Celebrating my style as a favourite artist for Anything but Cute's first anniversary

Hello and a very warm welcome to Jane's Journal. Today I am absolutely delighted to be joining Anything But Cute's first anniversary celebrations. I had a wonderful email from Pamellia in April telling me that I had been voted one of their favourite mixed media artists of the year! What an honour, I was totally delighted by this recognition. The brief for today was to show my mixed media style to give some inspiration for their newest challenge here.

I have quite an eclectic mixed media style as I love learning new techniques and using new products. I could never just use "one" style and my crafting is constantly evolving. I really love getting inky and using mixed media. I am totally inspired my Mother Nature which influences all my crafting and I particularly love the seasons.

Spring is in full swing here and everything is bursting into life. I take my camera with me everywhere, even into my own garden. Inspiration is all around me...these photos were taken in my garden yesterday

and when I went for all walk blossom is exploding everywhere

At first I thought I would make a spring art journal page using my Tim Holtz tree die as the centre piece. However I decided for this special occasion to make a double art journal page to show my style and all the seasons of the year. I also wanted to share some of my favourite mixed media techniques. I do love adding textures so I decided that I would textured a tree for each season.

I started blending my paints....

I sectioned my pages into 4, 1 for each of the seasons. I made a "path" to "walk" through my seasons with some thoughts along the way.

I used the colours I associate for each season to ink each section. I added texture paste through some stencils and archival ink through others. (Sorry this photo is so dark). The path was created with texture sand which I added a little grey acrylic paint to.

Then I started to add the details, season by season.

Spring: Newly budded leaves and birds. I stamped PaperArtsy leaves onto book pages, others I die cut using inky off cuts. The sentiment stamped, embossed and coloured with Glaze pens.

Summer; hot colours, butterflies, a garden bench with watering can and a daisy. (every garden must have a Daisy ;0)

Autumn; golden colours, spiders' webs, birds, falling leaves

Winter; snow, a starry wintry sky and of course a robin. I painted the stars with silver acrylic paints and the snow is Decoart Snow Tex with some glamour dust added (which does not show in my photo, IRL this has such sparkle).

I added some Tim Holtz chit chat stickers and Remnant Rubs words and images to tie everything in. You can see that each tree has a seasonal colour/ finish too.

Here is my finished piece......4 seasons in one day ;0)

and a couple of close ups

I had such fun making this. I am a crafter who usually makes Christmas themed projects no earlier than September and I would never usually even think about Halloween until September! So getting out my Christmas and autumn dies and inks was delightful.

I would like to enter my seasons art journal pages into the following challenges;

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday stencil it
Pile it on 2/3 garden creatures
Rhedd's creative challenge altered art/mixed media
We love to Create 2/2 anything mixed media
The artistic stamper 1/3 Collage

Memory Box for the birds my crows branch, the butterfly summer flourish and the tiny spring birds are all MB

Our creative corner 1/3 hit the books I used book pages to create some of my spring leaves.
Emerald Creek Dares Use the Bs... I have used blooms, butterflies, bright colours, bricks, bench and birds

I would like to say a big thank you to Pamellia and her talented team over at Anything But Cute for nominating me as one of their favourite mixed media artists of the year and for asking me show my style.
I am very proud to wear this badge in my side bar

Congratulations ladies on your first birthday and thank you for all your inspiring work you have shared over the last year.
ATBC have a brand new challenge to celebrate their 1st anniversary..celebrate your style starting today.

They would love everyone to be a part of it. Please pop on over here via this link to join the fun and to also see what the other favourite artists and the DT have created for this special celebration.

Thanks so much for visiting me here today and a very warm welcome to anyone who is a first timer.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x