Watercolor Background Tutorial Video

I made this quick tutorial video showing how to make quick watercolor backgrounds for handmade cards or projects. Bev, my boss, narrated the video. She has a great "radio" voice. I love her narrations.

I'm featuring Phyllis & Finn the Fish...the stamp set I illustrated last month. I did get to play around with watercolor background ideas after all!! See the Animal House animals if you like my illustrations.

Easy Water Coloring Tutorial

Beautiful bluebell water colored card created by Birgit Edblom.  This handmade card is one of many in the Technique Tuesday idea gallery. Birgit has added tons of gorgeous works of art to the gallery.

 I'm excited to share a link to my bluebell watercolor video.  I've been creating some tutorial videos for Technique Tuesday.  This video is probably the easiest of the the three.  I use watercolor crayons to add some color to the little bluebell stamp set. My Momma loves blue bells and she flipped when I gave her the finished card. Yay!

Check out the video here: http://www.techniquetuesday.com/Videos-Gallery/ZZ-Video-Bluebells-Watercolor.html

Watercolor On Digital Stamps

I printed the PDF (four 3″x4″) on white card card stock AND on a 90lb. watercolor paper.  I used some watercolor pencils but I don’t like the effect. That blue ghost (top left) looks like color crayon.  Instead I used my water brush (I’ll attach an image of the water brush below this post) to wet the ghost then I brush the color off the pencil and added it to the wet ghost.  That’s how I achieved the dark gray color on the ghost next to the blue one. No hard lines on that ghost. I used copic markers on the sheet that’s blurry in the top of the picture. I have LOTS of images to work with.  I want to attach some of them to Halloween party bags. Read more...

DECORATED ENVELOPES

"Decorated Envelopes" (Sharpie) artinflight.blogspot.com

 Happy Sunday Sketches!  I was working on some quick and fun envelopes for a swap.

"Decorated Envelopes" (Sharpie) artinflight.blogspot.com

 This little monster likes to yank out the flowers in the garden!

"Decorated Envelopes" (Sharpie) artinflight.blogspot.com

 Another whimsical house...really having fun working on those crooked houses.

"Decorated Envelopes" (Sharpie) artinflight.blogspot.com

Have a great week everyone!  The last week of school for the boys....

Also linking with Diane Evans 10min. Warm Ups!

NAIL POLISH ART

Nail polish

 What's this?  Nail polish....am I going to make my nails pretty?  Is this a project to do with the local Girl Scout Troupe?  Unless they don't do nails.  I have boys, what do I know?

Nail polish ready to do something....

No, this nail polish is not for nails.  I mean duh! If I own nail polish It's NOT going to be for my nails.  Look my whole collection all lined up.  So many great colors.  Let's get started.

Dark nail polish colors.

 First I wanted to make some sample pages in my sketch book of all the colors. My idea was that I would find out which ones dried sticky and which dried smooth. I need this information for an upcoming project.

Light nail polish colors.

 After getting really high and loving how these sample pages look. (because I'm high or I just love organizing stuff, not sure which) I find all the nail polish feels sticky when it's dry on my sketch book page. My fingers aren't sensitive enough to tell the difference. Another organizing waste of time.  I have a lot of those.

Glitter nail polish.

 This is my favorite color.  The big glitter stuff. 

More glitter nail polish and nail polish layered.

 Here is my second favorite nail polish.  The small glitter stuff. Big surprise!

Nail polish art.

 Sketched a quick little house scene to see if I could use the nail polish to color it in.

Nail polish art close up.

 Success! One problem, the brushes in the bottles are hard to paint with. 

Nail polish fashion sketches.

 I attempted to make a little fashion montage of nail polish art!  I see that the proportions are wacky.  I struggle with proportions....

Fashion nail polish sketch.

Great little project.  Not something I would do with the girl scouts across the street.  Unless there's a brain cell killing badge.  There's not, I checked.....

Linking with Paint Party Friday and Sunday Sketches!

ARTIST TRADING CARDS STEP BY STEP

This is my water color technique!

 Step one: Sketch your subject in pencil.  This was an "April Showers" themed ATC (Artist Trading Card) Swap. Then I work on the background using watercolor washes.

I have a pre-cut ATC on hand to make sure I have everything centered and the right size (2.5 x 3.5 inch) for ATC's.

 Step two: I use permanent black ink (micron pens) to "ink" in the subjects. One umbrella, one tree and flowers. SO April! Then I color my subjects in with watercolors.

 Step three: I realize this umbrella is boring....

 Step four: I cut out rain drops from an old dictionary for the umbrella. Then leaves (circles) for the tree.

Just can't say "tree balls", sounds funny!

Step five: I used Pearlescents to add some shine on the "trees circles". More Pearlescents to the purple flowers. This adds some POP! Okay, not so boring.

