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This article is written by Anjuli Johnson

My husband and I just moved into a new home.  It’s my first time as a new home owner, and I couldn’t be more excited.  My head is full of plans for how we can update and improve certain things… new tile in the bathrooms, different colored accent walls, perhaps some new kitchen cabinets at some point and of course, a brand new art studio for me.    All of those things will happen in time, but one thing I needed to do right away was create a few pieces of art for our bare walls.

I’ve spent the last few months scouring Pinterest and internet images, looking for décor ideas and deciding what I liked and wanted to incorporate in our home.  I was caught by so many of the gallery walls I had seen, where small photos are framed by large mats and thin, large frames, utilizing a lot of negative space to focus the eye right on the photo in a neat and quite sophisticated way.  I loved the result, but I decided to tweak it just a bit.

I knew I wanted to frame some small art pieces rather than photos for this project (Mostly because I have a pretty cool idea in mind for framing my photos… but that’s a different article in the future. ), I knew that I wanted to position the art on the outside of the mat, rather than having it framed underneath, and I wanted to do a whitewash grunge type of effect rather than having a plain white or black mat.

I used the cardboard insert from the frames I bought as my mat and used gel medium on book pages to transfer text onto the surface.  Once the medium dried, I dipped my fingers in water and rubbed off the excess paper to show the bottom text transferred to the cardboard.  I used watered down acrylic paint as a wash (two are white and one is in black) and applied several coats until it was the color I wanted.  I did let the cardboard dry in between.

I used a Versamark stamp pad to add some watermark stamped images in a few places… they’re very subtle but you can see them if you look closely.

And that’s it! A mixed media mat for the small black and white ATC cards I made.  I love the way they look in my hallway.  I want to do this again- perhaps as a gift- so I’d love to know how you would alter a mat to frame some photos or art.  What techniques would you use? 

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 Anjuli Johnson is a Mixed Media Artist form Raleigh, NC.  She began her art career as a scrapbooker, and it’s been an evolutionary process ever since.  She loves all things mixed media- paper, paint, pens, wire, gears, clay… the list goes on and on.  She is constantly trying to push through her fears to discover and develop her talents, meet new people, and learn from those around her.  To see more of Anjuli’s art and techniques, check out her website at www.thefarpavilion.com  and like her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TheFarPavilion   Don’t forget to follow her blog! thefarpavilion.blogspot.com

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