Watercolor -- Hello Spring.....

I am sharing a sweet Spring card with an adorable bunny stamp, given to me last year by a good friend.  (Thanks, Gwen <3 ).  I don't think any of us want critters gardening in our plot.....or worse, harvesting!!  That's for us to enjoy.  But I do love them on cards.  :)

This is one of my first attempts at watercoloring an image stamped on watercolor paper and embossed..  I am pretty pleased with my beginning effort.  I used Crayola watercolor pencils and a Zig Brush H2O water brush.  It was really fun....and not as hard as I thought it would be!!  I liked being able to splash a little brown "dirt" on to the overalls of the bunnies by brushing over the brown pencil and applying over the blue.  The lovely flowers are from Prima. The blue patterned paper and the cardstock are DCWV that I have had forever.  This was a good excuse to use my stash.  Yay!!

Thanks for stopping in and I would love for you to become a follower (see sidebar).  I love comments, too!!  :)   Hope your spring weather is lovely!!

<3
Janis

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
1.  Red Rubber Inspirationals #114 Spring  
2.  Pumpkin Spice Challenge #66 - Ducks or Bunnies 
3.  Use Your Stuff Challenge #130 -Spring
4.  Hobby Cutz Challenge #42 - Flora and Fauna 
5.  The Squirrel and the Fox Challenge #67 - All Creatures Great and Small

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CAT STATUS UPDATE:

Old, wily Chaienne (Shy-Cat)

Spring is surely in the air.  Even old Chaienne (Shy-Cat) wants to go out for awhile at night now.  I don't mind her going out for a short time, but I hate for her old bones to be subjected very long to our cool night temps.  Last night, though, she asked to go out just as I was going to bed and I forgot to ask hubby to let her back in before he came to bed.  So she was out all night.  She was fine, of course......probably found a nice warm spot under the house or in one of the many padded cat nest boxes we have in the back porch area.  She was glad to come back in this morning, though.
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Baby Girl Card (and gift) for a Friend -- Watercolor on Vellum

Hello, Friends....

Thank you to everyone who has visited my blog yesterday and today.  I really appreciate it!!  This is all so very new to me.  I appreciate each one of the kind comments.  I am also full of questions, so I might be contacting some of the bloggers who have been sweet enough to stop by!

Tonight I finished up a baby girl gift and made a card for an expectant mommy.  I went with very delicate colors and so, of course, it doesn't photograph well.  But this is part of my learning curve!!!  Here's the card I made:

I dug out an ancient set of Inkadinkadoo Dreamsicle stamps that have been in my stash for years and I had never used!!! 


 

With these precious images, I had the idea of stamping them on vellum and heat embossing with white embossing powder.  I wanted soft colors so I pulled out my cheapo plastic palette and used Gelatos of the desired hues.  I scribbled the Gelatos in individual wells and misted a bit of water in the larger center well of the palette to wet my brush.

I turned my embossed piece of vellum over and painted the backside of it so the colors showing through the front would be subtle and dreamy.  These are the Gelato colors I used:  skin - peach,  wings - a very pale wash of Earl Grey, large rose in hair and some of smaller flowers - bubble gum.  For the other parts I painted, I actually used some inexpensive children's watercolors we've had around since the kids were small!  I guess this was my project to employ some really old supplies.  :)

I love how delicate the colors turned out!!!  I traced the inner circle of a 4" round doily on vellum (Corrie, I am finding these doilies indispensable!!)  and cut it out so it would fit inside the doily frame.  With the heat embossing and the watercoloring, the vellum wasn't lying as flat as I wished, so I got out my Xyron 3" Sticker Maker that I won from Xyron.  THANK YOU!!!   It was a breeze to turn my vellum image into a sticker that would adhere smoothly to the doily.  You can see that it still buckles a bit, but I am satisfied with it. 

I mounted my doily frame and image on some DCWV Butterfly Garden patterned cardstock (that I had pre-folded and edged with some scallop scissors) with TomBow Aqua Mono Liquid Glue.  I like this clear glue for items that are lacy or lattice-like.  It dries clear and doesn't stay sticky in between the narrow parts of the doily design.  

Next, I wanted the wings to shine and sparkle a little more, so on the mounted image I colored them in between the lines of embossing with my Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust Clear pen.  It gave just the right amount of sparkliness.  I don't know if you can see it in this angled picture or not.

Next I added the pink bow at the top upper left, but wanted a little something at the lower right for balance.  I didn't want something very big or conspicuous that would overwhelm the softly colored image, so I opted for one of the lovely Prima Fabric Fancies opal flowers that Sabrina Alery sent me as part of a humongous prize.  (THANKS, Sabrina!  I have reached for these flowers over and over!!!)  I wanted something special for the flower center, so I dug out some absolutely gorgeous pearlescent Mill Hill glass seed beads I had found at a thrift store.

I put a couple of Micro sized Glue Dots side by side, overlapping slightly, in the center of the flower and carefully opened the bead package without sending them flying all over (this time).  The package actually says to "Please open carefully"!  :)  I placed one bead in the very middle and clustered the others around it with the holes showing like stamens....sort of.  (Ha!  My old biology prof would remind me that what they really look like are the disk flowers in the middle of a composite flower.  And he would be right!!)




I think that about covers it.  I love how this turned out.  I am delighted with the very delicate colors that painting on the back side of the vellum gave me.

Would you like to see what I made for the baby, too?????

A set of three flannel receiving blankets:

Isn't that ladybug flannel the cutest????  Love it.  I also really love that crazy-bright tie-dye one in the middle. I am wild about all the gorgeous flannel prints I can find at JoAnn's for making receiving blankets.  This has become my baby gift of choice for all my young friends when they are expecting.  All I do is buy a yard each of three patterns of coordinating flannel, pre-shrink it, cut the edges even, and finish the edges.  The way I finish the edges is to zig-zag around the entire blanket, then fold under and straight-stitch all sides, then fold under once again and straight-stitch all sides.  For extra insurance, I apply Fray-Check to the corners to make sure the stitching doesn't give way there.  Tie it with a coordinating bow.  All done.  :)

Wow.....this was a LONG post!!  Congratulations if you made it all the way through!

Thanks for stopping by.  I would love to hear what you think about my projects and would appreciate any helpful hints!!!

<3
Janis