Jane Chipp makes her art using found objects, old papers and photographs. "I’m fascinated by the lives of ‘ordinary’ people…how they lived day to day, the minutiae of everyday life. Found materials intrigue me but also bring a sense of sadness and poignancy that they were discarded." Jane works mainly with stitch, collage, assemblage, and encaustic wax. She like to create stories; to present forgotten materials in a way that makes them beautiful and profound.

Susan Rossiter is mixed media artist inspired by the colors, shapes and patterns of the 50’s through the 70’s. In college, she studied fine art metals, printmaking, design, art history, painting, and drawing. "I incorporate all of it into making my own unique papers and collage elements. Texture, composition and color auditions play a big part in my process and I love my job- it gives me those good brain chemicals." Susan works and lives in Ohio between two studios and teaches all over the country. Her strengths are discipline, focus and an absurd sense of humor.

As she puts it herself, Roxanne Evans Stout is an "artist and teacher, wanderer and dreamer, garden dweller, river walker, child of the forest, daughter of the sea—Always grateful, always noticing, always growing." She lives and creates in the beautiful Pacific Northwest where the mountains and the river lands that surround her home provide her with constant inspiration.

Teaching enables her to share her passion. “As an artist I am constantly learning and growing. Art is my passion, my love, my soul.” Nothing makes Roxanne more happy than helping her students through their own process of renewal. Her goal is to help you find your own magic.

Wendy Shragg is a contemporary mixed-media artist, designer, instructor, and the illustrator of a multi-award-winning family book, “Be Nice. The End. Simple Wisdom of the Playground Kids”. Her work blends painting, collage, photography, and digital art to create multi-layered compositions that explore the dynamic interplay of color, form, and texture.

Cheiron Brandon is a mixed media artist and card maker who lives in a tiny house, on a tiny farm in New Jersey not too far from the shore. She works in the financial district by day, but loves to play with stamps, ink, and paint at night in her studio—she aims to create something almost every evening.

She started making handmade cards over 15 years ago, and over the years she has fallen in love with mixed media techniques and loves incorporating those techniques into her card projects. Rainbow is her favorite color, and you will see that expressed throughout her work! "I love color, the brighter the better!" She has been a designer for many companies in the craft industry, including Tim Holtz, Ranger Ink, Simon Says Stamp and more.

Dori Patrick feels very fortunate to live this creative life as an artist in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is a mother of two grown kids, and is married to a sweet, loving hubby who cheers her on daily. They have two Labrador rescues who hang out with Dori in her studio, and she loves spoiling them. Dori takes the term "mixed media" literally: You name it, she'll try it! She works mostly with acrylic paints, but mixes them with a variety of materials. She utilizes many unique mark making techniques, often reaching for unusual tools.

Arlyna Blanchard is a lifelong artist who has always been into painting and anything art-related since she was young. She went to study Chinese painting and calligraphy in Tianjin when China was just starting to open its doors to the outside world, and later followed her passion into her career as a graphic designer and entrepreneur. Arlyna fell in love with her country’s history and culture, which inspires her personal artworks to this day.

You can find Cathy Nichols’s studio in Asheville, NC, where she paints her colorful “stories in wax.” Cathy first fell in love with symbol and story while completing her MA in Literature, and she adores teaching others to use these tools in her workshops. In her own art practice, Cathy specializes in colorful, narrative paintings created with melted, pigmented beeswax or acrylics and mixed media. Her signature folksy style includes highly detailed etchings combined with broader strokes of color that celebrate stories of love, hope and resilience. She is known for her delicately etched encaustic paintings

Kate McCurrach is a self-taught mixed media artist residing in Kamloops, BC, Canada. Kate has dived into a few different careers over her lifetime: starting in sciences, she quickly discovered that she could not stop her creativity from seeping into her everyday life. As with many passions in Kate's life, she dove headfirst into her love affair with mixed media—after taking some online art courses, she found her stride as a student in Fodder School.

Experience the essentials of mixed media art in our FREE course, Mixed Media 101. Dive into underpaper, papers, adhesives on Willa Workshops!

Welcome back to my YouTube/Blog series, Mixed Media 101, where I talk about everything foundational to my mixed media art practice. Today's subject, a Limited Color Palette, is near and dear to my heart because it is (I believe) so important to how and why I found my groove with mixed media art.

In an era dominated by digital devices, it can often feel like handwriting is getting totally lost in the sauce. However, a growing body of research suggests that the act of writing by hand has significant cognitive benefits, particularly for memory and learning. In this blog post I’m going to explain why writing with our hand is good for us, and then I will offer you some suggestions on how to add this activity into your art practice!

Teachable, the platform that hosts Willa Workshops, has an iOS app where you can see all the classes you've enrolled in, browse the same course content as on your computer, and have a convenient way to watch lesson videos at your crafting station or on the go, or even offline--great when traveling with spotty WiFi situations!

Carrie Smith specializes in hand-painting each and every piece in her collages, using vibrant colors, patterns, and floral aspects to create one-of-a-kind statement pieces for any living space. Before diving into collage art, she spent many years traveling the world and then teaching around-the-world art classes to children in her community, a lifelong passion that fuels her artistic journey.

Stephanie Lee creates luminous art that invites others to explore the corners of their own creative impulses and honor their own desire to create. She can show you how to improve your metalsmithing skills in her signature “homesteader” style, how to create original sculpted forms with plaster and found objects, and how to combine plaster, paint, and encaustic medium in two-dimensional work.

You’ll usually find Tracey Wozniak out on creative adventures expressing her connection with the natural world through her love of colors and textures on hand-painted collage papers, altered fabrics, and imaginative watercolor illustrations. She has a keen eye for beautiful small wonders and is drawn to all things weathered, worn, hinted with history, journey, whimsy, and most of all, a story.

Amanda Trought is a London-Born Mixed Media Artist who believes in the positive impact that art and creativity can have on health and well-being. She discovered the restorative and transformational power of art through being a caretaker for her mother with Alzheimer's, and running Art and Creativity workshops at a dementia care center.

Willa Wanders presents the second collaboration with the ArtFoamies foam stamp brand! Artist Yetunde Rodriguez designed this new collection inspired by (and for use in!) her Fodder School 3 class. Check out these incredible geometric tribal ArtFoamies stamps today!

Megan Quinlan has been a bookbinder and mixed media artist for over 25 years. She has taught several courses with Willa Workshops, and is known for her use of vibrant colors combined with paper portraiture, whether that be doll illustrations or photo cutouts, to make junk journals in her iconic style.

Angela Kennedy has been a designer for Penny Black Inc, since 2002 and has been into arts and crafts for as long as she can remember. When she discovered mixed media in 2007, she started practicing everyday and taking classes; by 2010, she was teaching art online! Angela loves all kinds of mediums, but Watercolor is her one true love.