Dirty Dozen March Christmas

 It's that time again, the first of the month and the new challenge prompt goes live for the fan club at Splitcoaststampers. For this month's theme I did this card mostly from scraps.

And pushing things around on the table, this Bear is from Impression Obession and it's name is Cocoa bear, the bow tie is from the Karen Burnston Riley & Co. tiny accessories set, I did use some black ( similar to liquid pearls) from ranger Enamel drops of his eyes. and After this was shot I did add two more layers of face to around his nose to pop that up a little bit. The tree he is holding here is from the Papertrey Ink enchanted forest set and I did use a red pen to draw the red lines under the trees on the scrap in the background where they are stamped to mimic the ones on the Tim Holtz printed paper. That lace is vintage, the button's either James dress it up or buttons galore. there is a bit of natural hemp string run through the holes. The sentiment is from the Papertrey Ink farm fresh set and I did cut it several times with a Paperrose curved rectangle die to get it down to a smaller size to let some of the paper scraps peek out around it. This cards is 5" X 7 " in real life on some textured Bazzill. That's about it from me, if you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here in the special forums set aside for fan club members. Thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring Snowdrops

 This week Brenda has chosen this video seen here on YouTube doing snowdrop flowers called easy watercolour snowdrops in the snow by Harriet de Winton. So it's been a while and I know a few years ago probably there was a snowdrop challenge that I did not try, it looked so intimidating to me. I seem to have a mental hang up on sketching the paintings as a start so, I grabbed a sheet of cold press arches, and made my self draw the flowers from what I remembered of the video.

Okay I thought you can do this.

Promptly painting a wash over the sketch and then remembered it needed masking fluid... so did a second sketch. 

"tilted" my masking fluid, it was a  glumpy mess. and I could see it was not smooth to the lines but, decided to let it dry and see what happened. 

This was the first sketch when it dried I decided to try some white bleed proof white over the dried places to see what it would dry like. (sometimes that dries grey instead of white) 

So meanwhile added some wash over the glumpy dried fluid. 

another round of paints. 

Took off the masking fluid and decided to try adding the paint details to the blooms, they were pretty ragged looking so. 

Out came another sheet for third times a charm painting, 

Same masking fluid, I shook that bottle until it looked like fluid in it, it did work but, if yours is a glumpy mess tilting it is not going to cut it. 

I should start by saying I used some of the same colors she mentions and others I just used what was near me, I do not have the same colors and I have never seen these blooms in real life so, I was not really all that sure what colors the caps near the petals should be or the veins on the petals.

I decided to add some bleed proof white to the "snow" 

After this round of paint I left it to dry for a couple of days, its been stormy here while this was being painted and Its hard to judge just how "dry" a wash is to me when my hands are cold. 

I cut the painting (twice) with a spellbinders postage edge square dies and then taped them back together on the back side. The sheer is some really old from Stampin' Up called going grey, the base is unknown and its 6" square in real life. There is no greeting because, I do not know what I want to do with this one as of yet. That's about it from me, If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. thanks for stopping by.

Another flowering Boot

 So, I had it really bugged me the boot I tried last weekend and I had more time to play today and thought try it again while the ( next week's sample) is drying.

So this time around I grabbed an old Sizzix originals boot die and cut one out and then used the drop piece as a stencil to trace a boot shape on some cold press watercolor paper like so.

 I also never seem to be able to mix "pretty" pastel colors with my Daniel smith paints so, I dug out these Prima ones I have that almost seem like Gouache. ( they are not so translucent as DS paints) but, are in pretty colors.

Added more paints and blooms and such each time it dried.

Well, I thought the boot was dry. So I stamped an old DOTS / CTMH sentiment on this with some rainforest ink and it bled on the boot. So, I had at that time white Dr. PH. Martins bleed proof white wet on the blooms and leaves so, its just sitting like this, not sure it will go any farther. If you'd like to play along you can find this challenge here at SCS. thanks for stopping by.

