Watercolour coconut palm tree

Still trying to learn more about watercolours. Took a photo looking up into a palm tree while at the beach and this is my attempt at representing it in watercolours.  I am showing two photographs of the same painting, one as it was taken and the other enhanced by the program on my ipad. I do wish I could get that intensity of colour with my watercolours. I think I am so afraid of making a mistake that I deliberately make my mixes thin when I should be using less water to enhance the vibrant colours here.

So onto my David Bellamy watercolour course.  Practice makes perfect!

Birthday and Anniversary Reminder Calendar

 

I am the worlds worst at forgetting birthdays and anniversaries,

so here is my reminder calendar.

 

 

The wooden plaque I got at Michaels together with 20 wooden tags.  I covered them all with tissue paper and decoupage medium.  The letters are cut out of cardstock with the Cricut, 5 of each letter and stuck together to give some depth and covered with a contrasting tissue paper.  I printed all the birthdays and anniversaries onto cardstock and placed one on each tag, I made an extra tag to cover the other pile of tags.  Two cupboard knobs from Lowes,  I used two knobs for my plaque because I have so many days to remember and the wood tags are thick, some brads and twine finish it off.

 

My thanks to Jamielyn Nye for the inspiration from her blog HERE



Watercolour practice

 

 

Recently I have taken up my watercolours again and have found I am very rusty, so I have decided to do a watercolour course from a book and improve my techniques.  Here are a few paintings I have done so far.  A long way to go but a start.

 

 

 

 



Wedding Card

 

 

My nephew is getting married this weekend in the UK and sadly I will not be able to go over to celebrate it with my family.  I made them this card, which was difficult to photograph because of the sparkly items but it is embossed cardstock with a center of paper flowers and crystals, lace and pearl edging and silvered paper and silver ink edges heat embossed.

 

 

I wish him and his wife every happiness in their future together.

Beaded Yard Art

Trying to get back into the swing of things by doing some small yard art with beads.  Here is my Scorpion, colours don't gleam in the photo as much as they do in the sunshine outside.  Off to try some others.

Q is for Quangle (plus final catch up)

 

Q is for Quangle

 

All caught up over at the Craft Barn's challenge HERE  Please excuse my poetic licence in using this word, I have taken my inspiration from a poem by Edward Lear, The Quangle Wangle's Hat.  My children adored this poem and I am sure they had their own pictures in their minds of how it should look.  I have decorated the hat with ribbons and bibbons and buttons and lace and bells and added pictures of all the creatures that came to live on it.  If you have never read the poem here is a link click here and you may have seen a couple of the illustrations before, adapted in my own style.

 

N is for Nectariferous

  

I always thought that Nectariferous meant insects that drank nectar, oh how I was wrong.  It means secreting nectar as in plants.  I decided to do a lot of stamping on my spread this time, flowers along the bottom using Anna Griffin pens with brush tips, and an assortment of bees, butterflies and a dragonfly all coloured with Inktense watercolour pencils.  Background is painted loosely with watercolours.  I managed to use the "N" from my dictionary this time to start my choice of word.

 

 

 

Z is for Zentangle

I chose to do a Zentangled tree and to Zentangle the word itself.  This is a time consuming craft and one that I have only just begun to try.  I love the end look, especially when a trompe d'oeil effect produces 3 dimension to the item.

I really enjoy looking round all your dictionary spreads, thank you for sharing them with us all.  Comments, as always, are greatly appreciated.

L is for Lace/Lacing (and more catch-ups)

L is for Lace/Lacing

I love using lace and this was a fine opportunity to go wild.  The tag on the left (you may have seen this before) has a photograph of a misty scene through the window with net curtains.  Lace edging for the pages and two line of lace in the center laced together with crinkle ribbon to reflect the ribboned lace on the undergarment of the lady on the far right.  Die cut swirls and leaves, paper flowers and paper lace finish it off.   Join in the challenge over at 
The Craft Barn HERE

O is for Op Art

I promise you the right hand page is perfectly flat.  Op Art, also known as optical art, was a 1960's style of visual art that made use of optical illusions, contrast and a precise, mathematically-based composition to trick the eye.

D is for Delft

I cut some thick card into a square and painted it with gesso then drew the corner patterns and circles in watercolour pencil.  I tried to coat the tile with a thin layer of wax but that didn't work too well so I stamped the ship in the center and coloured it with ship blue alcohol ink.  Some of the wax remains and gives it an old look.  White gesso pages of the dictionary are painted with an some old Delft patterns and I copied a makers mark from the bottom of an old Delft plate.

