Watercolor winter wonderland

A quick post only to share a few recent designs for my Christmas cards being sold at

AllSorts Gallery.

White backgrounds weren't actually an intentional theme, which is kind of funny because I normally don't leave such empty spaces. I find it refreshing though:)



Click your heels..

I've been trying to get my etsy art/print shop open again since being on vacation and I've been working on some new originals. So far though the gallery has been getting them all because it's a busy time of year and they're selling fast, but I'm hoping to have a few for my etsy shop soon too.        

Today I was missing Kansas a little so I painted this one. It's pretty tiny, only 4.5cm X 4.5cm, I blew it up slightly so that you could actually see it. 
This will be in the gallery on Monday, along with a couple more. I'll be sure to have some prints made for my shop though, and some new originals!

Snowy Watercolours- A Simple Tutorial and a Memoir

It's getting awfully chilly around here, and although I haven't seen it myself yet, there are reports of the four letter word. SNOW!

I woke up to a thick layer of frost across our garden and felt that dreaded confirmation that winter is indeed on it's way. Autumn is my favorite season, and unfortunately it always feels so short, especially here in Ontario. If I had my way, I'd still be raking and rolling in leaves in December.

I remember back in southern Illinois when I was little, we went Christmas carolling just the night after we filled our ditches with freshly raked leaves and set them ablaze. Of course, we rolled around in them all afternoon before they were lit. (oh how i love that smell!) And being small, of course, It was easy to bury myself from head to toe.

And then we moved to Canada, to a townhouse with one pathetic freshly planted little maple tree.

My sister and I would wait anxiously for those spindly little leaves to finally drop. We'd make a little pile and attempt to jump in them, but who were we kidding?

If we had actually allowed ourselves to fall freely into this poor excuse of a pile, we would have broken our necks!

And to make matters worse, we usually didn't get a chance to make the pile before the condo maintenance men would come around with leaf blowers and blow what little hope we had right out into the street. (I hate leaf blowers, by the way. They're loud, and pointless! A vacuum would make more sense!)

It wasn't all bad though. We were opening a church that had a lot of property, and a lot of trees. We'd spend many weekends there while my parents were fixing up the building, and we had a lot of opportunity to make use of the leaves there.

 A bit later, we'd move into a house with a massive yard that had a huge maple, and plant even more. Autumn was never boring!

And one thing that Ontario did have that we'd never seen before was more snow than we knew what to do with. We would spend entire afternoons hollowing out the piles that the snow plows had left in our front yard, making forts, caves and tunnels.

For the record, (in case you were wondering,)  I recently walked by the old town house, around this time last year. That itty bitty maple now towers over the house, and then some, and has more than it's fair share of leaves. I hope there are children living there and loving that tree.

********************************************************************************

 I was just going to post a fun little beginner watercolor tutorial in theme with today's snow, but it turned into a story. So we'll call this part 2!

This is a fun little beginner lesson with masking fluid. It's pretty fast, and doesn't require a lot of skill-making it fun to do with children too!

 

 LE COURS D'INSTRUCTION

(the tutorial. I think?)

You will need:

I promise that i didn't steal this tray from Ikea. My friend Pleuntje gave it to me as a gift because she knows I'm obsessed with the place.

I can't guarantee though that she didn't steal it. (However, I'm fairly certain that she bought it, as ikea was selling them for a little while;)

A pencil

An Eraser

Paper

something thick weighted, preferably watercolor paper. I have done this with Bristol board though a couple of times back in an art class. It ends up looking a little different because it doesn't hold the paint the same, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if that's all you had;)

Paint brushes

some that you like, and some that are junky, that you don't mind possibly ruining. Dollar store ones will do! Even a Popsicle stick could work, with some determination and a bit of patience.

Masking Fluid

This is available at most art stores, and I've even seen it at Michael's, Joannes, and hobby lobby. So it isn't super hard to come by. Look for it with the watercolor paints.

Watercolor paints

even the cheap stuff will do for this project-of course quality watercolor paints are more rewarding. If you're doing this with kids, use the cheap stuff.

An old Toothbrush for "splattering" (optional.)

The first step is to draw out your large snowflakes. (There's no rule that you have to do snowflakes. If you want, do something else that's white. Like sheep, or stars!!)

I don't have a picture of my snowflakes at this point because I'm a bad teacher.

But basically, I drew out 4 snowflakes across the paper.

 If you wanted you could make paper snowflakes with scissors, and then trace those-and the little detailed cut outs in the centre as well!

Next, take the masking fluid. It smells like dead fish, I know. But it's worth it.

This is where you want to use brushes that you DO NOT CARE ABOUT. Masking fluid is weird stuff, it's a liquid rubber. It is possible to get the brushes clean later by using warm water and soap, but I wouldn't go using any kolinsky sable brushes with this stuff.

Fill in every space that you want to remain white (so, all the "snow") Be sure to leave small detail in your snow flakes blank if you want the watercolor background to show through later. Don't worry about the blue of the masking fluid, we'll remove it eventually.

Make sure that everything is covered with the masking fluid. You may have to look over it and spot touch anything that didn't get coated. It won't be perfectly even, some spots will be thicker. It doesn't really matter, so long as it's covered.

Now, if you like, you can use an old stiff bristled tooth brush to make some extra tiny white sprays around the snowflakes. Just dip the bristles into the masking fluid, and run you thumb quickly over the bristles, over the paper. Of course, you could do this manually with a tiny brush, if you're really bored.

Now for the fun part!

Completely coat your paper in whatever colours you like. (Yes, you can use your nice brushes now.) 

Experiment with different shades,  and blend away. You can make it as dark as you like, or light if you prefer. You don't have to be careful at all to "color in the lines" as the masking fluid is doing all the work for you. You can paint right over it if you like.

Once you're finished, do whatever touch ups you like, a second coat, some different colors, anything. But then let it dry completely. I know, it's hard to be patient, but you really don't want to do the next step until it's fully dry, or it will ruin your work, and your life.

(no, not really, Just your work. AND it will make you sad. I don't want you to be sad!)

l e t      i t      d r y !

Ok, now that it's dry, this is the really really fun part. Remember when you were little and your great aunt had peely wall paper that you were just dying to pick at? Now you have the opportunity to make up for lost time.

With your finger (not your fingernail, but your actual finger) start rubbing the edges of the masking fluid. (you can use an eraser too, if you like.)

It will start to roll back and ball up into stringy little rolls of rubbery fun.

Once you have a decent little edge pulled back, you can start to peel it off.

Peel off the rubber from all your snowflakes.

Next, get out an eraser, and begin to erase the little spray dots that you made with the tooth brush. You could do these all with your finger if you're a real glutton for punishment.

Also, now you can erase any pencil lines that might have been hiding under the masking fluid.

If there are any white spots that you didn't intend to be left white, you could touch them up now with a bit more paint.

And now you're finished! This would make a cute Christmas card, don't you think?

Pretty Maids All in a Row... a Flower Tutorial

We used these watercolor flowers for our wedding, just to have some extras to decorate our tables and the window sills in the old barn where we held our reception.

Not only are they super easy, they're also really cheap to make! We only had to buy real flowers for bouquets. ( but you could use these for bouquets, really, if you wanted to!)

In bunches, they look like they were taken right out of one of Monet's paintings!

Grab your bridesmaids, and have a flower making party!

Materials:

Circular Coffee filters (3-6 per flower, the more filters, the fuller the flower)

Scissors

Staples/Stapler

Florist Tape

Florist Wire/Stems

Tubed watercolor paints or Food coloring

Spray Bottle

Clothes Line and Clothes Pins

Fold the filters in half and flatten out the "waves".

Cut Petals out of the wavy part, down to the flat bottom. You can cut a little deeper down if you like

but just be sure that you leave some form of a base.

If you cut the petals sort of long and skinny with pointy ends, they end up looking more like peonies.

If you cut them more curvy with a slight point, they end up looking more like a tea-cup rose!

Play around with it, there really isn't a right or wrong way. It just depends on the look you are going for.

You can cut a stack of 3 at a time no problem. I've done 6 which was a little tricky, but doable.

Separate the layers, and pull the centres down into a point, and gently fold the petals up.

 You can use the end of a pencil or a chopstick to do this if you want but it's really pretty simple. You don't need it to be a perfect uniform shape.

Take the first bunched up layer, and place it into the centre of the second layer. Again, fold up the petals of the second layer. Make sure that you're pinching both layers from the bottom.

Repeat, until you have as many layers as you like and the flowers are as full as you want them to be.

I sort of take the layers apart several times, turn them around etc to get the shape I want. (If I have time to be choosy!)

This step is one that I added after making a lot of these flowers and having a hard time relying florist's tape alone to hold them together. After adding the staple, they hold together so much better, both while coloring them and while using them to decorate.

Holding the bottom of the flower and pinching all layers, staple the layers together. Make sure the staple is vertical, in the direction that a natural stem would be. If it's horizontal you'll run into some problems later when we go to put them on the stems. Also be sure that you get the staple through each layer.

You can either color your flowers now (before putting the stems on) or after. I've done it both ways, and both ways work. If you want to color them first, the directions are below.

To add the stems, take the bottom of the flower and line up the staple with the stem. You'll want about an inch of stem in the flower itself.

Pinch the base of the flower around the stem. You will need to *ever-so-slightly* fold the entire flower around the wire as you do this. Once it's taped it will fall back to it's original shape.

Tape the flower by folding it around so that it just overlaps itself. Go around several times before moving down the stem. Make sure to go down the stem about an inch to be sure it's secure.

To colour your flowers, you'll need the spray bottle, and liquid watercolour paints.

This is doable with food coloring, although the color isn't quite as rich, unless you're

doing a darker color like red.

For the pink ones, I used a mixture of permanent rose and cadmium Red. For the yellow flowers I used yellow ochre and cadmium yellow, with a touch of burnt umber.

If you want, play around with colors first on paper (scraps of the coffee filters would work!) and see what you get.

Once you get your colors mixed the way you like them, add them to the bottom of your spray bottle, and dilute them with water. (You'll need about 1 cup of water for 60 flowers...so easy does it. No need to go overboard.)

Test your spray paint on some scraps and see if you need to add more paint to the water. If you like, add a touch of scent or essential oil to the paint if you want scented flowers.

Put on an old t-shirt for this part. You're bound to get a little bit of paint on yourself with this part.

Take your flowers and your spray paint outside. (make sure it's not going to rain, as you'll need some time for these to dry. They dry really quickly in the sun.)

Hold your flower an arms length away and spray the flower from the centre, working your way out. Some of the paint will cause the petals to stick together a bit. Just separate them with your fingers and be sure to get the paint right down to the centre of the flower.

If you've already put on the stems, just fold the stems over the clothesline and let them hang upside down.

If you haven't put the stems on, Just pin them by the base (on the staple) so that they're facing down.

The reason you want them facing down, is because the paint will run to the edges of the paper, making them look all that more real once they're dried. It's really noticeable in the darker colors like pink and red. (see the pink flower below?)

They only take about an hour to dry on a sunny day. Make sure they're completely dry before putting the stems on, if you haven't already.

Voila! Pretty, Affordable, and they never wilt! Either save them for later use, or send them home with you guests:)