Dirty Dozen November Card

 This was done for the November prompt for the Dirty Dozen Christmas card challenge found here at Splitcoaststampers in the special forums set aside for Fan Club Members. 

Since I waited for the last minute, and this was not what I thought I would do all year when I glanced at the list of challenges and knew it was coming up. SO, its pretty simple but, I really wanted the print to shine. with that thought in mine as the red berries on the print are foiled in real life, the gold mat is some Stardream shimmer and the green textured bazzill is also shimmery. The red is a printed paper from Recollections cut with an Impression Obsession die. and this is very flat one postage stamp to ship it YAY. :) pretty good deal for an A7 sized card. It's early days though so, its possible I will get the other first idea done this month. I hope you are all doing well & thanks for stopping by.

watercoloring a fall forest

 This week Kia has shared this video seen here on YouTube from Emma Jane Lefebvre on  easy & quick Autumn Cards and I chose the one with the forest in fall colors. I loved that one. I started with a cold press scrap and Daniel Smith watercolors.

First round of paint, just a small thing I did not manage to get as much blur to mine. so, I did let this dry and added more.

A closer look at the second round of paints. 

I wanted to keep it simple so, I die cut the painted panel and the copper shimmer layer with Large Spellbinders Deckle edge rectangle dies ( these are really old, and when I seen these were the "large" version it made me curious if there was a smaller sized set. These are on some textures bazzill at an A6 size and the sentiment here is from the Unity Stamps Thankful Oak set on an orange scrap that was die cut with one of the stitched slimline dies. ( I have several) I am pretty tickled with how this turned out. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring a Pear

 It's my turn to host the watercoloring challenge this week at Splitcoaststampers and heading into looking for something this month I knew it would be fall and I wanted to try something different. I happened across this tutorial from Ellen Crimi-Trent called Easy watercolor tutorial for beginners - Pears! that you an find here on YouTube. 

I don't really enjoy the sketching part of painting, I'd much rather just paint. So, this is first layer of paint on Arches cold press. I did drop in colors for some texture to the center and then walked away to let it dry.

added more paint, a shadow and stem to the pear. I did do some Bartlett pear colors on this from memory but, its missing the brown spots as I tried to keep it like the tutorial without doing all the other colors of pears. We used to have two pear trees because, they tell you that at the nursery that you need two varieties to get the cross pollination to work. But our D'anjnou ( probably mangled the spelling on that) tree died years ago and the Bartlett still grows pears. So, the best guess is there are other pear trees in the neighborhood. as I am down to one apple now and it also had a bumper crop.

I decided to keep this simple and just cut the painted panel with a Crazy stitched die from Impression Obsession. 

This is A2 in real life, the sentiment is from the Greetery just mason around set with some Versafine shady lane ink. The base here is a premade card from Impress called Aloe. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying Fall as much as I am. Thanks for stopping by.
 

watercoloring real leaves

 This week Linda has shared this video called Leaf Printing on Greeting Cards: Easy Autumn Watercolor and Stamping DIY for Beginnerson YouTube seen here by Kate Miles Art  using real leaves with watercolor paint.

So, I went outside an plucked two leaves off the weeping birch in the front yard and gave it a whirl

 And then I proceeded to stamp a sentiment across the bottom Crooked. yes, its a thing.

and a day or two after that I was telling my  husband I wish I had a maple leaf on the smaller side to fit on a card front. we went on our weekly breakfast date pre grocery shopping and in the parking lot of the grocery store when we came out there was one perfect sized maple leaf on the ground right where I would step into the truck and I plucked it up and told him it was fate.

now this leaf had been blowing around for who knew how long as there were no maple trees near this parking lot. and so, 

it did not go as well as the fresh leaves that were smaller, so I painted on some more paint and tried it again.

which did not get any better but, at this point I decided to just paint on some more paint and make textured paper. ( this may get stamped or painted over some time as background texture ) not sure yet.

So, I went out and plucked more leaves off our tree.

the first one was cool, the second two I put too much water onto them but, I decided to just roll with it at this point I was out of time.

Finished it off with some distress oxide vintage photo along the edges and an Serendipity stamps sentiment stamped in "falling leaves" ink. the print is an unknown scrap, the lace is vintage and the base is textured Bazzill. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring Birch Trees

 Hi & Welcome back, this week Brenda has shared this Easy birch trees using this technique video seen here on YouTube from Ellen Crimi-Trent. I used a cut up fake credit card I used to use to drag black ink across a inkpad as a reinked it and a brush for this.

the three in the center were done with a brush before I remembered to look for a card to chop up.

I did mix some greys with some greens to have variations in the color on the trunks also.

first round of paints to the background forest.

how the second layer of forest background paints dried I decided it was good enough and spent a lot of time looking through my Thanksgiving stamps but, in the end decided to leave it blank for now. 

 

This is finished out with some foam tape on textured Bazzill for the base and it is A7 in real life. The inside is lined with some Neenah earthstone card and also blank for now. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring a whimsical Turkey

 This week's Watercoloring throw down is for this Watercolor brush pens, simple watercolor thanksgiving turkey video seen here on YouTube by Tanya Leintz. 

I did not use watercolor pens, just regular Daniel Smith Paints on a Strathmore cotton notebook like so. 

I barely remembered to shoot the sketch before I started painting him. 

first layer of paints

Next layers of paints. the white here is some Windsor & Newton white Gouache, I had dug out the Gansai Opal colors for a shimmer paint and used the green opal on the body a bit and a few tail feathers after the whites were dry.

and he finished out like this. The shimmers did not photograph well. If you'd like to play along with us you an find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.