For creative adventurers who like to play and have fun innovating their masterpieces, Sarah J. Gardner’s inspiring guide, “Share Your Joy: Mixed Media Shareable Art,” is a delightful handbook that inspires imagination, originality, and generosity.

The book is filled with step-by-step projects that are easy to follow, even for beginners. Each project is accompanied by clear instructions and vibrant photographs, making it easy to visualize the final product.

Gardner’s book is designed to help readers create beautiful, shareable art pieces that can be sent to friends, family, and other artists—spreading joy and happiness through simple art projects.

Covering a variety of techniques, Share Your Joy covers topics like collage, stenciling, found objects, watercolor, and acrylic paints.

In mixed-media art, readers learn that the goal is to create a piece that is richer, more textured, and more visually appealing than what could be achieved with just a single medium. This makes it a popular choice for artists looking to push the boundaries of traditional art forms.

Overall, “Share Your Joy” is not just a craft book; it’s a celebration of creativity and the happiness of sharing your artistic expressions with others.

JoyReaderGirl1 graciously thanks NetGalley, Author Sarah J. Gardner, and Quarto Publishing Group - Walter Foster | Walter Foster Publishing for this advanced readers copy for review.

So you want to send something quick, cute, and personal to a friend or family member? Here are some good ideas for mixing up artistic ideas and crafts for something to send through the mail or hand off at lunch.

Learn how to express your emotions and warmth on the page with paints, collages, stencils, and other supplies. Step by step projects and ideas for customizing your own "play" with text and colorful photos.

Have fun! while you learn the basics or step to the next level.

My children and I found this book very inspiring.

Whilst we've seen mixed media online, I didn't really know much about where to start.

This book is a great intro to mix media and how to use it to make beautiful pieces or gifts.

We are still at the beginning of our journey but excited to add this technique to our art hobby.

I haven't really done mixed media before but this book has really inspired me to try! It is beautifully presented in an accessible and easy-to-follow format. The photos are inspiring and the text is detailed without being overwhelming. I love it!

This book was fun, and I think kids will get a kick out of it. While not necessarily geared towards kids this book is all about using various techniques and falling in love with paper to change, merge, collage, and create new items that you can share with others. I thought the instructions were well done with a positive look that there are no mistakes there’s just art.

Share Your Joy by Sarah J. Gardner is an ideal entry point for anyone interested in exploring mixed media. She does a beautiful job of guiding readers in choosing and using supplies. She shared fun projects intended for sharing, and I loved that. Her clear directions and the images shared made following along easy. She also covers many excellent techniques. The book itself is beautiful. I recommend it for any beginner mixed media artist.

I really like mixed media art and this book gives you tons of ideas on how to start and ideas to make different styles of projects. It’s bright, fun and joyful.

I was very excited to read Share Your Joy by Sarah J. Gardner. I’ve been dabbling in mixed media for over 10 years and recently started making cards for friends and family. I would say this book is geared more to someone who is beginning to pursue mixed media art since it does focus on basic techniques. The directions were easy to follow and the images were full of color and beautiful. The book would be a good addition to a new mixed media artist’s library.

Devo dire che ho apprezzato davvero molto questo libro, sopratutto rispetto alla mia precedente lettura di un titolo sullo stesso tema (Creative Wanderlust) che purtroppo si concentrava sopratutto sull'aspetto psicologico e benefico che questo hobby può apportare.
In questo libro ci si concentra molto di più su tecniche e progetti, e sono ben predisposta, se se ne presenta l'occasione ad acquistarne una copia cartacea.
Mi è piaciuto molto che il libro sia diviso in due parti: la prima dove si preparano le varie carte decorate e gli ephemera che poi andremo ad utilizzare, e la parte creativa dei progetti, che possiamo riadattare al nostro stile e prenderne spunto.
Il consiglio che sicuramente voglio mettere alla prova è fare una color chart di tutti gli acrilici che ho a disposizione, per poter studiare meglio le palette di colori che andrò ad usare. Ho apprezzato molto l'utilizzo dei qrcode per reindirizzare a dei video dove l'argomento viene spiegato più nel dettaglio.

Davvero un ottimo libro sia per principianti che per chi ha già un po' di esperienza nel campo dell'art journaling.

Grazie a Netgalley per avermi permesso di leggerlo in anteprima!

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I must say that I really appreciated this book, especially compared to my previous reading of a title on the same topic (Creative Wanderlust) which unfortunately focused too much on the psychological and beneficial aspect that this hobby can bring.
This book focuses much more on techniques and projects, and I am well prepared to purchase a paper copy if the opportunity arises.
I really liked that the book is divided into two parts: the first where the various decorative papers and ephemera are prepared that we will use during the various projects, and the creative part of the projects, which we can readapt to our style and take inspiration from them.
The advice that I definitely want to put to the test is to make a color chart of all the acrylics I have available, in order to better study the color palettes that I will use. I really appreciated the use of qrcodes to redirect to videos where the topic is explained in more detail.

