Watercolour paints.... (part 1)

... aren't something I use very often...

 ... and when I say watercolour paints I mean palettes of traditional watercolours... but I 'recently' bought a set of Prima watercolour paints to use with my flower stamps and am loving how this simple mini stamp (JM59) looks when painted with these fabulous colours!

I really enjoyed painted in watercolour - I really like how the paint can be moved about, diluted and layered up... you have to be quite gentle with it though! lol

 I assembled all the flowers and leaves I painted onto a card:

The leaves are from JOFY61 and seem to be my 'go to' foliage at the moment - they seem to go with everything!.

I'm looking forward to working with these paints more in the future....

ALBOTAT: Birthday card & present....

... for Mr JoFY..

I'd been trying to find a big metal 'M' to go in Matt's 'man cave' for a while and found these cardboard marquee letters by Heidi Swapp...  Started off as white cardboard, I painted it in a mix of grey Fresco Finish paints (Concrete, Slate, Elephant (now discontinued, sadly) mixed with white) and finished with a top coat of Metallic Glaze.  The treadplate in the centre also started off as white cardboard which I embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder and painted in the same way.

It looks great with or without its lights on, and hubby loved it.

I couldn't resist painting 2 of the Tim Holtz crazy cats to resemble our two furry family members - the shapes and facial expressions were spot on!  Makes me smile.

Holiday makes..... Part 1

... this is what I do when I go inside away from the sun at lunchtime to cool down and prevent myself looking like an overcooked lobster  :o)  and the reason I pack my 'perfect art kit' as blogged here...

These pages were created in a 6x6in Daler Rowney sketchbook which I had been working in at home - using some pages for clean up/ghost gelli prints, and other pages were finished journal pages... its an 'in progress' book...

NB some of these images have been posted on Instagram or Twitter so if you follow me on those, apologies if you've seen them already, I wanted to share them here too as my poor neglected blog needs some attention and prettiness on its pages... :o)


This page started out with a gelli ghost print across the top, I doodled a flower on top and blocked out the print with Snowflake Fresco Finish. The pencil sketched lines were overdrawn with an ink drawing pen and left to dry before adding colour....

Colour was added with Winsor & Newton water colour paints.. I haven't been using these paints for very long so each piece is a learning curve...  I like how 'juicy' it looks!

This double spread was another gelli clean up/ghost print that ended up being a weird mix of colours (not quite lilac, not quite aqua - it just wasn't nice! it had to go).. so I added Snowflake/Chalk gelli prints on top hoping to knock back some of the colour - Snowflake/Chalk came to the rescue!
(I liked the fold-out long page but reeeeeeaaalllly didn't like the colour)

I really liked how the sketch looked on the back ground and it stayed like this for days.... but then I decided I had to 'man-up' and paint it!
It looks great 'rough' painted with watercolour paint direct onto the background - on this page I didn't block out the background colour and I like that some of background pattern can be see - it give the flower head & leaves some texture.

I think I took this photo outside (the one above is inside under 'yellow' lights) the colours are much more 'true'... the black lines work so well to define everything without being too heavy, focuses everything - and these lines were drawn with both a biro and ink pen - hard to tell the difference isn't it!
After 'killing' two ink pens with wet paint the biro became my hero pen! draws on pretty much anything! :o)

A lesson learnt - keep working on a page until happy! (though I still have a slight urge to break out the white pen!)

x

ACP:2 Yellow + F

... yeah, yeah, yeah... this is a late late blog post.. (I thought about moving straight onto April and not completing March's letters but I felt I'd be letting myself (and the project) down if I didn't keep (roughly) to the schedule... (I'm cutting myself some slack here...) but I'm back on it so here we go..

this is yellow's final outing (I've had a word with April and its very accommodating of March's yellow's intrusion into its month (April has a very gentle colour - you'll be introduced to that very soon...)

The second letter for March is F... lots of lovely options for that - and I went for 'feathers' - it was a close call between that & Fabric & Felt - but I didn't have any yellow fabric so that put a stop to that option (and yes, of course I could've painted or dyed it but this letter was late already so lets not complicate things any further...)

aaaaanyhoo I had a plan:  Feathers + yellow paint + papers creating a journal page about feathers.  I find them interesting.  Individually they are such gentle, soft, fragile items but put together can have such strength and give such freedom...

I have 2 sets of feather dies - and I wanted to use the smaller ones.... could I find these dies??
NO. I. COULD. NOT.....
would other dies 'do' in their place?
NO.THEY.WOULD.NOT! ....
It was one of those situations where a substitute is NOT going to be good enough/won't work! (I might've had a frustrated mini 'where are the dies, I've looked everywhere' meltdown at this point while creating what started out a such a simple plan)...

