Watercolour painting - windmill

Another hour's paint along session with Matthew Palmer on the Craft Store this week - a windmill.    Quite pleased with it - albeit the sails are a bit wonky!     They were ok until I decided they needed to be a bit longer - and the dodgy eyesight didn't quite line up the lines - lol!

Another Paint-along with Matthew lesson

This week's lesson on The Craft Store was a countryside scene with a path and poppy fields.  Not my best effort - but in my defence I couldn't find the paint-along kit I had purchased for the lesson -  I am sure in a safe place, but so safe I can't find it  (I know I ordered it, now I am wondering it it got lost in the post!)  ...
... so I had to improvise with the watercolour paints I had - and I didn't have the right blue or and orange!   Fortunately I had the right watercolour paper in my stash!

Painting: Subset and boat

This was the last in this little series of paint alongs with Matthew Palmer.   Not sure I am really happy with it, but loads of friends like it.

Painting: Cottage

 Another Matthew Palmer paint along from last night.  This was slightly more taxing for my eyesight, but pretty pleased with the result.   I might try and paint it again on a larger scale.

I actually painted along in real time, rather than watching the lesson on Rewind, so that I could paint at my own pace.

Painting: Inspired by Harlech Castle

I caught up with the Matthew Palmer's "Paint along" the other day, and this is what I produced.   The painted using just three colours - blue orange and red.   The size is 5.1/2 inches x 3.1/2 inches.  So quite small.  I think it is sometimes more difficult to paint small pictures than larger ones,  particularly with my dodgy eyesight - but I do have a nice new daylight lamp that shines directly over my work on my desk!.  Anyway I am quite pleased with it.   

I will own up that there was a slight "hiccup", when I removed the masking tape from under the mountains, which took off part of the paper, but as we then had to "rough" up the sea with a craft knife at the end of the painting to give the impression of surf - it actually did me a favour! - lol!

All my readers will know that I have always said that I can't paint or draw, and I had to chuckle at a pal's comments on this picture "I know you say you can't paint and draw, but just think what you could achieve if you could paint and draw!"    I did reply that it was all down to the great instructions by the teachers, but left to my own devices, I doubt that I would produce anything without guidance!

A few Christmas Cards 4

And finally, the last few ..... I shared some that I had done with these two images in aperture cards (and I made a lot of those), but I also did a few using the image on DL cards, and adding some glitter, as well as altering the shape of the image in Craft Artist, and putting the image on square 6" cards.  (yes did a few of those too! and yes - they are all signed!)

I will persevere with stamping and colouring if the dodgy eyes will allow ..... It is just so frustrating - I can paint a watercolour, but can't watercolour an image.   I shall just have to learn to do more watercolour painting, and import them into Craft Artist.   At least there will be an excuse for digital crafting if I use an original painting by me!  

Watercolour Birthday Card

A simple watercolour birthday card today.   I stamped the boat (from crafts-too) which comes with two parts the background and the detail.  I then masked it, and did a quick watercolour , and then mounted it on a card.  (The actual painting is 5" x 5").

Wedding Anniversary Card - Ginkgo

Another of my oops I nearly forgot cards for this weekend.    I have this stamp and die, which I bought by mistake - I thought I was ordered a poppy - duh - that's the problem when two things are the same item!   Anyway I thought I might as well use it, and it was the right size for this card blank.

Once again stamped with clear embossing ink and embossed with a red mix WOW embossing powder, and then water coloured with green.   The sentiment was created in Craft Artist and backed with some red Joanna Sheen faux pour card,which was the exact match for the stamped and painted image.

I tweaked the painting on this image that I shared the other day.   I wanted to make a card from it, but the handmade rag paper was A5 size and I didn't want to trim the natural edge to it, so I had to create an A4 card.   Thank goodness for washi tape!.  It worked to join the two bits of cardstock and I used some more to create a frame around the front of the card.

(In hindsight, I think I have some A3 card somewhere, but I will blame it on the heat this week that I didn't even think of that!  Added to which I have been suffering from a very painful back following a collision with a wall in the house, where the wall won!)

I didn't add any sentiment to the card, so it could be mounted in a frame later.

Mixed Media canvas

Another little play - using up some of my ~MDF stash.  I think this kit was from SamanthaK crafts - to be honest I have had some of my stash for so long I forget where I bought it - but I think this was Sam's that I bought at Farnborough.

I painted the background with water colours, in an attempt to create a countryside scene with sky, sunshine, fields and flowers.

The MDF pieces were painted with acrylic paints

Water Colour Birthday Card

Following on from my attempt at some water colouring - I decided to have another go on a smaller scale, and turned it into a birthday card for my sister in law.

I kept to a similar design, as I knew that worked.   I must try and get a bit more adventurous now.

I need more practice!

stamped image

I decided to have a little practice with some Inktense pencils and do some water colouring - the demonstrator made it looks so easy!

I have an Alphabet colouring book, and had the idea of colouring some of the pages and framing them for my grandchildren for Christmas.

I was good and tried out the technique on a couple of stamped images first (one shown above) and it seemed to go fairly well, so I attempted one of the pages  (good job there is more than copy of each letter).  All was going fairly well, until I managed to get some "paint" on my hand and smudged a bit in the white area - OK, I do have a special water colour eraser, and got rid of most of it - but I know it is there!   I am also not happy with the black on the Toucan; it really did not go right (Perhaps the special eraser will come to my rescue)- so looks as though it is back to the drawing board as they say.  I shall play safe and photocopy the remaining image (you are allowed to do that - and can reduce the size etc if you require)  - at least I shall still have a good image to copy again if I mess the next attempt up!

Alphabet Page

Well if I mess the next water colour attempt up - I may have to swap to alcohol marker pens!   At least I am brave enough to share my "failures" with you!