myself for coming up with an idea that would surely ruin the page.

I considered using a pen instead. But it doesn't have the same texture. A small voice kept saying "Just walk away, you're done, don't ruin it!" but then another one was saying "But what if it's really neat looking?" And my motto is that if you're finding yourself wondering, you should try it.

So what if you "ruin" the page? You can make many more. And if you try and it's indeed cool, now you know one more trick.

So I grabbed a pencil, drew some guidelines and went at it. The result was crooked indeed but I still loved it. I think it added just the right texture to my page.


Now that I'd tried my crazy idea, I was done. One more page done, one more story told. Here's to many more!

See you next month.

Mixed Media with Karen | October 2014

 

Hi everyone! This is Karen, back with another Mixed Media project.

For this month, I decided to use another Life Book project. This one is from Tam and it's about using your intuition. As Tam talked about intuition and imagery and listening to yourself, I saw images of balloons being let go. I'd been thinking of the brave for a while by that point and then I saw the word "release" so I decided maybe the universe was trying to tell me something and I should just sit and paint.

Sometimes things become clearer after you start.

So I grabbed a piece of paper, a bunch of 3x4 cards from Jubilee and I drew a balloon.



I cut it out and then used it as a template for each of my cards. (Apologies for the yellowish photos, it was really late at night and my camera did the best it could.)

After I cut all the cards, I had my balloons.



It was time to create my background. I covered the page with blue paint and then put some white on it with a palette knife.



I wasn't thrilled with it at this point but I knew most of it would be covered so I decided not to fret. Sometimes you just need to move on and see what unfolds.

I then lay down my balloons and pulled out the large letters from the Necessities collection. I knew I wanted to use the gold ones but the original letters were too thick and took up too much of the page. So I cut them up and made them narrower. This way, they fit easily.



Then I added the other word that I knew would be in my title: release



Next step was to make the balloons look like they were being released. So I put some twine at the end of each of them.



I then traced the balloons with black Stabilo All because I wanted them to stick out more. I also tied a bunch of twine to the letter "R" because I wanted it to look like the balloons were tied down on the letter and had been cut off to be released.




It was time for my favorite part: paint! Using the colors in the papers, I added paint to the balloons and to the frame of the page.  I like paint because it unites the page and adds vibrancy. I also finished out my title.

Here's how my page ended up:



The title says: it is time to be brave and release. let it go.

And it looks very very shiny in person:



That's it for this month. I hope you can have some time to play with the huge letters and your intuition and some paint this month! See you next month.

Mixed Media with Karen | September 2014

Hi everyone!

This is Karen, back with a Mixed Media page for September. This month, I decided to try out one of my assignments from the Life Book class I am taking.

The week's artist, Mika Diaz,   taught a technique where we traced an image on tracing paper and then used it on our page.

I found an image in a catalog I had lying around and then traced over it with pencil.



I didn't worry too too much about getting it perfect.

I then started working on my background. I decided to collage a bunch of the 3x4 cards I love so much.


I glued them down using gel medium (I will note that gel medium and I don't get along well. I can never seem to use it without creating a lot of bubbles.] I really liked how it looked after I had the cards down. In fact, I liked it so much that I was tempted to just leave it like that. But then I got the idea to use one of the gold papers from the Necessities line and I kept worrying that it would "ruin" the whole thing.

Here's something I've learned: when you have an idea, you need to be brave enough to try it. Even if it turns out to be a disaster, you can always start from scratch or paint over it or even soldier on. If you start second guessing your ideas/whims, you will always find yourself doing the same things so as to not "ruin" anything.

But it's only when we venture out and try new things that we expand and discover.

So I urge you to give those little whispers some voice.

I decided to listen to mine and I glued down the gold page on top.


And then I immediately hated the results. I hated how much the page bubbled up. In some sections, it was so bad that I had to cut out parts of the paper which made me more upset. After ranting out loud for a few  seconds about how I totally should not have ruined my page, I scolded the negative voice in my head and decided to move on and see where I could go next.

I put some paint down on my page and noticed that the paint hugged the bubbles and texture of the paper.


I was already liking this better. Next, I glued down my traced girl and traced over her again with my Stabilo All pencil (which can write over any surface and is awesome.) I then painted my girl lightly to match the colors in the background. And added a bit of text that says "You Can Choose Peace." A little more Stabilo All on the edges and my page was done:



I love that the cards all the way at the bottom show through in parts of my page. But what I love even more is that gold that comes through the layers and shines:

If I hadn't been willing to add that gold layer, I could have not achieved this lovely effect. Yet another proof that you have to be willing to try new things. And that when it looks like all is lost, you can just move through and remember that this is just another layer, it doesn't have to be finished until you say it is.

Thank you very much for letting me share my art and I look forward to seeing you next month!