Art

November BYOC at The Lilypad

| cristina

Hello and happy November! Fall is in full swing and I had a blast using the new BYOC products from The Lilypad to scrap this season.

Supplies:
This Is Us – Templates – Designed by Soco
Stop and Look Around: Mixed Media Artistry, Stop and Look Around: Trashed Papers, Stop and Look Around: Mixed Media Paperie and Stop and Look Around: Paper Pieces by Rachel Jefferies
Hand Drawn Alphas No. 4 by Heather Joyce

Supplies:
Cubbage and Coo, Cubbage and Coo Birds, Cubbage and Coo Crosshatch, Cubbage and Coo Snippets, Cubbage and Coo Naturals by Rebecca McMeen

I also am happy to report I successfully completed Artober – 31 daily art prompts for the month of October inspired by Jane Davenport.

(I used a template by Scrapping by Liz from The Lilypad to make this collage of my artwork, and artwork by Rebecca McMeen to decorate it).

Lately

| cristina

I’ve been quiet lately because I have been busy with life, and with playing with new supplies! So here’s what I’ve been up to.

Sweet Stamp Shop

I’ve had a blast making a few projects for Sweet Stamp Shop as a guest designer for October!

The first thing I did after receiving the 3 stamp set was to stamp all the images, color them and cut them out. So fun! The sets on the left are colored with Copics, and the set on the right is done with watercolor pencils.

I’ll be sharing the projects I made with these sets later in the month.

Online Classes

Last year I took Sandy Allnock’s Copic Jumpstart class, and it was great. Since in the past year I’ve acquired an embarrassing amount of colored pencils (I bought both the Prismacolor Premier and Faber-Castell Polychromos full sets, in addition to the 80 Caran D’Ache Supracolor pencils I had from my childhood), I decided to sign up to her Colored Pencil Jumpstart class. I haven’t had time to dive into it yet, since I’m still working on my color charts (and it takes forever with all these pencils! :P), but I am making progress. She just relaunched her Art Classes website with a new platform, and has a great giveaway going on right now- check it out here!

New Art Supplies & Artober

I have been a fan of Jane Davenport for a while, and I am absolutely in love with her products. She has a new line that was launched this month, and I have bought an embarrassing amount of it, and am having a blast trying it all out with her Artober prompts.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. What about you?

Pinkfresh Studio Liquid Watercolors

| cristina

My cardmaking kick continues in full swing! I have been making mostly cards in the little craft time I have in between work trips. And I have been playing with new supplies too! I won a giveaway by Pinkfresh Studio and got the full set of their new liquid watercolors!! I’m so excited because I love art supplies – and these are just lovely!

The bottles are so pretty! There are 12 colors in the set. You can also purchase individual colors – the bubble gum and the aquamarine are my favorites!

If you are not used to liquid watercolors, it takes a little while to get the hang of them. The bottles come with an eyedropper, and I used a palette dish to put a couple drops of each color.  Liquid watercolors are super concentrated, so if you use them undiluted the color is very strong, and won’t warp the paper since you are not adding water. If you add water, you can get more diluted colors. They are super fun! Another bonus is that if your drops dry out in the palette, you can just add some water to use them again.

I swatches out the colors in the wheel – they were pretty much undiluted, so you can see how bright they are! Then on the wreath (which I gold embossed on plain cardstock) I added a little water to wash out the colors and get a softer look. In this photo you can also get a look at the box the set came in – it was packaged very securely.

I made another card with these pretty watercolors – this time on watercolor paper since I added more water. This uses the color scheme from this month’s Pinkfresh Studio challenge: yellow, pink, blue, gold and black.

I applied the Indian Gold embellishment mousse through a Dylusions stencil and I love the added texture! Here’s a closer look.

I will be sharing one more card soon on the blog – I have been experimenting with my (OK, let’s admit it….) huge stash of art supplies [trying to justify buying even more… ;)] and I’ve been having a blast!

Weekend Crafts

| cristina

I was home alone this weekend, which resulted in watching at some craft videos and learning about new supplies I absolutely had to have… So here’s the result – I went shopping!

I certainly didn’t need any more brush pens or washi tape or stamps… but of course I had to have them. 🙂

I must have been living under a rock, because even though I had heard ravings about the mermaid markers before, I didn’t know who Jane Davenport was. But then I signed up for her free class using the products from her line for American Crafts, and I was hooked!

