Inspired by {Moda Operandi}

 This Memorial day weekend Amy is sharing the Moda Operandi site and pinterest boards. And I came across this light colored straw cowboy hat. and I laughed and laughed. Because, I had received this Whimsy stamps Cowboy Obsession stamp set and printed paper in the mail a day before I seen that and I had made her hat that color a few hours before that... and I thought OK lets just keep it simple.

 The couple was stamped with Versafine Morning Mist ink on some cold press 100% cotton watercolor paper and painted with Daniel Smith watercolors. The sentiment from that same set of stamps was done with Pine cone ink. When the paint was dry I cut this out with a new to me die set from Craft Addiction UK called Stitched craft fusion frames. I did get mine from Color me Nordic here. I thought the stitching details could lend itself to western style. And I then cut it out with some Kraft cardstock and it really showed off the stitches really well but, I wanted to use some of this scenic paper. ( every sheet in this pack is gorgeous) So, I cut one piece with a large die and then cut out a smaller section from its center. And I put the second frame up on foam pop dots) and then layered these over the watercolor/kraft layers. The base layer here is some Bazzill Quick Sand textured cardstock and this is 6" square in real life. I did try to give him some of that five o' clock shadow and then removed most the grey from the skin and went back over the top with the same shades of skin tone I blended for her. I think there is a little bit of contrast between their faces. I did still struggle with where to put the shadows on the folds of their shirts but, I am pretty tickled with how this turned out all in all. I hope you are doing well & thanks for stopping by. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. 

Watercoloring Loose Anemone's

 This week Linda is sharing this video seen here on YouTube that is a loose pitcher of Anemone flowers. When I turned on the Closed captioning it wrote the words in I think it may have been Spanish so, I turned it off and this was done from memory from just watching it. I am sure I did not use the same colors and I probably skipped around the steps out of order but, I think I got the gist of it. 

All my splatters were tiny, just really tiny so, I kept going up in brush size. I did some splatter-y loose blobs of what I was hoping would become the backgrounds of the flowers on the edges leaving some space for white-ish blooms in the center. 

 So I added in some leaf suggestions along with a wonky tilted pitcher top ha and another layer of paint to the flowers.

another layer of paint pretty much every where. 

 

I started adding darker rings to the centers of the blooms and more splatters and more leafy background suggested things so it wasn't so clean on the edges. 

 More splatters and paints. 

 and even darker paints to the centers of the blooms. the shapes of the leaves overlapping the rim of the pitcher bug me every time so, they get more paint every round as well. 

 I kept adding shadows to the leaves but, they just look harsh and too there not loose to me so, I just kept adding more. ha and along the edges of the pitcher as well. the shadows are deeper. 

I tried a white gel pen, actually I tried 3 different ones. They didn't do much to my eye so I used some white gouache straight out of the tube by this point. And I am thinking about trying to press this flatter in the bigshot while I am at work today while I still ponder some words for finishing it off. I really do not have any floral cards on my needed list at the moment so, its a mental road block.  So When I came home I pulled it out of the bigshot and it was slightly flatter but, not a completely flat painting. and I don't have an idea about what to do with it so, this is where I stopped.

 That's about it from me, I hope you are doing well And If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by. 

 

Inspired by {Kartoti Designs}

 This week Denise is sharing the Kartoti Designs site and pinterest boards collection and I came across this pin with these framed black and white sketches. And I thought that could make a cool ( fast easy card) ( its been a rollercoasterofaweek) So, I had originally decided to use Christmas flowers and knock out a Christmas card but, most of my Christmas flower stamps are large. for the most part I seem to have not many "sketchy" type stamps and the ones that I do have are very large geared more towards watercoloring.

But, I found this stamp from the Club Scrap Girlfriends set and thought OK and all those squares and blooms are all one stamp and thought ok back to the quick and easy idea... This is stamped with some Versafine clair nocturn ink on Neenah solar white 110# cardstock in a Misti so that I could ink the stamps several times for best coverage since this is a one layer card I wanted that ink to be bold and there.

 The sentiment here is from the Stampin' Up! Thoughtful branches set. That's about it from me, I hope you are doing well.  This card is finished out at A2 in real life. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by. 

Watercoloring a gumtree bloom

 This week Suz is sharing this video seen here on YouTube to do a gumtree flower in watercolor. I have never in my wildest dreams imagined such an unusual bloom. At first glance my first thought was sea anemone. So I sketched a kinda top to the bloom with some hanging leaves.

 On a piece of cold press arches cotton watercolor paper. 

I added a first layer of paints and walked away.

 

At work today I printed off a screen shot of the video bloom/pod/leaves and 3 different pins This one 

And this one 

and this one as well. 

I seen on Pinterest with these flowers. I could not make up my mind when I googled them last weekend which colors to choose and finally today decided on the pinkish ones. (they also come in a white and a red) The things that interested me most about the photos besides the color idea was how the leaves drape, shape type thing. I did skip the pod in this painting as it did not interest me much. 

 I spent a bunch of time mixing that color for the ends of the pink petals? its 3 or 4 colors and it dried flat and invisible.

So I mixed up a yellow tinted one and went right over the top of the dried light color. thinking it could be a shadow under it all.

 

And I continued to add more to where I thought there should be shadows and ultimately ended up doing just plain white dots two more times in those spaces.

 At this point I decided it was starting to look kinda muddy and over worked so, I let that dry and then added some shadows under things thinking that maybe the whites would pop later when dry because of that.

 So this is where I stopped with this. I am not sure I would do anything with this so, I like the colors of it and it was an interesting thing to try. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by. 

 

A Fancy Scene fold card

 So, this has been an off again and on again thing this weekend. Early on Saturday AM before I ran out the door I seen  This Amazingly beautiful this card on SCS by Suz  for the May Dirty Dozen prompt that uses this fancy fold that has a tutorial on YouTube seen here. And because Suz's card is so gorgeous I went down that rabbit hole and watched the video and then attempted this fold. 

 It took me a while to find a 6" scenic piece of paper and this one came out of a Studio Light Let it snow pad. And when I looked at it I thought OK, all hearts come home for Christmas is the theme for this paper and. So, I dug out this old stamp from the Waltzing Mouse set called Seasons of Love tags stamps and I used some versafine to add it to the third panel of paper. The sentiment on the farthest right Neenah solar white cardstock panel is from the Hero Arts Winter Holiday Messages set. 

And I have to tell you I pulled these panels up and moved them multiple times before I got them to look like this. And because of that I decided to add the drop piece of the green linen cardstock to under neath of the far left front swing panel part of the fold to give that printed paper some more stability.

So this does not lay flat anymore because, the other bright idea I had was to watercolor some loose pine trees and do some falling snow splatter on that pale green textured paper I used for the other part of the front panel.

Like so, before I painted on the piece which was already glued to the card front I tried some colors on a scrap of watercolor paper and a small scrap of that same textured heavy paper to see how it would look and I decided it was "ok" for this thought. I also splattered this with some Dr. PH Martins bleed proof white. 

At this point I have not added embellishments to the far left corner of the card where you hold it to open it. I am considering adding a Merry Christmas some where though. And then when I handed this to hubs to open, he did not open this like to see the scene, the way you will see it open in that video. He opened it and then could only see the two inside pieces with the white panel. And he spun it around and flashed it at me and his face said? this is not impressive. So, its something to keep in mind its one of those folds that may not be self explanatory to a non card maker. I did have fun with this and I do like the colors but, the green linen textured cardstock is pretty wrinkly looking on the back side of this card for how many times I removed those scene panels and re glued them. Probably I should have used liquid glue. I am not so sure I would do this again like this, what I like about the whole thing is the framing that the splitting the panels gives like a trio of hung art and so, in my mind this may work better for me to just make a flat card and split the scene that way.  That's about it from me, I hope you are also enjoying this Mother's Day weekend. Thanks for stopping by. 

Inspired by {Ethan Allen}

 This week Kia is sharing the Ethan Allen site for inspiration. And I seen this Hem stitched table runner and I kept coming back to it. What I thought was interesting was the shade of blue. Some how I tend to lean away from Blue things in card making. I have no real reason why and the hem stitched linens I own are all white so, I thought why not.

 So I cut the layer with the Spellbinders hem stitched rectangle die from some thin blue cardstock and it ends up being slightly under A2 in real life. The other colors that caught my eye in those photos were the brown table, the white dishes and that there was a pine sprig on the plates so, I seen it as "Christmas" and blue for Christmas is also something I don't do much of so, I had this previously embossed piece of printed wood grain paper and thought OK. so I used the next size down rectangle in the Hemstitched die set to make it fit inside the stitching layer. I was messing around with the idea of adding sprigs to this some how because of the sprigs on the plates but, ultimately discarded them.

The ribbon here is from the Stamp Simply Site. The Photo corners here are from the Frantic Stamper Chevron Dies. The sentiment die is from Penny Black and I did cut three layers of it so that it would pop better on that brown background. The matelasse embossing folder here is from Anna Griffin. I did use a white gel pen on some of the clusters of dots in the embossed panel and then over the top of the white with a stardream sparkle pen over the top of that and in a few little spots of the sentiment diecut as well. 

I keep thinking maybe I should work the springs in for one more white space maybe some how dangling under or tied on to that knot of ribbon but, so far this is how it looks when I stopped.  I do not know who makes this blue cardstock but, the cream here is from Simon Says Stamp. I don't remember who makes that wood grain print but, its double sided and it has a black and cream sheet music print on the flip side of it. 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.