Mixed Media Journal

Take some time to relax and reflect with your own handmade Mixed Media Journal from Heidi Borchers. Use recycled materials like brown paper bags and cereal boxes to construct this piece. Mixed media art is perfect for showing off your creative side!


 

Materials:

• Aleene’s Collage Pauge
• Aleene’s Tacky Glue
• Brown grocery bag
• Cereal box
• Scissors
• Tulip3-D Paint – colors of your choice
• Acrylic paint – colors of your choice
• Cardboard squeegee (or expired gift card)
• Wax paper
• Tissue paper
• Rubber stamp(s)
• Black ink pad
• Cool2Cast shapes
• Miscellaneous embellishments – rhinestones by the yard, fancy yarn, beads

Instructions:

1. Cut brown bag to desired size. Lay flat on wax paper covered work surface. Draw squiggles of 3D paint on the brown bag.
   
   
    
2. Squeeze several colors of acrylic paint directly from the bottle onto brown bag.
   
   
    
3. Starting in upper corner, hold squeegee at 15 degree angle diretly on brown bag. Pull from side to side with a wiggle motion. Tap excess paint onto waxed paper.
   
   
    
4. Repeat process of dragging squeegee across brown bag until you have removed the paint from the entire surface of the bag leaving behind the intriguing pattern! NOTE: Do not go back over any squeegeed areas or you will create a muddied effect with your paint. Also, if your puddles of paint on your waxed paper are too thick, take your squeegee and smooth them down because when this paint dries, you will peel it off to use it in your collage.
   
   
    
5. Repeat painting and squeegee process to color additional brown bag pieces for your journal. Set all pieces aside to dry completely. When all pieces are dry, layer them together. To give strength to cover and back, cut cereal box cardboard slightly smaller than journal pages and glue in between two layers of brown bag with Aleene’s Tacky Glue. Punch holes along the binding edge. Use fancy yarns to bind the edge of your journal.
   
   
    
6. To create my embellishments, I stamped my designs onto tissue paper.
   
   
    
7. Next, I applied Aleene’s Collage Pauge with my finger onto the top and sides of my Cool2Cast shape.
   
   
    
8. Press the stamped tissue into the Collage Pauge. Use finger to apply more Collage Pauge over top of tissue. Cut off excess or wrap around to back and glue in place.
   
   
    
9. Here’s a close up of a Cool2Cast shape which has been covered in stamped tissue.
   
   
    
10. Rhinestones by the yard make a beautiful accent on the journal cover.
    
    
     
11. Layers of stamped tissue, brown bag, dried peeled paint and embellishments on the cover of my brown bag journal.
    
    

For a comprehensive video tutorial of this project, check out How to Make a Mixed Media Grocery Bag Journal.