Believe

Earlier this year I did a Craft Box workshop (now Creative Craft Academy) and made the Wings of Time mixed media panel. After doing it, I said that I didn’t think I’d do another workshop because I found it frustrating simply making someone else’s design.

Well, I’ve recently completed the Just Begin workshop by Shawn Petite — I mentioned Shawn in my inspirations post — and yes, it is another workshop that walks you through creating a particular piece of art but, unlike the Craft Box one, it focuses much more on the thought processes behind the design rather than just telling you exactly what step to take next.

And yes, my finished piece does bear a resemblance to the one Shawn creates, but that’s mainly because I stuck closely to the layout (and I was too lazy to search through my own stash for an alternative piece of collage and just printed out one of the postcards from the workshop collage pack).

But it also looks sufficiently different that it feels like my work. The colour palette is completely different. The balance of the butterflies and the positioning of the postcard has been adapted. I used drywall tape for texture. And I avoided my scrappy handwriting by using letter tiles to create the central word. Oh, and I used stamps for the final layer rather than reusing the earlier stencils.

The workshop also includes an intro to supplies, which is obviously biased towards products that are readily available in the US, but it still has some useful pointers if you don’t already have a stupidly large stash 🙂 And Shawn also talks about inspiration in a way that (being very English) I should find annoying but absolutely don’t — do look at her Sunday Inspiration videos to see if you like her style (both in speech and art).

If you do like it and are curious about trying out that style of mixed media art, then this class is definitely a good starting point.

And, unlike the Creative Craft Academy workshops, there is a very strong chance that I will return to try another of Shawn Petite’s workshops (I am very tempted by Transparent Layers). I just have so many other things to do first…

Supplies:

• Prep, Stick & Mediums:
  Finnabair soft matte gel
  Spectrafix
  Golden satin glazing liquid
• Texture:
  Drywall tape
• Colour:
  Acrylic paints
  Liquitex white gesso
• Pens & Pencils:
  charcoal pencil
• Stencils:
  The Crafter’s Workshop – mini coffee splotch
• Stamps:
  Visible Image – de-stressed
• Paper & Fabric:
  A5 artist canvas panel
  Collage papers
• Embellishments:
  Tim Holtz alpha tiles