Here at Anything But Cute we love to see all the seasoned and expert mixed media artists, but we also want to encourage those who are just getting their feet wet. Our design team will always be on the lookout for these exceptional artists, and you just never know when we might be giving out something special to a talented mixed media newcomer.
Make sure to put 'newbie' after your name in the linky so we know who you are.
(new refers to 'new to mixed media' NOT 'new to our challenge')
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Thursday, May 5, 2016

Challenge #13 - Celebrate Your Style

Hello Everyone!

Pamellia here and I am pretty darned excited about our challenge this month, as we are celebrating our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!! I am so honoured to have such a wonderful team and deeply grateful to have so many talented followers, so this month is going to be a real CELEBRATION! Pour some coffee folks, because I have a lot to share with you today! First up is our challenge theme for the month of May...

CELEBRATE YOUR STYLE
As we celebrate our First Anniversary, we want you to celebrate what you do best...mixed media! This is your chance to do it your way, in your favourite style...so pull out those inks and paints and show us what you're made of! You can make anything you want, in any theme you want and any style you want, just as long as it has some mixed media products on it and no cute images. HAVE FUN!

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OUR SPONSORS

We are so excited to announce that we have a wonderful line up of prizes for you this month!! We have three Gift Vouchers to give away (Winner, Runner up and a random draw), and a couple of surprise packages that will be given away randomly as well. Thank you so much to these wonderful sponsors for their generosity, and helping make our Birthday one to remember!!

The Funkie Junkie Boutique

Linda from the Funkie Junkie Boutique has generously donated a $25.00 gift certificate to one lucky winner and she has also put together two surprise packages full of goodies that we will be giving away at random to two lucky entries!
VISIT THE FUNKIE JUNKIE BOUTIQUE:
Store - The Funkie Junkie Boutique
Blog - Frilly and Funkie Challenge Blog
Facebook - The Funkie Junkie Boutique


Emerald Creek Craft Supplies

Kim at Emerald Creek has generously donated a $25.00 gift certificate to one lucky winner and she is offering a 10% discount to all Anything But Cute followers until December 31, 2016! The code will be under the badge in the sidebar for the rest of the year.
VISIT EMERALD CREEK:


Janine of Alleystamp has generously donated a $25.00 gift certificate to one lucky winner!
VISIT ALLEYSTAMP:
Store - Alleystamp
Etsy Store - Alleystamp

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FAVOURITE ARTISTS OF THE YEAR!

I am honoured to introduce you to our very special Guest Designers this month. These ladies consistently entered gorgeous projects into our challenges over the past year, and appeared more than once in our DT Favourites and Honourable Mentions section. The entire team sends out a special thank you to these wonderful artists for all their inspiration and support. 

These talented gals have all put together tutorials for you on their blogs, to share their techniques and skills with you. Please do give them a visit and learn more about how they put these stunning projects together!!


Howdy from Joi@RR. And HAPPY First ANNIVERSARY....Anything But Cute Mixed Media Challenges!!!! 

Wow - so honored and excited to be here to "party"! I sooooo love these gals at Anything But Cute. They are such incredible artists and some of the most caring and encouraging gals I have met in the art world, to date. 

My goal was to create something bright, cheerful and fun in keeping with the happiness of a year of huge successes at ABC. I sure hope you will hop over to my blog and see the step-by-step tutorial, as well as lots of yummy photos!! And guess what? There is even an original poem there for the very special and well deserved ABC Celebration!! Hugs to you all!!! j. 



Hello everybody! Congratulations Happy Birthday Blog "Anything But Cute" ! My gift to you - a tutorial for making such an old treasure chest.

To see a tutorial invite you to look into my blog "Скрап-ХоббиМания". Be sure to grasp with itself a cup of coffee. I adore coffee. And still I absolutely love scrap. I met scrapbooking autumn 2012. I like to make albums and canvases. Although at the beginning of the way, I was doing a lot of layouts. Creates in Vintage style, Fabric White Vintage, Shabby, Grunge, and of course, SteamPunk. In almost all of these styles, I use the technique of mix-media. I hope my tutorial will be to you to liking.