So I ended up buying the mermaid markers , the ink-edible pen, the paint over pens, a set of washi tapes (called “palette”), and a set of face stamps. I mean, I haven’t ever been interested before in faces in art journaling, but I’m telling you, I am totally hooked now! Here’s all my purchases documented in my Hobonichi cousin planner.

Sadly one of the paint over pens was totally dry when I opened the package, so I’ll have to return it. But the other pens in the set are very pretty and work great on top of watercolors (the only medium I’ve tested them over so far).

Isn’t that washi tape really pretty?? I love it!

And the mermaid markers are really great – you can squeeze on the barrel to make the ink flow, so you can easily get drops of color to used for your mixed media. And I love how affordable and convenient the Ink-redible pen is – you can use it with cartridges, or with a converter (to put in fountain pen ink, or even ink from the mermaid markers). I hope the refills will be made available.

Other than in my planner, I only used the markers on a card so far. Here it is:

I stamped a cupcake from the Birthday Blueprint stamp by Tim Holtz in Jet Black archival ink, then colored it in with the mermaid markers, and using a water brush for blending the colors together. I added some highlights with the white paint over pen.

The background was made blending distress oxide inks – salty ocean, peacock feathers, and twisted citron, then adding a few water droplets and silver mist to create a cool distressed effect activating the ink.

It’s so fun playing with new supplies! What did you play with recently? Let me know in the comments!

September Art 2 Heart

| cristina

Wilna Furstenberg started a year-long workshop this month, and even though my attention span is typically very short, I decided to sign up for it. I love her style very much, I love watching her videos, and I liked the idea of this year-long creative journey.

I have made two pages so far inspired by Wilna’s pages and message. I tend not to journal much on my scrapbook pages (not sure why.. I journal tons on my Project Life, and quite a bit on my digital pages), but this page is mostly journaling, inspired by some recent successes (& added responsibilities) at work.

I used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors for the background and paint splatters (love them!!).

I gessoed + watercolored the background.

And then I made one of my favorite pages ever. I am not a scrap lifter, I always like to do my own thing, and even when I use sketches I often just use them as a starting point. So the fact that I have made this page very much based on Wilna’s example is really telling of how much she has inspired me. It was the sneak of this page that made me decide to sign up for the class!

The background was done again with my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors. I was going to go with a black and white photo, but then I found this picture of me that I had printed (and cut up and then not used) for another project, and I loved how nicely the colors matched my page. I journaled about the things I dream of. It turned out to be fantastic motivation for me! And the colors… oh how I love these colors!

I am so glad I embarked on this journey!

Project Life – Week 11

| cristina

Well, well, I cannot believe how fast I put Week 11 together! I got it done this week in scraps of time, and I am quite pleased with how it turned out! Now I just need to do Week 12 (last week) and the current week to be all caught up. 🙂

I do have a reason for not working harder on catching up, though. I signed up for a 3-week art class (that started in Week 11), and I’m having so much fun with it that it’s hard to find time for everything! Add to that the fact that I was out of town last week (Week 12), and I am majorly behind with my crafty projects. But it’s all good! 🙂 Anyway, here’s the workshop I’m taking:

I am absolutely loving it! I am totally, completely new to all of these techniques, but it’s so much fun to try! I know I never would have tried these things out if it weren’t for the class. During the first week, I did my very first experiment with watercolors, and made these darling cupcakes:

I used this as a card for my mom’s birthday! I couldn’t believe I made it! 🙂 DH even paid me a huge compliment (very unlike him!), saying that I should sell these! 🙂
Then last night I added paint and modeling paste to the mix, and I made this:

Isn’t it just adorable?? But let’s back to my Project Life. 🙂 Here’s Week 11!

Project Life - Week 11

I kept things really easy this week, using only paper supplies (the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan line). Here is a closer look at the two pages.

Project Life - Week 11

DH was out of town most of the week, but he was sweet enough to email me several pictures while he was away, so I included them in the album (I’m happy to report that I’ve made him addicted to instagram too! ;)).

Project Life - Week 11

I have not started working on Week 12 yet, but I plan to keep things super simple for that week too, so I hope to have something to share over the weekend.

Supplies:
Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection
See and Stamp alpha stamps
Washi tape
Smash date stamp K&C company