Water color sketches

July is World Water Color Month. I had some time yesterday and today to make some small water colored sketches. I am taking time, with my water color sketches to work on my lettering. I think I am starting to see a little improvement, but I still have a long way to go. 

Rescued mono print and butterfly birthday card

Today is the first day for the Linky Party for The Pittmans. 

Polka Dot Orchard encouraged us to link up new floral projects.

I made this birthday card. 

I thought I would show some photos showing the progression of this card.

 Only black and white cardstock used to make this card. 

I used ARTplorations Evolution stencil and ARTplorations Happy Flowers

with my gel plate.

I meant to take a photo of just the mono print, but when I finished the project, I realized that I must have missed it.  But you can get the idea looking at this first photo. I did two layers of printing I did the Evolution stencil first with greens, blue, white and black.  The second layer of printing I used yellow pink coral and lime green with the Happy Flowers stencil. I almost threw this print away because I wished that the flowers had come out better. But I decided to see if I could salvage it. I decided to stamp some flowers on it. I was thinking that the peachy coral flowers from the stencil would look like flowers further in the garden. I stamped STAMPlorations  Blooming Buds  I painted a thin layer of white acrylic paint on the flowers to give me a "new canvas" to water color on.

I used a retired STAMPlorations set called Mini Mixed Media Backgrounds. I masked the flowers and stamped the black polka dots and music notes at the top.

 My garden of course needed a butterfly I stamped STAMPlorations Blossom like a Butterfly stamp.
One of the butterflies that I stamped didn't come out very clearly. Since images like that usually get thrown away, I decided that was the one that would use. I wanted to "rescue" it.

 After I water colored it. I outlined with a black ink pen. You can see the difference it makes in this photo.

 I used a white gel pen to add the dots and highlights.  Then I cut the butterfly out, shaped it and gave it a new set of antennae with a super thin piece of black cardstock folded in half.

 Outlined with black ink pen.

 I stamped the scripture and added the butterfly. The card is an easel card with the "Happy Birthday" sentiment on the opened part. I punched out several circles with a circle punch. I layered them to make the "stopper" for the easel.

I hope you have been inspired by my project.

Petals for the Pittman's Fundraiser Linky Party is HERE.

I am also linking this to the STAMPlorations World Water Color Month Linky Party: HERE

Also linking to Daisy Chain Challenge # 32 Flowers

and

Creative Artiste  Challenge Blog #51 Always -Anything Mixed Media Goes

By the beach mixed media trio

This week's SCS Mix-ability challenge MIX337 is about beach life.

I made 3 projects; 2 mini cards and a regular sized card using mono prints that I made yesterday.
This is the first one I used. It was done with a stencil and bubble wrap.

I stamped this little girl image onto the mono print with black stazon. Several years ago my stamping friend Sabrina sent me a bunch of "vintage" looking stamps. This was one of them. I don't think I ever used this image before. Partly because I had a hard time getting her face to stamp "right" but I knew it wasn't going to matter here.

I painted the girl  and ocean with white acrylic paint

I added color back in with water colors and colored pencils.

I finished it off with a black ink pen and a white gel pen and a black mat.

Then I made a little boy mini card using an old SU set.

Last project  I used  what is probably my oldest SU stamp sets, an old Layers of Color stamp and a sentiment from Unity.

This mono print was done with an ARTplorations stencil called RAG RUG

Inspired card butterflies

On Splitcoaststampers, they have a challenge on Sundays called Featured Stamper. I don't usually play along. 1st reason is I don't do a lot of crafting on Sundays because of church and family time, 2nd reason is I don't do a lot of CASEing other stampers. But this week  the featured Stamper is my friend Lee Ann Barrett. So I had to play. HERE is the card in her gallery that inspired my project.
The colors, my favorite, butterflies, also a favorite and cheesecloth... well how could I not be inspired by this? Of course mine looks totally different. But I was inspired by hers. Here is mine.

Here is a close up of the butterfly

I used these 2 mono prints on my card

second waterfall album

The other day when I made prints I made enough that I could make a second waterfall album.
You can see my first waterfall album HERE.

I used STAMPlorations FAITH EXPRESSIONS  and ITS A GIRL THING- SUNSHINE

I water colored the little cross and I used markers on the little hearts and border.

I stamped the little hearts from Its a girl thing-sunshine. The music notes are from a retired set from STAMPlorations called mini mixed media backgrounds. 

The thing about mono printing, is there are no "mistakes". This was a scrap that I had on my desk and it had pretty colors. I added black and white layers on top and really liked how my piece of junk turned out.  I used ARTplorations stencil called RAG RUG

I used the music notes again and a border from Its a girl set

I used RAG RUG stencil here too.

I used STAMPlorations BUTTERFLY ROW and I used the little hearts from ANCHORED

I used RAG RUG on this too.

I really liked how this print turned out and decide to do minimal stamping on it. I just did the simple border from It's a girl thing-sunshine.

How fun is this stencil by ARTplorations called LUPINUS?

Also a touch of black with bubble wrap.

Because I water colored the little cross on my first page 

I am sharing this in the STAMPlorations

 JULY WORLD WATER COLOR MONTH LINKY PARTY.