Hello, my name is Deb Riddell (better known as Paxton Valley Folk Art around blogland) and I am so happy to be here at Anything But Cute to help them celebrate their one year anniversary, congratulations ABC!  I was shocked and honoured to get an email from Pamellia telling me I'd been chosen as one of their favourite artists for the year and thrilled to be asked to be a guest designer, thank you so much.

This month's anniversary theme at Anything But Cute is 'Celebrate Your Style'.  My creative style is vintage and I am always inspired by Mother Nature so I used these inspirations to create this dragonfly reverse canvas to celebrate my style. I used lots of layers and techniques to create this canvas and have some step by step photographs on my blog to show you how I made it, so hope you will be able to stop on by.

Thank you again to Pamellia and the design team at Anything But Cute for allowing me to be a part of their anniversary celebration.  And I hope that you too will 'Celebrate Your Style' and join in the fun here at ABC, can't wait to see what you make!  Happy creating, Deb xo



I was surprised and thrilled when Pamellia e-mailed me to say I had been chosen as an Anything But Cute Favorite Artist of the Year and to invite me to be a Guest Designer to help celebrate their First Year Anniversary!  The theme for the challenge is Celebrate Your Style.

I am a fairly new convert to the mixed media style and I'm slowly learning all the layering, painting, and rusting techniques. I tend to be a 'clean and simple' designer which probably sounds very contradictory to mixed media - but that is my style and I'm going to celebrate it!!! I absolutely LOVE books - reading them, holding them, shopping in book stores for them and making them! So I created a little 4" x 5" x 1 1/2" book for my project using Eileen Hull's Passport Die from Sizzix.

My overall theme in images and sentiments on the cover and the pages is affirmation and being positive, strong women as we go through life. I invite you to stop by my blog here - to see just how I put this little book together and to see what's inside!

Thank you again, to Pamellia and the rest of the Design Team for inviting me to participate in this celebration! I also look forward to seeing what you create to "Celebrate Your Style".  Please join us in the Anything But Cute - First Year Anniversary challenge! Julia



Hello, yes I know I was only here in March as a featured artist but recently I was delighted to receive a lovely email from Pamellia. She gave me the wonderful news that I had been voted by the team as one of their favourite artists of the year. Wow, I am truly humbled by this as there is a lot of fabulous talent around here.  Thank you so much.

Pamellia asked me to make something to celebrate the challenge's 1st anniversary which shows "My style". My style is quite feminine but I do like to dip my toe into grunge too. I use a lot of mixed media in my work.  I love learning new techniques and trying new products so I think my style is also constantly evolving, just like the world in which we live in. I love art journalling and I also make "Moments" to celebrate family occasions using mixed media. My crafting is totally influenced by the seasons, Mother Nature and my family and often combines all 3.

For this special occasion I decided to make an double art journal spread celebrating all the seasons. This was a real labour of love and I used lots of techniques. You can see them and more close ups of each season over at my blog here.

I would like to wish the ladies at ATBC a very happy 1st anniversary, where on earth has that year gone? I have really enjoyed entering their challenges and I look forward to continuing to do so. Cheers and birthday hugs, Jane x



Let me start off by saying Thank You to the Anything But Cute Team for picking me as one of the Favourite Crafters!  EEK... I cannot believe it.  

Nicole here and I am a crafter, blogger and designer where you can find all the things I create and mistakes I make on my blog Nicole Wright Designs.

My style tends to lean towards masculine.  I prefer natural colour tones, metal and gears to anything cute.  I will usually find a way to take the cute and make it grungy. Stop by my blog and check out a full tutorial on this card including the metallic powders, distress crayons and Sizzix dies. 

Stop by and say Hi.  Be sure to take a closer look at the gears when you are there.



Hi there! I'm thrilled to be here to help the majorly talented Anything But Cute team celebrate their 1st anniversary! Huge thanks ladies for including me as one of your favourite artists of the year - it's truly an honour.

Shabby chic / vintage is my favourite style and I also love all things nature so to "Celebrate my Style" I've made a trinket box that adapts to the varying seasons. The scene on the top lid represents Spring / Summer and a second scene, inside the lid, depicts chillier winter times. Please pop over to my blog, Paper Profusion, to see lots more pictures.

Wishing Pamellia and all at Anything But Cute a Happy, Happy 1st Anniverary with many congratulations. Wishing you even more success in years to come. Nicola x



Hi everyone! A whole year of fabulous challenges at Anything but Cute……and I have been asked to join the celebrations! I can't tell you how excited I am! What an honour this is to be here as a favourite artist at ABC! Thank You so much!

I don't really have a crafting style - I will give almost anything a go - so eclectic is the word I suppose! I love using up my scraps though, so there's a lot of that on my blog Pearshapedcrafting

The theme here this month is 'Celebrate Your Style'. I do love making little books, and this time I have Paris on my mind - having only returned from Paris 3 weeks ago! It was also chance to use up more of my scrap mountain! I hope you will come and see the inside of my little book!

A very Happy Anniversary to all the talented team at Anything But Cute! Chris


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OUR AMAZING DESIGN TEAM

Wow, so are you completely blown away by those amazing projects or what!! What a line up of inspiration for you all, and we aren't done yet. We still have some incredible projects to show you from the Anything But Cute Design team!!

Anne - Redanne
I wanted to celebrate my style by creating a sea themed project.  Seahorses are my favourite sea creatures so I used three beautiful Seahorse knobs to adorn a mini cabinet, which I altered Andy Skinner style and I used some clay from my stash to make an Octopus ....

Autumn - Sew Paper Paint
For our birthday celebration and my first project with the team, I wanted to create a mixed media mini album.  I have been on a cardboard junk journal kick so I worked out a mini accordion version, filled with watercolor puddles, stamps, and grungy texture - all of my favorite things!

Branka - Vintage Handmade
I wanted to celebrate my style and our first birthday with this handmade canvas art journal. I used a  lot of sewing, hand dyed fabrics, ribbons, some yarn, threads, acrylic paints and markers in creating this vibrant and colourful project.

Lisa - A Mermaid's Crafts
For my first design team project, I wanted to celebrate my style with a shabby chic canvas. I covered the background using Andy Skinner's Mega Crackle technique and then layered it with my some of my favorite things: crackle paste, crackle paint, texture paste, distress inks, glitter, butterflies, cheesecloth and lots of flowers.

Niki - Pawsitively Creative Crafts
I wanted to celebrate my style by creating something I have never tried before and also using one of my favorite movies as inspiration. Jack Skellington is made from a wire frame and polymer clay, his dog (Zero) is made from polymer clay as well. I used some new molds for the clock and pillars and the bricks around the tombstone were made with a very interesting item that anyone with a die has. Hugz and Carpe Diem!

Pamellia - My Little Craft Things
This card was made for my dear sweet friend and team mate Niki. I have combined patterned papers with mixed media products and home made flowers to create a shabby garden card for her Birthday! Happy Birthday Doc! For my tutorial portion of this, I have made a video. ENJOY!!



Sara Emily - sarascloset

To celebrate our birthday at Anything But Cute, and  my teamie, Niki's birthday, I made a card for her in my grungy style. I used glue, glass bead gel, Distress inks, paints, crayons, re-inkers, and Crazing Medium, as well as DecoArt Media paints, antiquing creams, and Crackle Glaze--and that's just on the background panel. 

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WOW, I am just so amazed with the talent and creativity of our team, it's impossible not be inspired by these amazing projects! Thank you so much to everyone who entered our challenges last year, we loved seeing all your incredible work each and every month!!!

Challenge runs until June 4th - we can't wait to see what you come up with this time! Happy Crafting from the entire team and thanks for visiting Anything But Cute!


44 comments:

  1. Thank you very much for the invitation ! I am very pleased to inspire with such wonderful and talented ladies!
    Perfect mood to all!

