Thursday, April 23, 2015

Blogging A to Z: Texture, Trading Cards and Twinks

April is here!! It's time for daily blogging, lots of visitors and meeting new friends.  In other words, time for the Blogging A to Z challenge hosted by Arlee Bird and his team of minions.  Thousands of other bloggers from all over the world participate in this blog hop each year, and anyone may join in as long as they blog each day during the month of April, (except Sundays) the blog posts correspond to the appropriate letter for that day, and they sign up on the link list. Simple!

As mentioned in my E post, one of the elements of art is texture.  I love texture!!  I add it in a variety of ways: layers of paper or tape; textured papers such as hand-made or other textured scrapbook papers; mediums like super heavy gesso, modeling paste or glass bead gel; glue, glossy accents or texture spray such as "Goosebumps"; a variety of non-art related products such as drywall tape which comes in a variety of styles, corrugated paper, mesh bags, etc.; fabric such as burlap or other loose weave; fibers such as yarn, string, hemp, thread... You can imagine that just about anything can be used!

One of the first things that captured my interest in mixed media art was Trading Cards, commonly known as ATC's (Artist Trading Cards).  These are 2.5 x 3.5" little miniature works of art.  They can be made with any style or form, the only hard and fast rule is the size.  I have a nice collection that I keep in two large binders filled with sleeves like those used for sports card collections.

Twinkling H2O watercolors, (twinks) are little pots of watercolor infused with minerals to create a shimmer effect.  They were my first real art supply after I left the world of scrapbooking. They come in so many colors, and every single one makes me happy! :)

Thank you for coming by today!  I hope you learned something or were inspired.  I'd love to hear what you have to say in the comments!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hadn't heard of Twinkling H2O before. They sound like a cool thing to use for art.

~Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
Member of C. Lee's Muffin Commando Squad
Story Dam
Patricia Lynne, Indie Author

Stephanie Bird said...

It's nice to come upon an art blog. I'm an artist too. Texture is so important and I love ATC's. I've posted some on my blog a few years back and artist's books as well. I have some twinks but have not figured out a way to use them apart from my ATC's. Nice to find you through A to Z. Thanks for the tips!

Birgit said...

Texture is so great to see on an art piece and I love seeing what car makers do. I love my twinkling H2O's-they are great!