Sunday, January 31, 2016

More Watercolor for Card Makers...Day 5 lesson

I have to say; this has been one fast week!  I'm trying to keep up with the lessons, even though I should be spending much more time on the previous ones...but I'll have plenty of time for that later...a great benefit of these Online Card Classes.

For this day, the first lessons need much more work on my part...but this one seemed to work pretty well for me.  Not as expressive, but rather straightforward. I think I was much more shocked that I had a card back that pink to go with it.
For this, I found a pack of the Peerless Water Colors that had been in my stash since forever! Since I'm having a horrible time mixing colors from the Cotman set I thought I'd give these a go...and I like them, rather brighter. And to mix I just cut equal sizes of the paper and put them in the same palette well..

And just to show practice does make a difference; here are my first 3 attempts as the first lesson. 

So, off to cut up more paper....Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday, January 28, 2016

More Watercoloring: Day 3

OK, today's lesson over at Watercolor for Cardmakers, Intermediate techniques was about negative painting and lifting....and these are the looks that make me fascinated with watercoloring! Everyone should take this class just to see Dawn Woleslagle's "so Very Grateful (Leaves)" examples!  That is what I want to do when I go up! LOL!

By my third attempt I was at least a bit OK with my results; but by then my patience on waiting for the first paint to dry was pretty much gone...and I had much "bloom" overflow.  Really need to continue to work on my hard edges.  (but at least the only browns I got were intentional!) I tried the lifting on the second one where the wings overlapped; but thought 3 butterflies was too much for this size; I'll give that another go tomorrow.

The stamp is by MemoryBox, and the butterfly has some leaves as part of the image; I trued to lighten them, but forgot on the final one. The palest Archival ink I have is Dandelion, which was darker than it probably should be.

Thanks for stopping by and witnessing my transformation into a water-colorist...I can't wait to see what the next 3 days bring!



1st Try
2nd Try

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

A Rose....

by any other name, would still look better than these!

More work from the Online Card Class, "Watercolor for Cardmakers, Intermediate Techniques"
I admit; I thought since it was for card makers, we'd be water coloring over stamped images; not doing things free-hand! How frightening!  But, after many attempts with my brushwork, here are two images that could actually be somewhat considered a rose!

Here too, are poppies--yes, from a stamped image (Our Daily Bread)--as I needed to have some feeling of accomplishment, while practicing my washes and testing different papers.


So some progress! Yay Me!Can't wait to start day 3!

WOYWW #347

Welcome to WOYWW…the “What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday”  blog hop created by Julia at the StampingGround,  so hop over there to join the fun.
 
Been very busy this week!  I’m taking an Online Cardmaking Class, “Watercolor for card makers, intermediate techniques”.  I had taken a beginning one, but used watercolor markers or water brushes…this is So not that! LOL!  So, my desk is covered with some of the homework from day 2. 

The poppies were to test different paper brands…as with stamping, it really makes a difference! The roses were the last 2 attempts …at least they are starting to look like flowers!  The card lower right is a Pattern on Pattern Emboss Resist.  Of course I used a very fine IO cover-a-card background, and the embossing powder got sucked up by the paper, so it’s not that evident, but pretty cool for all that. The die cut is using a glazing technique; which was very vibrant until I used the heat gun...weird.   The paints are a Winsor & Newton Cotman set.

And here are my pears and corn flowers from yesterday…I have to say; pretty impressed with the pears! Drawn free-hand—wet on wet technique. Woot!


So there is my desk area for the week.  Now go visit Julia’s and see what the rest of the Desker’s are up to!  Have a great week everyone!


Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Watercolor Adition

The real post is here: http://kimmcyoung.blogspot.com/2016/01/watercolor-experimentsdays-1-2.html
This is to get the second photo to upload on class website...

So not blogger/tech savy....yet!

