Here's the method in one breath: you don't have to settle for the photo you took. Take a face — a photo, or a quick drawing — and treat it as the bottom layer. Then build up from it: layer in colour, drop in symbols that mean something to you, hand-write words across it, smear a filter over the whole thing. Each layer is a decision, and the finished image is the stack of all those decisions.
The Materials Are Mixed on Purpose
This is what "mixed media" really means once you're working contemporary: a photo and a pencil drawing and a bit of paint and some text and a digital filter, all living in the one picture. Artists mash these together because no single material can say everything. A photo gives you the real face; a drawing lets you exaggerate or hide; colour sets the mood before anyone reads a word; words say the thing the face can't.
Digitally it's even easier to layer, because the layers stay separate — you can switch the handwriting off, try a different colour, nudge a symbol, switch it back. That's exactly what the remix board lets you feel: nothing is permanent, everything is a layer you control.
Assembly Is the Art
The reason this rung matters is that it moves the art from the camera click to the choices afterwards. In the toy, switch every layer off and you're back to a plain, meaningless face — a selfie. Switch them on one at a time and you can literally watch identity being assembled: this colour because it feels like me, this symbol because of where I'm from, this word because it's the thing I'd never say out loud.
That's the whole craft of the contemporary self-portrait. Not "capture what's there", but stack up chosen layers until the picture says something true on purpose. Get comfortable with that, because the next rung is about the moment it goes wrong.