{Red Lead} Mixed-Media Lampshade & Art Journal

Red Lead is a treasure trove of mixed-media magic! This petite storefront located in the charming, historic community of Webster Groves is just a few miles from downtown St. Louis, MO, and well worth the trip!

I first discovered Red Lead several years ago on a weekend excursion with my family to St. Louis. I immediately fell in love with its modern vintage style and amazing art and craft supplies. I brought home quite a stash of collage materials, papers, charms, rubber-stamps, ribbons, and more!

As you can imagine, I was over the moon when the sweet sisters who own the store, Chris and Sharon, invited me to be a guest artist for Red Lead! The talented duo designs their own line of rubber stamps, stencils, collage sheets, embellishments, inks, and ink pads. I was thrilled to receive a package brimming over with these artsy goodies!

I already had a stash of Red Lead's Artisan Inks, so I used several of my favorite colors, along with their Broken Circles stencils and some kraft tissue paper, to create backgrounds for my art journal. Just a few drops of ink in a mister bottle filled with created vibrant sprays that were so fun to use. I also dropped some ink straight from the bottle along the top edge of the pages and allowed it to drip down and create patterns and pools of color.

Lovely rubber stamps from Red Lead along with my favorite white paint pen, a black journaling pen, vintage sheet music, and a bit of red crepe paper added the finishing touches to my art journal pages. I love the sentiments expressed by the Red Lead line of rubber stamps. They perfectly reflect Chris and Sharon's philosophy that everyone is an artist!

The art journal pages I created proved to be the perfect warm-up for making a mixed-media lampshade! I used Artisan Inks along with a Tapestry Stamp, and the Vintage Dot Stamp to alter large sheets of kraft tissue paper. I used matte gel medium to layer the tissue paper over a pink lampshade from the thrift store, and added a a paper doily, some vintage trim, an image from a Red Lead collage sheet, some rhinestones for a bit of sparkle, and text from an old book.

I was so honored to be invited to create projects using wonderful supplies from Red Lead! I popped into the store for a visit last Saturday, and had a wonderful time chatting with Chris and Sharon and doing a fun make-and-take! Of course, I had to so some shopping too and came home with another stash of rubber stamps and some fun pens and markers that I can't wait to try. I hope you get a chance to shop at this wonderful store, but in the meantime you can visit their website and blog for products and inspiration!