Watercolor experiments...Days 1 & 2

Soooo Excited! I'm taking the Online Card Classes "Watercolor for CardMakers, Intermediate Techniques."  Probably intermediate is pushing it; as I've only used watercolor markers or a waterbrush with inks, but what the hell.  I can only go up from here!

Day one and two  are on basics, thank heavens, with experimenting with brush strokes and how different papers react.

So here are Pears, from Day 1 and Corn Flowers from Day 2; As of course the week this class is running I'm suddenly swamped, I'm watching the videos during lunch hour, so only have a few supplies I packed to work; and these two didn't require my cardmaking stash to "finish", as it were.
The Pears use wet on wet; probably will be my go-to technique...these are all hand drawn..that alone impresses me!!




The cornflowers are brushstroke only...will definitely need more practice on that one!!  I painted the stamp from Heart Art Studio's for the saying...Pleased it sorta worked.


So stay tuned to see how I progress...as I said; it can only go up from here! LOL!



Wednesday, January 20, 2016

WOYWW #346

Welcome to WOYWW…the “What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday”  blog hop created by Julia at the StampingGround,  so hop over there to join the fun.



I hope everyone (stateside) had a great holiday weekend!  My friend Julie and Hubby were coming over on Monday to finally do the Holiday thing, and since craft goodies were on the gift list; it was a good bet we’d be up in the craft room while the boys did their thing.  So I did the (almost) final push on getting the room sorted away.  So first up; there is the 2nd letterpress I managed to shove under the table.  A shame to waste the top surface, but what can you do.  And all but one drawer on the 2 sets are filled. I just can’t seem to pull the trigger on putting my “other” (ie, not distress) inks in a drawer—might not be the best use of drawer space…we’ll see. Still need to find space for the 2nd pen/desktop organizer.

So here is the desktop—since Julie finally got a real Gelli plate, we ended up making a mess with gelli printing…but I have far less virgin stencils now! LOL! So here are some of the prints I’ll use in card backgrounds.  And my Zig real brush markers; now that I have some nice watercolor paper I’m going to really get to know them. And I still need a place for my TH die sets.  


So there is my desk area for the week.  Now go visit Julia’s and see what the rest of the Desker’s are up to!  Have a great week everyone!

Oh, one more...just cuz I can't not show it!! Despite being raised in Patriot's territory (New England Football team), my house is a Carolina Panther's house!  So for the division playoffs; here is my hubby and Dakota getting their game gear on.  Dakota is not sure about rooting for a black cat....

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

WOYWW #235

Welcome to WOYWW…the “What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday”  blog hop created by Julia at the StampingGround,  so hop over there to join the fun.

 Ok, on the “who would have guessed” item; I can finally blog from home, and for some reason keep missing it’s Wednesday!  Guess I need to learn how to schedule now…and clean up the blog…but I digress…


I actually haven’t done any real crafting since 2 weeks before Christmas…or the whole week in between Christmas and New Years that I was on vacation because my room was a bloody mess!  I had a good sit and look around; decided it wasn’t just putting things away; it was no place left to put.  And miracles of miracles…Michael’s had a 50% storage sale.  So it’s a start…and this morning I just had another of the 5 drawer thingies held for me, because there is still a ton of things that don’t have places to go.  And I have 2 online classes starting, 1 of which I can finally do “live”, so I’ll need to be able to get what I need for each class, without spending valuable time searching. 

So here is the desk; with 2 of the new pieces in place. and a pile on the actual desk waiting to go into a drawer….and did you notice the floor? Yup; I can now walk right up to my chair…Miracle!!

And here are the 3 pieces up close and personal; with another letterpress coming.  Of course; now I need to find a place for the 2nd set, as it were…

So there is my desk area for the week.  Now go visit Julia’s and see what the rest of the Desker’s are up to!
Have a great week everyone!






For the not faint of heart…I found a picture from my “before”…Dec. 30th...with the pathway cleared after I had stepped in the small bin that held my Distress stains and almost fell into the desk…don’t call me “grace” LOL!