So, after what seemed like hours of unsuccessful searching, I created the page without the feathers - with F now being represented by FRUSTRATING, FIND, and FATIGUE !! it became a page about how I felt at the time of creating, not about the original subject matter.... I like that!

Its a page in my 6in spiral bound journal....  I rollered Slate Fresco Finish around the edges after rollering the paint onto an alphabet foam stamp - love the size of this stamp...

Next I added a wash of yellow watercolour (enjoying working with watercolour paints at the moment)...

then I thought what this page needs is a sprinkling of the new PaperArtsy Infusions - I chose 'Golden Sands'.. then I added a couple of strips of patterned papers....  I like the amount of white space still remaining..

I added the words 'Find!!' (because I reeeeeeaaally wanted/needed to find those dies), 'Frustrating' because NOT finding them was exactly that (lol), and 'Fatigue' because that is what I have and I can't deal with the (not really a)(self-imposed) drama of trying to finish a journal page/project blog post! (Not really life or death is it!)(or rocked science) lol
The die cut gears are there because my gears just don't go round fast enough when I'm fatigued.

I quite liked the page like this... not too bad.... but its missing something... and do you know what that is???

FEATHERS - it is missing FEATHERS.. lol (like a dog with a bone! I just can't let it go!)

So I got out the dies I could find (Sizzix, Tim Holtz - cut and emboss feathers) & die cut two.. coloured them and attached them to the page...

.. and now I really like the page...  and the feather dies that I could find and used turned out to be better than the others because they have texture and detail....

This was a lesson for me - to use what I have and make it work - not waste time & energy trying to find the 'perfect' missing item - the page turned out well in the end - and now has meaning on a completely different level.

Thanks for stopping by

x

PS  remember the mustard trousers from my previous blog post? They've arrived, and they're lovely!! Now I just need to be brave enough to wear them! :o)

mmmm pretty colouring pens...

....make me happy.. yep, its that simple - & NEW pretty colouing pens (or pencils) in a box & in colour order (squeel) makes me very happy...

I like to colour in my stamp images in pen, and I've been using Distress Ink pens (which I love) but they don't work well with Fresco Finish paints which is a problem because I paint A LOT with Frescos (obviously!)... Distress Pens have their place - great if you're using the other Distress products: inks and stains, and directly onto paper but not on Frescos because they get absorbed into the paint.... so I've been keeping an eye out for an alternative and (drum roll please...) taa daaaaaaaaaaa  Fibralo pens made by Caran d'Ache!!!  oh be still my pen loving heart! lol

go on stroke the pens - you know you want to...

I had a quick play with them.. - I want to do straight forward (?!) colouring with them and so I created the little tile tester in the photo above... just playing around and getting them to blend which is what I want pens to do - not block colour, something more delicate...  

What I love about these pens is that they are water soluble- you can scribble onto a craft sheet  (or into the inside of the lid of the tin (?)) and pick up the ink with a wet paint brush and paint with them like watercolour paints!!  Bazinga!  Love!!
My little tile sample is created on a watercolour postcard which the pens worked really well on... I also painted onto Fresco Finish paints - great blending & no absorbing into the paint.. woop woop!!

If you want to see what else these pens can do check out Darcy's blog post over on the PaperArtsy blog where she did all kinds of interesting stuff with them - HERE  and you can buy them HERE

Speedy post...

... well as speedy as you can be in this hot hot hot weather - which I'm loving by the way!! I'm actually browner now than I was when I came home from Mexico last week! - that's a first for me - my 'tan' normally gets bleached off by the airconditioning on the plane home!
(but please don't think I've been laying in the garden all week - no no no I've been out clearing the garden getting ready to had the keys back to the Landlord - more about that another day..)

This is a speedy post because I have to go to work - and apparently it is going to be hotter than hot - south facing shop with full window shop front - I think I'm sweating just thinking about it! (well not actually sweating - horses sweat, men perspire and women glow - isn't that how the saying goes?? So, in that case I'm 'glowing' just thinking about it)

aaaanyhoo..... it was nephew No 3's birthday yesterday and here's the card I made him:

I love this stamp from Stampotique - Twinkie needed a little 'something' to bring to the birthday celebrations as he climbs over the 'J' on his way to the party.... so I sketched a balloon for him to carry - oh yes... I sketched... direct to page.. with a pen...  no pencilling in first! (am proud of myself that I didn't faff about with it, overthink it - just got it done! lol)
(PS I am really enjoying sketching at the moment)

Aaaaanyhoo... the birthday boy loved his card and that's all that matters isn't it?!

Have a great day - enjoy the sun....

Jo