Mixed Media ATC's with Dragonflies

I've created a series of ATC's following most of the same techniques I explained in my last post.  This is a scan of one of them.
If you're in the area, I hope you'll stop by my tent this Sunday at the Linn Creek Art Fest in Marshalltown.

Dragonflies will be at Linn Creek Art Fest 2012

Here's a sneak peak at mixed media art I've been working on.  I'll have a booth at the Linn Creek Art Festival in Marshalltown this coming Sunday, July 15, 2012 from 10 - 4.  This is a fun art festival with plenty to entertain the whole family in addition to the beautiful art you can see.

In addition to mixed media art, I will have acrylic paintings and jewelry.

This art piece was started on acrylic paper which is really just a heavy water media paper.  I think it has a different sizing than regular water color paper.  After applying washes of acrylic paint and allowing the paint to dry, I added visual texture with an acrylic transfer. 

To make an acrylic transfer-

Choose a laser or toner copy of clip art (I used copy of a floral design from a Dover royalty free book.) and adhere it face down to the art surface using matte or gloss gel medium.  Rub the paper to make sure there are no air bubbles, but be careful to not get any medium onto the top of the paper.  Allow the medium to thoroughly dry which can take several hours to over night, especially in humid conditions.

Now you will wet the paper you adhered to your art. 

A damp cloth works well to help keep the paper moist as the paper gets softened.  When it starts to look translucent, rub the paper and it will peel or curl up from the surface, leaving the toner image behind on your art.  If your image is coming up as you rub, you didn't adhere it with enough medium or it wasn't thoroughly dry.  Occasionally, you may be rubbing too hard.  I find Golden gel medium has very consistent results.  I've used Liquitex, too, but its gel is not as creamy as Golden and is trickier to apply evenly for this type of application.

Keep rubbing away the paper until the milky appearance is gone.  As the surface dries, you may find that you haven't removed as much paper as you thought!  Just keep wetting the surface and rub away.

I added more layers of matte medium and paint over the transfer.  I also used Caran D'Ache water soluble crayons, Inktense pencils and water soluble graphite to enhance the surface.  The transfer was very bold and I wanted to push it way back so my dragonfly clipping and text could be the stars.  The background was still a bit intense for my purposes, so I stenciled the vines with gesso and added more color glazes on it.  I also used a bit of interference paint in one of the glaze layers.

In person, the result is reminiscent of encaustic. 

The dragonfly is my personal clip art.  Last fall I painted a set of dragon flies on Tim Holtz Grunge Paper for a client.  Before delivering them, I scanned them to use for clip art in future projects.  After this collaged dragonfly dried on the surface, I embellished it with Sakura gel pens and outlined it with water soluble graphite.

The text was salvaged from an old music book that I rescued from a friend's discards.

I scanned the finished art and added the border effect to the digital image.

Now it's time to finish a bit more art...