Watercolor Bookmarks with OOAK Artisan Showcase!

Hello everyone, I have two water colored bookmarks to share with you today for OOAK Artisan Showcase!  These bookmarks feature stamps from Whipper Snapper Designs, Inc.

I created these bookmarks on Prima Water color paper that comes in a 3 x 625 inch pad.  This is a great size for bookmarks.  My daughter, who is an avid reader, says the wider bookmarks are better than the longer, skinnier ones because they stick out from the book farther and get bent!  I didn't even think of that, what a happy accident :)

I painted these cute images using my Prima water color pencils, and used my Winsor & Newton Cotman water colors to do the skies.

These little mice are so cute, the pair of grey mice are called Yin & Yang.

And this little brown mouse is called Daisy.

If you have come from the OOAK Artisan Showcase blog, you know that I promised that I had an idea lol.  My thought is this...I have a whole pad of this bookmark size watercolor paper and I have only used four sheets so far.  IF you are an avid reader, and IF you would like to have one of my bookmarks...I will work on completing the entire pad of bookmarks.  

Every time you see a new bookmark on my blog you can comment and let me know that you would like to have one :)  If there are more than one of you I will use Random.org to decide and then I'll contact you for your address and send it to you!  Do you like that idea?

This will be open worldwide, so don't be shy!

Thank you for visiting my blog today and I hope to see you again soon :)  And, btw, there is one of these bookmarks available for someone who would like to have it!  So leave me a comment and let me know you would love it and I'll send it out to someone soon!

Watercolor Wild Rose Pair with Sweet Stamps LLC

For my Sweet Stamps inspiration this week, I created another watercolor card, this time mixing colors from my Cotman watercolor paints.  I used the beautiful Wild Rose Pair 7037 rubber stamp from Sweet Stamps, and paired it with a sweet sentiment from the Framed Handwritten Words Stamp set SS4406.

I love how this card turned out.  I mixed all my colors for this card to create the purples and the earthy greens.  I purchased only three colors of the Windsor & Newton Cotman Series 1 watercolor paints, so to get the colors I wanted, I had to take a risk and mix, lol.

I even used a different tool this time, and masked off the flowers with masking fluid before creating the background with a wash of blue.  That stuff is super cool!

I love these Wild Rose stamps, and I have a couple more I'll be using in the near future :)

Lesson learned this project?  Hmmmmmm, I'm having trouble with that one right now.  Except maybe my lesson learned this week was the use of masking fluid and mixing colors.  Although I've been around colors my whole life (HA!) I think I need to learn how to mix brighter colors.  This purple turned out to be very muted.

Stay tuned next week, for more watercolor inspiration for Sweet Stamps and more lessons learned lol.  Come and join us on the Sweet Stamps blog for our two monthly challenges :)

Watercolor Trees with Sweet Stamps LLC

Hello everyone, it's challenge time over at the Sweet Stamps Blog!  And, yes, I have continued my watercolor theme for the month, and created this card using  the  Tree #1 stamp from Sweet Stamps and my Shades Dye Ink to watercolor the trees :)

I stamped the trees three times, and I didn't bother to mask them because I knew the overlapping wouldn't be seen through the color.  I used Shades Dye Ink in Tank, Palm Grove, Duchess Rose and French Roast to create the greenerie on the trees, alternating between colors and layers to create shadows and depth.  Then I used French Roast and Brownie to create the tree trunks.  The ground was created using Palm Grove and Tank, and for the sky I had to break out my Cotman watercolors as I don't have a good Shades Dye Ink in Blue yet ;)  The sentiment is from the Framed Handwritten Words stamp set SS4406.

I will confess, lol, I created this card, and the next couple of cards all at the same time.  As I've mentioned before, the drying time between layers of watercolors can be tedious, so why not create more than one at a time?

And yes, I am just learning to paint with watercolor, and although I am thoroughly enjoying the journey, there are lessons to be learned with every venture.  Here are my lessons this week.  Don't create muddy colors :P  Some colors when you put them close together or on top of each other, create a color that closely resembles mud, hence the brownish trees, lol.  Try as I might to change them back to green again, it wasn't happening, lol,  Lesson learned.  Another lesson?  Sometimes Dye inks are not the best to watercolor with lol.  They are not as transparent as real watercolor paint, so they don't layer the same.  And your finished piece may not have the effect that you were hoping for.  Lesson learned , again, lol.

All in all, after I completed this piece, I came to realize that it is what it is, and I enjoyed the journey, so why not enjoy the finished product?  Everyone else seems to enjoy the outcome of this card, so why shouldn't I?  I will try not to be my worst critic any more, ya right...but I can try lol.

Next week, another watercolor card, with a different watercolor medium.  But in the meantime, why not come and join us on the Sweet Stamps blog for one of our monthly challenges?  This week the theme is Anything Goes!  Doesn't that just open up a whole realm of possibilities :)

Watercolor Poppies with Sweet Stamps LLC

Hello everyone, I hope your March is great and snow starts to melt :)  For Sweet Stamps, I have started this month with watercolor, and I think I may just continue that theme throughout the month.  I am learning how to watercolor, and I'm really enjoying it.  I have been an acrylic painter for years, so I'm no stranger to a brush, but it is a task to learn a new medium.  I find myself attempting to make acrylic rules  work for watercolor lol, and that's not how it's supposed to be done, lol.

For this project, I made two cards, essentially identical, except for the colors.

I stamped the image using Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Antique Linen, so the lines were barely visible.  Then I painted them with my Cotman watercolors.  The background is dry embossed using my Cuttlebug.  The floral image is Poppies ATC 1007 by Sweet Stamps, and the sentiment is Beautiful Day 919 from Sweet Stamps.

This image is so versatile, and poppies come in all kinds of colors, not just the red that we see all the time, and associate with poppies :)  So why  not go out of my comfort zone and try a blue one too?

There are two lessons I learned while creating these cards: one is that when painting watercolor images, there is a lot of waiting time, so creating more than one card at a time is very beneficial, and efficient!  The second lesson is that I should have painted a background before starting to paint the focal image.  After the image was painted, I decided I wanted a background, but was worried about ruining the flowers that I had already painted.  Lessons learned lol.

Come back and visit often for more Sweet Stamps inspiration, and you can visit the Sweet Stamps blog for tons more inspiration from the rest of the talented design team!  Visit the shop for tons of great stamps and other papercrafting tools and stamps :)