Watercolour powders and oxide butterflies

I have a card to share today over on the Country View Project Blog, in fact I did two very similar ones where I've matched up some left over watercolor powder backgrounds with stamped butterflies using the wonderful oxides again.

So I would love to see you over at CVC if you can make it.

Thanks for stopping by.

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

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

Adding texture at CVC

This is my second sample for the texture challenge at Country View Crafts and  I have two more Christmas baubles for you today that fit with the two I showed at the beginning of the month (see that post here).

The texture was laid down as the previous two were with gesso and texture paste but I had fun playing with different media and colours on these two.

You may remember 

I started by covering all four with gesso and to start the texturing whilst they were still wet I pushed some of them down on the craft mat so that the gesso texturised when I pulled the bauble away.

The second layer of texture is created with texture paste through a stencil and letting it dry.

This first bauble has Tim's snowflake stencil added to it with grey and prussian blue brushos and a little decoart silver acrylic paint to create the base layer. Over that I spritzed water and 'painted' in some of the blue around the snowflakes so that the colour collected in the gaps. 

When dry I gessoed over the snowflakes and also dripped some walnut crystal ink in the gaps to achieve this mixed media background before lightly and very gently applying ultra matte varnish and letting it dry. To finish I laid the stencil back over, gessoed again and when dry painted glue over the snowflakes and sprinkled on crystal glamour dust.

For this next experiment I wanted to try sprays on the background and I wanted the poinsettia to look fairly realistic but still be vintagey. 

So I began by squeezing some decoart cadmium red hue, transparent red iron oxide and prussian blue on my mat in tiny, tiny amounts. Placing the stencil back over the flowers and using a sponge I daubed on the cadmium randomly trying to keep to just the petals, I mixed in a tiny amount of the blue and sponged some shadows and the centres and them mixed a tiny bit with the red iron oxide and sponged a few places to create more texture and colour variation. I then sprayed fired brick distress spray stain, misted it with water and let it run off the sides. It created a few lighter areas so I sprayed antique linen over again spritzed a little water and heat dried. Mmmm I really quite like the effects and you can see the textured gesso. 

I finished by painting the dots gold and the leaves green and edging the bauble with potting soil archival ink.

I hope you've liked the series of baubles and you can see from 1 to 4 how my choices of colour, media and layers improved - well I think they have....

Having finished the texture posts I think I maybe back before I publish this one .... I have an idea.

Yep I'm back. I decided to add some embellishing to brighten up the baubles. 

Tim Holtz greenery and poinsettia, sparkly berries, moss, dried flowers and decoart snowtex.

Thanks for stopping by today. Do pop over to Country View Challenges to see lots of inspiration from the team and hopefully you will find inspiration for your next project.

hugs Brenda xxx

A Visual Journey #35

A season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Continuing some experimentation with brusho crystal colours I have another autumnal double page in my Visual Journal using Tim stamps.

Both the background and the stamped papers were made using the powder spritzed with water technique and the wrinkle free technique together layering and blending colours and heat drying in between each layer.

I love the intensity of the colours and although they fade a bit when heat drying they really do hold the vibrancy and depth of the pigment producing some stunning results.

What I have found though that too much water with the spritzing creates very diluted colour that I am not so keen on.

I was going to paint some of the areas of the stamping in with a waterbrush bit I think it might well have spoiled it so I resisted (I must be learning when to say enough is enough before overdoing it).

I put the pages together collage style ......

... adding printed autumnal sayings ....

 

... and creating a riot of colour that I love.

The leaves on the trees in the garden have just suddenly deepened and remind me of the tones on these pages.

Thanks for stopping and taking a peek at my ongoing visual journey.

hugs Brenda xxx

Add some texture for CVC

Today sees the start of a new challenge at Country View Challenges.

Here are some experiments using brusho powders and distress paints and I so love the artsy effects on these chipboard Christmas baubles. Altogether I have made four of these and am showing you the two smaller ones in detail today and the larger ones will be later in the month.

I started by covering all four with gesso and to start the texturing whilst they were still wet I pushed some of them down on the craft mat so that the gesso texturised when I pulled them off again.

The second layer of texture is created with texture paste through a stencil and letting it dry.

This was my first and the most simplest bauble using the brushos over both dry (merry) and wet (christmas) paste. Both worked so it's good to know you don't have to dry the paste before adding the colours.  Would you believe I used three different greens to get this mix? Olive, moss and lime. You'd think I'd used yellow and blue as well but it just shows how the powders burst into colour.

To distress and vintage the bauble a bit I blended leaf green, olive green and potting soil archival inks round the edges and then replaced the stencil over the words to allow me to rub treasure gold through it - oh no what a mess - in fact I was soooo disappointed in it I started to add black pen around the letters to highlight them which looked abominable ....... and I got so into the moment wondering how I could salvage it I forgot to take a photo - but here's take 2 after I painted some chalk paint (just 'cos it was sitting on my desk) and then some gesso over it and used the brushos all over again.

This time I replaced the stencil and daubed some decoart media metallic gold over it - phew what a difference .... thank goodness.

For this next bauble I painted the holly leaves with distress paints, heat dried them and then added some patina stickles to give them some glitz. I wanted to see how the brushos laid over distress paints so I mixed some very watery colours on my craft mat and dipped the bauble in several times, heat drying between each layer.

Then I repeated with the brushos and they laid over fine but the leaves were disappearing into the background and the colours were deeper than I wanted so the next step was to mix some watery picket fence distress paint on my mat and dip the bauble in and dry it. I repeated this a couple of times dabbing the leaves to keep as much of the paint off as possible. To bring the leaves back to life I painted on some more green brushos and green grass dylusions ink.

By the time I had sanded and edged the bauble with potting soil and added some stickle berries it now looked aged and vintagey. That's better!!!

I haven't used stickles in a long while and had forgotten how difficult they make the photography.

So this is the start of my textures and as I got further into experimenting with media and the stencilling I became even happier with my results, but you'll have to come back for the next installment to see what I mean.

I hope we will see you over at Country View Challenges. Thanks for stopping by today.

hugs Brenda xxx