Watercolor Wednesday - Watercolor 101 - The Ten Minute Card

Today I made a few cards with the most basic and simple watercolor technique.  If you are new to water coloring, this is a perfect card to make that will help you to understand how watercolor moves. It's the basic of the basics, so to speak.

Use watercolor paper for this technique.  I find it helpful to adhere the paper to my craft sheet using painter's tape.  (It removes easily and won't rip the paper when you are finished.  It also makes a nice border around your art piece but if you don't like the border, you can always cut it off with a paper cutter.) Liberally brush the paper with plain water before applying your watercolors.  This is a very important step which will allow the watercolors to move.

I used my Paper Layers tool to put an 1/8" border around the watercolor piece but as I look at it, I wish I had trimmed down the white border on the card first.

I adhered the finished panel to my card base and added a simple sentiment.  That's it!  Believe me, I wanted to add so much more but I left it alone - no sequins, flowers or ribbon - nothing - because that's what makes it a 10-minute card.

 

Framed Card Using Penny Black Stamps

This card was inspired by Elizabeth Allan, one of the designers for Penny Black stamps. (You can find the post for her card on their blog here.)  I love the way she framed the flowers with dimension and thought I'd give it a try with a frame I had in my stash.  I never put white on white but loved the way it looked, so I ventured out of my comfort zone and gave that a try too.  I love how it turned out.  The Enamor stamp set contains five sets of flowers and one butterfly stamp that gives you the ability to create so many different cards. These flowers are also perfect to add to an art journal page.

I used Spellbinders Scalloped Frame Edge (S5-011).  This die has been discontinued and no longer available.

Inspiration with Penny Black Stamps

Happy Thursday, everyone!  I have another card to share featuring Penny Black stamps.  This one is called Delicate Florals and it's one of my favorites.  The flowers on these stamps remind me of my childhood growing up in Wisconsin.  I grew up on the outskirts of town in what people called "the country" and the flowers in summer were beautiful, vibrant and cast a sweet aroma in the air.

I used distress markers and inks to color the images and create shading.  The sentiment is from a stamp set by Simon Says Stamp called "Sending Happy Thoughts".  You can find the stamps in the list below. Enjoy!

  

Watercolor Wednesday - New Release by Penny Black - Trumpet Song

It's no secret that I love Penny Black Stamps.  I find myself drawn to their floral designs and love to use watercolors to "paint" the image and then stamp it.  I never know how the image is going to transfer and sometimes it needs a little tweeking and sometimes it's beautiful just the way it stamped out.  This card was made with Penny Black's Trumpet Song Stamp.  It really is a beautiful stamp and so versatile because you can use all of the image or just parts of it for your projects.

• Cut a piece of watercolor paper to 4-1/2" x 6-1/2".
• Prepare watercolor paper by liberally spreading water over the top of the card.
• Make a watercolor by mixing any Tim Holtz Distress Ink color of your choice and put some of the ink on a craft sheet.  Add a few sprays of water.
• Using a paint brush, paint the ink on the paper moving the ink around the card to get the desired look. Dry completely.
• Use Distress Markers to "paint" the image by coloring the flowers, leaves, bird and stems in the colors of your choice.
• When you're finished "painting" the image give it a couple light spritz of water and stamp the image on your water colored paper.
• Add any depth to the image, if necessary.  (I added depth to the flowers and bird with some soft strokes of ink from the distress marker fine tip.
• To give the card more depth and movement, lightly stamp some background images around the image.

You can find a list of supplies I used to make this card below:

Festive Berries

Mustard Seed

Mowed Lawn    

Forest Moss

Mermaid Lagoon

Brushed Corduroy

    

Broken China

 

  

A Mother's Love (Laurie Moore's "Creative Cone" May Challenge Entry)

This month I joined Laurie Moore's May Challenge and created "A Mother's Love" canvas.  I enjoyed last month's challenge so much that I couldn't pass up another challenge for this month.  It's fun to try to come up with something with the item she features for her challenges and I envisioned a "vase" filled with flowers when I received the cone.  I wanted to do some stenciling with molding paste on the cone but it was impossible to wrap the stencil around it without the paste smearing.  I had an idea of taking a piece of tissue paper, stenciling the image on that with molding paste and then after it dried I shaped it around the cone.  It worked perfectly!  I used gesso on the cone and then sprayed it with Prima Iris Color Bloom Spray.  I used some Petaloo flowers, Leaky Shed chipboard pieces and some small buds from a flower arrangement to fill the cone.  It's a small Mother's Day gift for my mom.  I hope she like it!

Shooting Star (Laurie Moore's "Rising Star" April Challenge Entry)

My friend, Laurie Moore has started a monthly challenge this year on Facebook.  Each month she features a craft item and those who would like to participate in the challenge purchase the item from her Artfire store.  You have a month to complete your project and you can create anything with that item that you like.  In April, the challenge was called "Rising Star".  The kit contained a paper mache' star, plastic crystal dangle and a wire crystal hanger. (Pictured below)

Here's what I created with the kit.  I chose to omit the crystal dangle and hanger and used an 8x8 canvas to create what I had envisioned in my mind.  The star is painted and covered in Tim Holtz Clear Rock Candy dry glitter.  I wish it would show in the photo, but it really sparkles.  I used some Blue Fern Chipboard, Cheery Lynn doily dies and various stencils along with surrounding the star with various flowers from Petaloo and Prima.  I hope you like my "Shooting Star" canvas.

Walkin' The Dog

Okay, don't laugh....but I was so inspired by Marta's "Mr. Chillin" assemblage art that I had to give it a try.  Assemblage art is when you make a three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic composition by putting together found objects.  I had seen it before but didn't know it was a form of art that had a name.  After seeing her creation, I just had to give it a try.  I used some metals from Tim Holtz, Graphic 45, 7gypsies and Prima Mechanicals.  It really was fun and I surprised myself with what I came up with.  If you've never tried assemblage art before, you have to give it a try.  I think I did okay for my first attempt.

To see Marta's blog and video for "Mr. Chillin" here's the link:  http://artistycrafty.blogspot.ie/2015/03/assemblage-canvas-for-finnabair.html

Here's my "Walkin' The Dog" assemblage art piece: