Water colour colouring - Watercolour powders 4

I've decided I will make a technique journal this year and have started with the water colour powders.

Experimenting a bit further with the water colour powders I began with the brown bister sprinkled over the water colour paper and then spritzed an old stamp with water and pressed it onto it, repeating lots of times until I had it fully covered the paper.

I then stamped an old Tim stamp with ground espresso distress ink over the top.

Taking a fine brush, some water on my craft mat and chipped sapphire and stormy sky distress inks I began painting in some of the designs and finger splattered some blue onto the background. I love the browns and blues merging together in some areas.

I repeated the process with antique linen and tea dye.

As this is a journal I thought I would keep it simple and add one of Tim's small quotes.

And hey presto the first page is done.

I can see me using this technique for my Packhouse cards. It will be interesting to watch what designs will sell. At the moment I am gathering up Mother's Day style bits and pieces and making some shabby cards to do a changeover tomorrow - just trying to keep to the themes of the year. I had forgotten how much I love shabby card making - I can see some appearing on here soon.

Happy Sunday.

Listen to your HeArt.

hugs Brenda xxx

Watercolour Powders 3

Sharing another background and card using the powder water colours, I have bistre's, brushos and infusions in my collection. I love the very mottled and watery effects you can achieve using them with a stencil. If you missed #'s 1 and 2, click on the numbers to be transported over to take a peek.

The background was created by lightly shaking watercolor powders over a stencil (make sure you have a piece of card underneath to create a second background) spritz the stencil with water. (The depth of colour will depend on how much powder you sprinkled on and the watery effect will depend on how much you spritz onto the stencil - play and experiment to see what effects you can make). Take your background piece of card and flip the stencil over onto it, rub over gently with a paper towel and remove the stencil to reveal the first layer. Heat dry.

Dry the stencil, place it back over the the background pattern. Blend distress inks through the arrows, I used pumice stone, stormy sky, and gathered twigs. Remove the stencil, spritz the card with water and heat dry. Press under something heavy to flatten it.

Collect together some items to build up the focus for the card. The cogs had been made before and thee corner had been rusted and not used on a previous project so I like to hold onto these bits and get them out when needed and not waste them. 

I do however also have a 'rusting' session sometimes. Bits from Andy Skinner packs, chipboard pieces and die-cuts. Again I keep bits like the hexagons that are the 'waste' from a die, these look great as bolts.

These were given a rough and random coat of paynes grey, then some stipple burnt umber, a third stippling of cerulean blue, phthalo turquoise, burnt umber and a little tinting base (mixed, blended and changed every time I picked some up from the palette) then a coat of quinacridone gold finished with a wash of quin gold and phthalo turquoise mixed together.

I took this photo just to show how I adhere metal pieces that have a recessed back like this corner. Just fill it with modelling paste which acts as a glue.

The photo is one from my collection.

Hope you're enjoying the watercolor series.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Watercolour powders 2 and GiveAway winner

I'm back with another in the series of watercolour powder techniques. On this one I used the same colours as in the first one (which you can find Here if you missed it) the powders are brown bister, royal blood infusions and grey brusho and they are combined with weathered wood, faded jeans and gathered twigs distress inks.

Step 1. Take a stencil and lay over your card, shake the powders over it and spritz with water. remove the stencil and heat dry. This is the positive image.

Step 2. With the distress inks having been used for another piece and left on the stencil, spritz it lightly with water and lay over the top of the design already made in step 1, carefully matching up the pattern, dab it gently all over with a cloth or paper towel and remove and heat dry again. Now you have added colour to the negative area.

Step 3. Cut your design to fit a card, collect some focal embellishments and a sentiment and assemble.

The lovely Autumn has pointed me to the Stamps and Stencils challenge this month 'Texture, Crackle and Paint' and I think the frame alone qualifies this as an entry so I am hopping over to add this for my entry into their fabulous challenge.

Now for my giveaway winner for January. random Org did the choosing which takes the stress out of this part and the number that arrived was -

- and placed 16 in the list of comments was

Sue Adams

Sue I don't have any more information about you so if you would like to email me your postal address (my email address is on my sidebar) I will get your little prize in the post. Congratulations and thanks for joining in and being part of my blog.

For anyone interested keep a look out for another giveaway being announced in a couple of days along with a DecoArt Mixed Media Design Team project.

Have a wonderful week.

hugs Brenda

Watercolour powders 1

I have a card and the process steps on the Country View Crafts Project Blog today and thought I would make another one for here.

Follow the steps on the CVC blog HERE but mix and match your powders, I used brown bistre, royal blood infusion and grey brusho to show how they can all work together. The two steps needed to create this are so easy and can produce some amazing effects.