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  2. All I have to say is WOW! Our guests have done an AWESOME job of celebrating our first birthday with us, and my teamies have really outdone themselves, too! I can't wait to visit each of them to see how each of these works of art came together! Hugs!

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  3. Thank you so much for inviting me here as one of your guests today...such an honour to be among such awesome talent from the other guests and of course your own DT. What a gorgeous array of projects and all so unique as they celebrate your own style. Many congratulations on your first anniversary, I have loved being a part of your challenges over the last year. Here's to many more years of you challenge blog inspiring the crafting world. I shall be back during the month to enter the challenge myself, what fantastic prizes are up for grabs. Huge crafty hugs, Jane xx

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  4. Happy Blog-Versary ladies! There is so much beautiful art on display here and that in itself is so inspiring.
    I wanted to say thank you because without you ladies I would be still trying to figure out what I liked and how I could create it. You and your challenge has been an awesome place to visit and provided me with so much inspiration.
    I hope you all have much success in your art endeavours and with this wonderful stopping place. I am looking forward to creating something to enter your challenge and will be back soon Karen x

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  5. Oh, I am so happy to see so many brilliant creations from our wonderful guests today as well as from my awesome teamies!
    What a great celebration of our first anniversary!
    Happy Anniversary, ladies!
    Hugs! xx

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  6. Happy Anniversary! What a wonderful array of mixed media goodness from the Design Team and all the fabulous Guest Designers.
    Hugs!
    Cec

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  7. ANYTHING BUT CUTE... THANK YOU. You created an outlet that is friendly, encouraging and safe for artists of all levels and all talents. This past year with you all has been a blessing for me. You pushed me out of my comfort zone. You helped me grow, discover, and change for the better. And then you all encouraged me to do it again - over and over - by all of your fabulous comments and the promise of that winning badge. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY. YOU ARE TOUCHING LIVES and ENCOURAGING ART. Be proud. Hugs to you all. j.

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    1. That's what it's all about, Joi! You have brought such JOY to us here! Hugs!

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  8. Happy Anniversary!!! Always love sharing and seeing the beauty in all the creativity that is shared in this wonderful space! Love and blessing to all the gals who flock together here!!!
    Hugs,
    Michelle ♥

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  9. I am speechless (well almost!) at the fantastic array of talent here today - from our wonderfully talented Guest Designers and our own team. It is such a pleasure to be part of this helpful, supportive and hugely inspiring team, the entries we get each month are truly inspirational. Happy Anniversary to each and every one of you!! Hugs, Anne xx

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  10. WOW, everyone has created such lovely projects! Thank you so much for asking me to be apart of this special anniversary! I have enjoyed following and playing along!

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  11. Happy Anniversary!! Such Amamzing creations!! All beautifully done!
    Have a blessed day,
    Migdalia
    Crafting With Creative M

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  12. Wonderful DT creations. I'm a new follower. I'm a newbie both to mixed media & to the blog. Please let me know if the inking I did after distressing the edges qualifies for the wet paint rqmt. Have a BEE-utiful day!
    Melissa
    "Sunshine HoneyBee"

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    1. Hi Melissa! Welcome to mixed media and welcome to Anything But Cute as well!! I have left a comment for you on your blog in response to your question! Lovely to meet you!

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  13. Thank you so much Anything But Cute for this wonderful honour and congratulations on your first year anniversary! Amazing projects from all of your favourite artists and the design team (as always!) has hit it out of the park! Wishing you much continued success, Deb xo

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  14. I want to say w warmest thank you to the team for inviting me to sponsor. I couldn't be happier giving back to a team that inspires and participates so much. It may take a week but I will be by everyone to comment. You are all so talented and wonderful. Congratulations to everyone who has been featured here.

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    1. Thank YOU Kim! Such a wonderful sponsor and your prize will be enjoyed by one lucky recipient! So happy to see you over here and enjoying our challenge! Hugz to you! ~Niki

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  15. Very many thanks to the wonderful design team for including me here. I sure am in great company! Terrific assignments and creativity from all! Best wishes for many more happy anniversaries. Nicola x

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  16. Wow, what an amazing display of talent from the guest designers and from my fabulous teammates!! So much inspiration!! I look forward to seeing all of the entries!! Happy Anniversary!!