Inspired By {Bas Bleu books}

 This week Amy has chosen the Bas Bleu store for inspiration and I came across this pin of these text filled cats. I thought that was interesting and wondered if I had enough open space in any of my cat stamps to pull it off. 

So I decided on this old Stamps Happen Gift Box Cat to give it a try, I stamped it with some pinecone ink on a scrap of A Muse Studios printed night before Christmas text paper and some Cotton Arches cold press watercolor paper and proceeded to add watercolor paints to both.

A closer look at the cat after more paint had been added, I did also after this was mostly dry add some clear Nuvo crystal glue on the eye balls. 

I am not sure what I want it to say yet so, there is no stamped greeting on it, The HO HO HO printed paper is from the Scrapbook.com Gingerbread pad. The base is some textured bazzill and this one finished out at 6" square in real life. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

Watercoloring a bloom filled boot

 This week Angie is sharing this video seen here on YouTube by Julia Lis Art that has you sketching your boot and filling it with blooms ala spring colors. 

I did grab my travel pad and kept it small using a water soluble pencil. I did not add the buckle. 

First layers of green paint wet,

When that was dry started adding some blooms and tried to do some shading to the bottom of the boot.

Which looked really obvious to me so I added even more color to the boot and then gave it a shadow wash underneath. I do like how those loose water dot flowers turned out. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

A catch up Post

 I am getting really bad about not either blogging things that were made for not team challenge samples or just random things. So here is some more eye candy for your Sunday. I did do an order from Red Lead Paperworks stamps not too long ago and I was totally tickled to see how they packaged everything. 

Everything was tied off with the ribbons and that box, its hand stamped. very cool 

The inside of that box contained the wood mounted stamps I had picked up from them. 

Sometime after that arrived, I had seen that Polly was asking for humor cards for a Ways to use it Challenge And I had received a few silly Diamonds sentiments that leaned towards the snarky side of get well in the mail that week so, The sponge one was one of those and when I opened the drawer with people in it to get the operating room ( also from Diamonds) I seen this old Art Impressions Nurse right next to them so, out she came and The sentiment on her card is from Riley & Co.

I snagged a piece of this white crepe paper ( hobby lobby) to use thinking of curtains but, wanted to keep these simple so, I just stamped them with Versafine on some Neenah cream and die cut those panels with the Impression Obsession Crazy stitched set rectangle (it's one of Anna Wights) used some grey scraps for contrast and called it good enough. 

Today there is a featured stamper challenge going on at SCS and Shelly's gallery was chosen. Right off the bat this pretty blue card caught my eye. I felt really at home with the design, and knew I could use it as a Sketch type inspiration. and then a little farther down the first page I seen this Santa card and thought ah ha. So, I kept the colors and the Christmas theme of the Santa card and tweaked the layout of the Blue card to do this one. 

A look at the layers and depth. The bears eyes were done with black liquid pearls. ( that's not the right name will grab the bottle but, its a ranger thing that dries very glossy and 3-d)

The base here is a premade A2 one and the Sentiment is from Impression Obsession also one of Jeanne's sets called Christmas coffee sayings. Its stamped on another of Anna's IO dies ( the original sized pinked stitched banners) and that is tied onto the sheer ribbon with some natural hemp string. The cocoa bear is on a Die cut from the Penny Black Posted die ( I like the simplicity of this one, most of my postage dies are more detailed and have lots of stitching or piercing and such) I did add a transparent heart button to his scarf and some pop dots under his arms to hold the cocoa. ( really I know people who have some coffee with their cream ;) so, the coffee sentiment still works here) Added some white dots over where I had thought to add pink to his cheeks. I thought he turned out pretty cute. I have been pushing around a small pile of cocoa bear pieces for a couple of weeks now trying to decide if I liked the browns together. Which made me end up inking most the edges with some DOX vintage photo ( of course right) just to tie them together a little better. That's about it from me, Thanks for stopping by.