 Step six: I use an ATC template to trace my 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch trading cards. That way I can center my subject just the way I want it.  Then I cut them out.  You can mount them on sturdier paper such as card stock or in the old days we used cereal boxes.  Unless you use a heavy weight watercolor paper.

Three finished ATC's! 

These are my two favorite Artist Trading Card swap sites.

http://www.artfortytwo.org/

http://www.swap-bot.com/

For more information about an Artist Trading Cards click here: ARTIST TRADING CARDS

Happy Paint Party Friday!

BUTTONS AND MAGNETS

One of the featured artists on THE BUTTON BLOG!

American Button Machine Button Blog

Hooray!



 

HANDMADE ENVELOPES

Diagram of envelope making supplies.

I made a bunch of handmade envelopes for my Mom's and Sista's for Christmas!

Old calendars are awesome because they usually have great photos or art work with perfect composition. They are thick and sturdy.  I use the clear template, which is amazing, to see how the image will look on the folded envelope.  Using the silver sharpie gives the edges a pretty silver look. I don't have to be as careful to cut off all the tracing lines unlike using a harsh black sharpie.

They even have special glue so you can add stuff for licking later to sealing the envelopes.

In other news, I took a picture of the germs (last post) made into magnets but guess what?  This is what was on the camera.  In my mind, germs bugs, same thing! HA!

My Dad and I Christmas Eve, he especially loved the airplane envelopes I made. Who knew....

Hope you are all doing great this year!  I'm TRYING to get away from those pesky teddy bears and get the tree paintings done.  I've got it bad for those bears.  Have you ever obsessed over a subject?  I think I know someone who just LOVES her Tea!! Wink Wink

BLEACH PEN ART

Bleach pen seahorse project!  I made this seahorse for my sis-in-law's Mom.  Hope she liked it!  I'm noticing Tommy is eating some eggs in the back ground.  Funny!  We are always sharing space in our tiny I mean, cozy house :)

Bleach pen is NOT easy to work with.  It likes to glob out of the tube and there are tons of air bubbles in the bottle.  Another one of those project where I start the drawing and the rest of the time I just fix and fix and fix.  It's a big mistake made to look like it was on purpose.  Ever feel like you're working like that?

AND different brands of bleach pen work differently.  The bleach pen made for whites was intense and really bleached the color out.  The regular bleach pen it much lighter giving a batik look.  It was fun.  A challenge and I like a challenge!

Andy's first dance last Friday night.  So cute!

TAGTASTIC

I had a bunch of images that I drew and copied off for the pin back buttons....I copied them onto card stock paper.  My button punch won't punch out the images, the paper is to heavy. SO!  I decided to make them into gift tags!  First I used colored paper, didn't look right, to many colors that didn't match the paper.  Then I found this card stock weight vellum and it seemed to make the images POP.  I love glitter so you know, can't do anything without glitter. :) I tried to sell them at one of the bazaars but they wouldn't sell.  Maybe .25 a tag?  4 for a $1.00? Hmmmm

WARM SNOWFLAKES

I was able to get the boys to sit down and make exactly two paper snowflakes with me. 

That's it!  Just two.  But I'll take it :)

~Happy Thanksgiving~ 



PATCHES FOR PURSES

These goofy little characters are for the purses I'm trying to make. Well, I don't really make the purses, Minh does but I embellish some of them. I use fabric paint and permanent markers. I'm super impressed. It all actually works better than I thought it would. The colors are fabulous and blend well.

OWL BOOKMARKS

These little things are my bookmark submissions for the Owl Bookmark Swap on Swap Bot. I've been having fun with that site! I also discovered Atcs For All, another site I didn't know existed until the other day! So much fun!

DECORATED ENVELOPE SWAP

Here is a postcard and an envelope, front and back, in the theme of winter for the Decorated Envelope Swap over on swap-bot. I made a boo boo and sent the darn thing without checking the address. It needs to be sent to Canada, and I forgot to put the appropriate postage. Darn it! I'll need to come up with another little sumthin sumthin for my partner in the mean time.

COOPER MOUNTAIN SCHOOL PROJECTS

First project, an artist came to make the beautiful new stained glass windows for our Cooper Mountain School. The Art Lit people at school helped the different classes break glass for the windows. Next we got the Cooper Mt. Art Fair done! There were six local artists (I got to be a local artist!) music performances (Andy got to play the guitar!) and beautiful art work done by the Cooper Mt. Children. It went well except for the 20 ounces of coffee I spilled on the supplies right before the fair started. Then it was time to work on the Art Auction. Finally, that's done too. It's a good thing I like painting, the auction projects took a long time. The first and fifth graders did such a good job painting the turkeys, pumpkins, ladybugs, bees, frogs, ducks and snowmen. below are the cookie jar and plate we worked on. I was really impressed with all the drawing and painting the kids did.