Gather some items to embellish the card and create your focal point.

I edged the card with ground espresso and created a small collage with a sentiment.

There we go, a great vintage card in under an hour and a half, well it can be if you just go for it, but if you're like me you'll spend ages choosing your colours and your collage elements lol and take longer.

Here's the one that can be found at Country View Crafts project Blog, it would be lovely if you could pop over to take a look.

Have fun and happy Sunday.

hugs Brenda xxx

Friends share coffee

Here is the third of my mixed media background cards, if you haven't see the others they can be seen here and here.

This background started as a bister mop up over which I applied crackle paint through a stencil and let it dry.

The colours weren't vibrant enough for what I wanted to I took a couple of dylusions misters and gave a couple of fairly quick sprays.

Still not happy with it I then brayered over a little white gesso lightly so that it mostly caught the raised areas, but you can see it picked up some of the coloured inks and created an effect I really quite liked. I gave it a coat of matte medium to seal it.

To finish off I made up one of Tim's take away coffee cups, added some collage bits and die-cut the friends celebrate words.

 

All I had to do then was put it all together.

Again I know just the person for this card.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Celebrate Spring

I am trying to get some cards made for my box and thought I would challenge myself to find a set of stamps that hadn't been used. I have a small tub of stampin' up stamps that never see the light of day and I chose the Nature walk set - now I think I may have used one or two of these many moons ago but I used a fair few of them to create a card that will be perfect for a man. (Hmmm I may know someone with a birthday in July who would like this).

I stamped the images on card that had been dipped in distress inks and found a piece of notebook style paper in my collage box and cut the celebrate from Tim's thinlits dies.

 I used Bisters in Tim's flourish embossing folder to create the background - you can just see some of the flourish pattern showing.

I didn't want to add embellishments because of posting but I am pleased with the collage feel it has to it.

Whilst I had the bisters out I played with a couple of more backgrounds and you will see those cards another day. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

hugs Brenda xxx

Dandelion inspiration

I promised to show you how my muse took me off onto a completely different path after covering Beckah Krahula's Wanderlust lesson. If you missed my tangled journalling post you can see it here.

 I have been saving photos, paintings and drawings of dandelions, aliums and seed heads to a Pinterest board for quite some time and the shapes of these natural beauties intrigue me.

So I used my new found motivation and interest to doodle draw some of these shapes on small pieces of card ....

and made a new folder for them. 

As you can see there is no zentangling but that's where the inspiration came from to sit and have fun with pens, line, shape and perspective.

I even made my own reference drawings and notes on the back for future use.

I had made the cover from some paper that I had dipped and sprayed with bisters so I did the same to some good quality card that take the washes well and cut them up into the same size as my little learning cards and I am now playing with my designs over the top of the colour wash backgrounds ....

.... and I have plenty cut ready to pick up this little folder when I am sitting quiet and wanting something non-messy to do.

Who knows, you might see some of these turn up on my journal pages sometime.

If you are inspired to have a go at doodle drawing do let me know here or on facebook as I would love to see what you create.

See you tomorrow to find out who is the winner of my little give-away.

hugs Brenda xxx

Watercolour playtime

Well my poor blog has been so neglected and at last I've had time to have a little play. I have other workshop things to be shown but I can't put them up until a little later.

These little postcards are the experiments of playing with brushos, bisters that my sister bought me for Christmas, watercolours and stamps.

 

The background was started first using distress inks before stamping this gorgeous bee by Wendy Vecchi which was stamped twice, once with sandstone brusho and again over the top with black archival which helped to get me a watercolour shadow. Water was used to be;each out some of the colour in the wings and watercolours painted in. Bisters were add and spritzed over the background and the hexagons stamped (also Wendy's) to finish it off.

 

The leaf gave me quite a bit of a headache. It's one of Tim's blueprint stamps which I masked and stamped over with another of Tim's old stamps to create a background, but it was far too busy and the leaf was completely lost. But I added brushos and bisters and spritzed to get the watercolour background, then using water bleached some of it out around the leaf trying to make it come to the front and show up more. It didn't!! After a while I took my watercolours and painted white around the edges and let it dry, this was beginning to look better and I repeated the process about 3 times. Now the leaf pops out more and the background looks quite misty and ethereal. Yep I am quite happy with that.

This last one is one of Tim's landscape stamps and you can guess where (even if the main buildings are all in the wrong place lol). Again I used the brushos and bisters to get the watery looking background and used bleach spray to create the clouds and to take out some colour from the buildings, painting them back in using the powders. I used just a little grey on the clouds.

Although I studied three years of oil painting at college I am not a watercolour artist, but the powders help create those lovely indistinct backgrounds and can be manipulated and changed. I just enjoy the processes which is the main thing.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx