After a lot of encouragement from friends and colleagues, I would definitely consider myself a mixed media collage artist. This was a hard phrase for me to accept as I am quite the perfectionist with myself. No, I've never been to art school. My parents considered that to be a complete waste of time and money. No one makes a living as an artist they said. While perhaps it was true that it was more difficult back when I was growing up to break into the art world, that just isn't true anymore. Sites like Etsy which focus solely on hand crafted items for sale are doing rather well despite the "recession" we are experiencing currently. Why is that, when more and more schools delete art and music from their curriculum in order to teach to some standardized test that doesn't value creative thinking?

Once upon a time, music and art were just as important in the learning process as math and reading are. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Its interesting, though, if you give a child access to enough glue, glitter, scissors, old magazines, crayons, and other coloring media - you will find that we are all mixed media artists at heart! Engaging a child in artwork helps to develop their natural inquisitiveness and creativity. Something that standardized tests hate - its not really very measurable.

Consider the following example.  A close friend of mine has a daughter in kindergarten who is very creative and inquisitive.  She spends her weekends making sand collages out of items she and her mother collect on the beach.  Recently she is studying basic math and learning how to count items out.  She was given a worksheet that contained lines of ten pictures each (ie 10 apples, 10 frogs, etc).  For each line the kids were to color a certain number of objects to demonstrate that they understood "how many."  Hers came out very colorful, unique, and correctly counted.  However the teacher gave her a zero - FAIL.  Huh?  She colored 3 apples on the apple line with the number 3?  Apparently because she colored a RANDOM 3 apples, rather than only the first 3 apples on the line, she failed.  

We are seriously missing something here.  The message this teacher delivered was that your creativity is WRONG.  Kill it and step in line or you will fail, even if technically your answers were correct.  

Take a look at this video (its 20 minutes long but WELL worth the watch) - Schools really DO kill our creativity

So I am back to the statement - I am a mixed media artist.  I am very proud of that fact.  Although in all likelihood, none of my artwork will ever hang on the inside of any museum.  It doesn't need to.  It serves a different purpose.  Sitting down to work on a collage or play around with some new paints I just got as a gift stimulates my creativity.  Art allows me to see new and different solutions to a problem other than just coloring the first three apples on a line.  And mixed media collage helps me quash the inner critic who always says "you can't draw a straight line let alone an actual image."

1. Grab some glue, acrylic medium, modge podge, whatever; some old playing cards or 3" x 5" cards; old magazines; colored pencils, rubber stamps, crayons, whatever; and a nice table space.  Glue and color to your heart's content.  Starting small helps turn off that critical voice in your head.  
2.  Modge Podge some old crayon labels or some other funky/fun colored items onto a simple clay flower pot.  (You can use other types of glue, but modge podge works for many things and above all is cheap!) 
3. Take a scrapbooking class or seminar - many scrapbooking stores offer these for free for beginners.  
4. If you are really serious about reviving your inner artist, work through The Artist's Way.  This program is exceptional for stimulating your creative juices.  In larger cities you can even find groups that are working through the book together, although if your artist has been silent for a while, she may be quite shy about sharing.
5. Create your own greeting cards for this coming holiday season.  Again, many slocal stamping stores offer classes for free or for a very low entrance fee to get you in the store.  If you really don't like working with paper and glue - create them yourself using software programs and print your cards out on card stock!