Thank you as always for looking and for your encouraging comments, I love looking at everyone's work and am constantly inspired by you all to try new techniques and projects.

Still Playing Catch Up over at The Craft Barn

J is for Joker

Getting there slowly, just a few more to catch up on.  My choice of word for the letter J is Joker.  I covered the pages with harlequin and gold tissue papers then made three tiny ATC sized envelopes, embossed at the top and lined with gold tissue paper for the tiny Joker cards.  the image on the right I layered on the contrasting paper to match after embossing the edges with gold.  Sticker letters and the dictionary entry finish the card.  Please take a few moments to check out my other catch up letters below.  Link to the challenge can be found HERE

Off to enjoy the other posts, thanks for looking and comments and suggestions are always welcome.

T is for Tulip

The tulip is one of my favourite flowers, it heralds Spring with such vibrant colour.  To echo this I used Gelatos for a dripped background on gesso.  Stamps and stencils remove and add colour to the pages.

Y is for Yurt

The letter over at the Craft Barn is Y with some yellow on your page.  I chose the word Yurt.  Sprayed glimmer mist through stencils background.  Texture paste spread through leaf stencil and painted black then highlighted with Viva paste.  Window cut through several layers to reveal the inside of a yurt.  On the outside of the window is another photo of a yurt.

B is for Bathing Beauties, Beige, Black, Border, Brown, Brownie

Beige brown striped paper background, harlequin stamp, Edwardian girls at the seaside photo with black die cut border.  A cardstock sticker of a Brownie box camera and a rub on word.  All with a lace border.

Christmas Cards - Step

Finally got round to making a few of my Christmas cards.  I bought a Cutz Mountain Lodge die last January in the sales and this is the first project I have made with it.  On the left side I embossed the white cardstock with a holly embossing folder and coloured the berries with bright red stickles.  On the right side I frosted the trees, the background stamped cardstock and mountain lodge diecut with crystal glitter.  

From the side it looks like this, instructions for the construction of the card can be found on Youtube.

 I made a couple of alternative cards using blue and white cardstocks, each one is pretty in its own right but I much prefer the black and white version.

Craft Barn Dictionary Challenge Catch-up

G is for Gable

 

Sorry for my long absence, so many letters to catch up on, had my hip replacement and been to England to stay for 6 weeks with my daughter and my grandsons, oh what fun we had.  To continue on with my altered dictionary challenge over at The Craft Barn Blog HERE for the letter G I have painted a watercolour of a barn showing the gable end.

 

If you have time please look at my other letters below that I have finished so far, still got a few more to go but on my way. 



 

U is for Urban Decay

 

 

Seen to much these days, I found this photo of what was once a splendid building.  So far I it has not been painted with graffiti, so I added some of my own.  My first ever attempt at this art form, and believe me it is not easy. 

 

 

F is for Ferruginous

 

 

The colour of iron rust.  Acrylic paints in black, rust red, yellow and orange brayered onto Tyvek and stuck to the pages to make the background.  The same colours used to stencil across the bottom of the page.  Two pockets torn from the painted Tyvek on the right side hold tags of red headed girls and the main picture on the left is matted onto blue cardstock and edged with gold marker.

 

K is for Knot

 



 

 

Love this photograph on the right of rope knots had to use it.  6 knots tied with cord and mounted on cardstock.  Tried to get a nautical feel to the pages with the use of red, white and blue colours.

 

A is for Aquarium

 

 

Two zipper plastic bags filled with hair gel and placed on a mixture of blue sprayed background with stamped fish and ferns.  Frames of cardstock hide the edges of the bags.  The cheaper the hair gel the more bubbles you get in it.

 

W is for Wall

 

 

 

I removed a piece of from the keyboard of my computer which made a perfect stencil for the wall.  First coated pages with gesso, printed a picture of poppies in a field (circle heads) and stuck it to the pages.  Cut 3" circles from cardstock to mask the "hole" and masked an inch strip along the top with paper.  Another coat of gesso over the whole page, let it dry.  Keyboard mask down sprayed with watered down ink. Flower stamps coloured with Twinkling H2Os.

R is for Robin's-egg Blue

  I chose Robin's-egg Blue for my letter "R".  I used my water soluble oil pastels for the background, nest and eggs.  Stamped an American Robin in brown Stazon ink and coloured it in with the oil pastels too.  Die cut silhouette letters on robin's egg blue speckled paper backgrounds (though you can't see the paper clearly in my photo) finish my page.