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  17. Wow! What fabulous projects from everyone - amazing inspiration! Thank you for inviting me to be part of your celebrations - looking forward to more great challenges! Happy Anniversary! Hugs, Chrisx

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  18. Happy Anniversary! Love all the amazing inspiration over the last year, wow! The art is totally wonderful this month, great celebration!~kim

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  19. WOW!!!! I'm a new follower and have never tried many of these techniques but I just love seeing the designs! Truly stunning and oh so talented design Team!
    Shelly

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    1. Welcome Shelly! We sure hope your try some of these techniques and have some inky fun because that is what it's all about here. Happy crafting and get messy. :) ~Niki

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  20. Great ideas from the Design Team. Happy crafting, Angela x

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  21. Absolutely amazing DT projects and congratulations on your One Year Anniversary ladies
    Carol x

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  22. At first, I wish you a very happy first anniversary!!! :)
    Thank you so much for the challenge, and also for all the previous ones... I really enjoyed playing with you all as much as possible so far.
    I just miss time too much to hop over at each individual blog, but I really regret because you are all so talented!!! Also kind ladies, I received many lovely comments at each of my participations, and this is not always the case so well worth to be said, THANK YOU!
    And WOW, fabulous makes as samples for this new challenge, I have many "favorites" today!!!
    I also adore Joi's creation, totally stunning!!!
    Hugs, Coco xx

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  23. Well, all the guests have made a fabulous job me think... the creations are all SO detailed and beautiful!!! :) Congratulations to all. xxx

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  24. Happy Anniversary , congratulations . Wonderful artwork from the team, such variety of styles makes it a joy to visit. Tracy x

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  25. I can't believe it's been a year already! Thank you so much for the inspiration and challenge. I know I've grown as an artist!

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  26. Happy anniversary! ! Thankx for all the inspiration and different styles you show each time
    Gr miranda

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  28. Hi ladies! I'm back with what I hope is my first entry. I am learning very slow how to draw and paint and that's what I want my style to be about along with some stamping and mucky play of course! I just entered my first share with my first successful acrylic painted face and hope it's allowed? If not let me know and I will remove the link.
    Of course you have all inspired me to push out of my normal comfort zone and encouraged me all the time for which I am extremely grateful.
    Joi has breathed courage into me and that's why I've shared one of my faces with you Karen x

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  29. It's so much fun to see all the different genres represented by the talented DT members. Blessings!

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  30. Not sure if Glossy accents is considered a mixed media item. Please let me know. Have a Bee-utiful day!
    Melissa
    "Sunshine HoneyBee"

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    1. Hi Melissa. I apologize for taking so long to get back to you regarding your question about glossy accents at Anything But Cute. If you are using it as glue, then no, if you are adding it to googlie eyes on an image, then no. If you are using it as a resist for a background or to alter paper in some way, then absolutely yes, it would count as a mixed media product. Thanks for all of your support at Anything But Cute this month. hugs Pamellia DT :)

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  31. Happy Anniversary!

    Thanks for sharing so many wonderful and inspirational projects by your design team.

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  32. Happy Anniversary! I am totally new here and just found your blog! Such inspirational designs! Glad to be here!

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    1. Welcome, Vinita! We're so happy you've joined us! We hope you will be a regular visitor and contributor to our challenges! Hugs!

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  33. Happy Anniversary! So glad I found your blog! Wow - the level of artistry is amazing! I loved seeing everyone's "not cute" projects & can't wait to see what next month's challenge will be.

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    1. Hi, Candi! We're happy you're here! Thank you for your sweet comment, and we hope you will join the challenges! Hugs!

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  34. Loved this Art event. Everything is very creative and eye catching. Glad that you shared these photos here. Searching for some great holiday party ideas and apt venue Houston for celebrations. Hoping to get them soon.

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