Share Your Joy

September 4, 2023
“When you share what you create, you’re sharing the joy that you experienced making it,” writes art teacher Gardner in her cheerful debut on how to make mixed-media postcards, greeting cards, and other items that are easy to mail. Offering guidance on what materials work best together, she notes that fluid matte medium is great for collaging tissue paper, while the fast-drying product Art Glitter Glue (“a precision applicator”) is ideal for attaching small items. She outlines eight ways to create decorative “art paper” for use in mixed media, including using a skewer tip to scribble designs in a thick coat of wet acrylic paint on cardstock, as well as drawing with a water-soluble crayon and them -n spritzing the paper to create a runny, watercolor-like effect. Instructions for nine projects show how to incorporate the art paper into a variety of items, such as “trading cards” meant to be exchanged with other artists and made from weaving together strips of art paper, and collage postcards created by gluing ripped rectangles of art paper to cardstock, adding cutouts from magazines, and then sewing the product onto a postcard. The fun projects leave plenty of room for readers to add their own flourishes while exploring a variety of techniques and approaches. Crafters will be eager to share the results.