A truly excellent book for both beginners and those who already have some experience in the field of art journaling.

Thanks to Netgalley for letting me preview it!

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

Share Your Joy: Mixed Media Shareable Art is a fantastic how to guide to start out making your own mixed-media art to keep or share with others. This book follows in the artists own art work style but could be easily adapted and experimented to yo create your own pieces. This book is a great starting board to start using your creative side and exploring and adventuring with it. It's given me some great ideas to try to send to my pen pal. I really enjoyed the postcards and will be giving them a go first.

Great book for anyone who enjoys any type of craft - easy to follow with fantastic descriptions and photos showing exactly what to do

Shareable Art
Sarah Gardner provides inspiration and instructions for eight art paper projects and nine shareable projects in this colorful mixed-media art book.
The sharable projects include;
Sewn Collage Postcards
Printed Layers Postcards
Watercolor Rainbow Greeting Card
Abstract Collage Note Card
Embellished Envelopes

My Thoughts
This is an inspiring and instructional book for mixed-media artists. The focus of the book is creating art that can be shared with others. This is a perfect selection for artists who create handmade greeting cards and mail art.
The step-by-step directions are excellent for both beginners and experienced mixed-media artists. The color photos add great value to the text. The original designs and techniques will motivate the reader to take their creativity to the next level.
The book includes interviews with two artists who have been swapping and sharing art for many years.
Ms. Gardner (juicy.s.art) shares samples of her work on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
I read a digital copy of this book and hope to order a print copy in the future. I really love everything about this book.
Highly recommended!!!

MY RATING: 5 STARS OUT OF 5

A beautiful instructional book about mixed media art. I loved the focus of the book, creating art for its own sake and giving others joy. The projects are beautiful and fun. A very inspiring and informative guide!

Sarah truly hit this one out of the park.

One of the best parts of making art is how it connects us. Turning your art into something that can be shared is the shortcut to better art and deeper connection. Mixed media is the perfect vessel for this, and OH so much fun.

The book goes beyond simply making art and sharing. It shares a host of practical ways that I never would have thought about without this book. It shares passing along art papers (my fave way to collaborate!), ATCs, postcards.

The projects are gorgeous - accessible for beginners and fun for those who've made a lot of art. The photos are beautiful and the instructcion helps remove overthinking.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I've already pre-ordered this for my shelf.

Love it 💖 Simple ideas, mostly using paints and bright colours to create warm and vibrant designs for decorating scrapbooks, postcards, greeting cards and envelopes + a few others 🖌️ 🎨

If you're into arts & craft and more specifically collage and mark making, Sarah Gardner's book is a great read and includes some nice projects to play along. There is a total of 17 projects to follow, with a list of easy to find materials and clear step by step instructions for each of them. They include 8 projects to create your own collage papers and 9 projects to make small sharable art pieces. Sarah also shares her favourite art supplies and various art tips along the way.

I'm into mixed media so this book was right up my alley and I'm looking forward taking on a few of those projects myself, as they seem fun and mostly bite-size when it comes to the time needed for each of them.

I'll most certainly grab a copy paper of this book to add to my art book collection further down the line. An easy recommend for mixed media artists looking to get into collage/mark making or simply look for a few fun projects.

This book definitely brings the joy! I really enjoyed looking at all of the different crafting ideas. I love sending postcards, so those ideas were especially interesting. I think readers will find this book motivates their desire to be crafty.

This is a great book to help inspire artistic creations and bring joy to yourself and others. Lots of detail to help you create some stunning pieces of artwork.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for access to this arc in exchange for my honest review.

If you like crafts such as me, this book will offer you hours of joy trying out ways to have fun with simple things like paper and paint. It looks simple enough and no special talent to make. I think I will enjoy doing quite a few of those.

I love this book so much! Everything about it: the colors, the layers, the projects -- it all sparks joy for me and makes me itch to try the projects for myself.

I love how everything is explained in a easy-to-follow step-by-step way, with project materials clearly listed and examples of each step. I can see myself following the steps to create my own variations, and the gorgeous colors and designs make me want to drop everything to start now.

I have always wanted to try mixed-media projects, and have even collected most of the supplies in this book, but I get tripped up with actually creating the layers. But now I feel confident that I could use this book as a guide to get through that and really start creating.

I think this is going to be one of those art books that I have to own, that I can flip through to get my creative juices flowing.

I also love how every project in the book is designed with the concept of giving it away in mind. Postcards, Artist Trading Cards, Envelopes, Journals... It encourages you to create and then give it away to share the joy (and prevent hoarding).

A must-have if you're looking to get into mixed-media.

*Thanks to NetGalley, Quarto Books, and Walter Foster Publishing for providing an early copy for review.