Understand Blue: VIDEO: Easy Mixed Media With Newspaper

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I have several journals from this incredible artist and one of my original Twitter friends from 2009 - Renate. You'll see one of them in today's video. They are all hand painted and the paper is hand torn - they are beautiful.

Each one comes very carefully packaged and she wraps them in this newspaper that is much higher quality than American newspaper - the ink doesn't smear, the paper is thicker and has a rosy tone.

I absolutely cannot throw it away, so today I'm making it into cards.

My inspiration for the sentiment design is these stunning 3D butterfly stickers. I used mostly the black and white, but also the pink, and there are gorgeous purple and blue sets. To mirror these, I used holographic cardstock with this triple layered die. This die has sentiments that you cut out all at once and the die is super sturdy, with thick metal so it doesn't warp going through the machine.

For the newsprint background, I first used a glue stick to adhere the paper to cardstock. Most glue sticks are absolutely terrible. If you watched my pandemic lives you know that I tested every glue stick available in the US in 2021, and there's only one that actually works. I'm stunned that people continue to use and promote some of the more common office supply store brands.

Then I put a thin layer of chalky gesso on it so you could still see the print - but I wanted to tone down the rosy color a bit to match my butterfly. I added splatters and marks with a thick black acrylic marker.