Watercolor with markers Tutorial.

This tutorial is especially for Shanon and Brandy. I hope everyone enjoys it though.

Here's the tools I used.

• You can see I have a few brands of marker here. Any water based (dye ink) marker will work. I do not personally own any SU markers, but they are dye ink so they should work. (the stamp n write, not the journalers).
• The waterbrush is the good kind. You do NOT want to get the cheap 3 to a pack ones. DO NOT get that kind. If you do it will spill water all crazy and generally be p00p. The good ones cost 5-7 dollars. It's worth it. You CAN use just a paintbrush and water. Totally up to you.
• I also have watercolor paper here. You CAN use the Papertrey paper if you don't use a ton of water, that stuff can stand up to it, otherwise go ahead and get you some watercolor paper.
• There is also a plastic board. ANY nonporus thing will work, inkpad lids, underside of your plastic trimmer, wax coated paper plate, glass plate, your glasses on your face....
• I use versafine ink to watercolor. It's soooo black and stamps easily and is waterproof. You can use ANY waterproof ink, I believe the SU basic black works (don't have any myself) I know palette works, stazon works.
• Also you will need a stamp! Mine is Eat Cake Graphics.
  

On your plastic board scribble a bit of each color you plan to use. Can you see the first two smears, of yellow? The first is Impress marker and the second is Tombow. I have NO idea why the impress stays on the sheet like that while the tombow beads up, but they both work just fine.
Squeeze your waterbrush ONCE to get the water flowing. I personally then check it on the back of my left hand. You want it wet, but not dripping. If it's too wet you can dry it off some with a papertowel then just wiggle it on your hand to get it flowing (don't need to squeeze again usually). If it's too dry try to just flik the brush part a bit on your hand, but if that doesn't work you may need to squeeze again. These are quick light squeezes, you don't need to be squishing it or anything. (Too much water is the main problem people have).
Start to color your image. For her skirt I took the lighter yellow and colored the whole thing then went back with the darker yellow. They blend into each other nicely.
See this smudgeing where the pink from that under thing went into the yellow. That's called "leaching" and it happened because I didn't wait for the yellow to dry before painting the pink. I think it's OK because it's just a bit and watercolor is sorta like that, flowing and all. But if you are bothered by it wait for each color to totally dry before going in with another color.

And that's pretty much it. It's a way quick and simple coloring technique. I hope you enjoy doing it. You can also do the very same thing with a drop of reinker or even with ink from your ink pads that you smash into the lid.

Here's the finished card. It may be a bit crooked now that I look at it online, I'm looking in RL and it seems fine. I'm gonna make sure it's ok before sending it though. :)

just one tiny ATC

This is for Amy R's Amuse ACT swap. The stamps are A Muse (go figure) from the "Animal Wishes" set. I colored them with copic and prismacolor markers. It was fun, I actually made these with my kids AWAKE and up and it turned out ok, but I will stick to naptime stamping I think! hehe

Did you see my cool new Eat Cake Graphics icon? I had nothing to do with it! Holly gave me the graphic and Angie uploaded it to my blog. (She does all the cool stuff on my blog for me) Thanks!!!

Last night's cards.

I made cards last night! It was strange, I actually threw out a bunch. I was having a HARD TIME with my new Green Thumb set by Papertrey.
I finally did make this and like it ok. It's really simple stamping. I don't think I have anything to add. All stamps are papertrey. I did put glossy accents on the toe of the boots. The one boot is on pop dots. The dots on the scallop are tulip liquid beads.
This one is very simple. I just love this image, although this girl looks like she may have a bit of a 'tude. But she is barefooted so that makes up for it! I'm only teasing, she's a cutie. I colored with watercolor pencils. The card is watercolor paper from my stash from when I thought I was gonna be a painter. The "love you FOREVER" stamp is Papertrey and the girl/dog/cat stamp is Eat Cake Graphics.
Another simple one, this is also on the watercolor paper and used the watercolor pencils to color. I went over the ice cream with stickles so it's shiny and sparkly. (not that ice cream is glittery but it is fun anyhow) I LOVE this dog. I'm not sure I colored him right though. Maybe that ear should be black too? I think it's a Newfoundland dog and I only have one friend with one. Jennifer's dog is ALL black, which I have a hard time coloring.

This one I actually made during nap time yesterday. The main image is Eat Cake Graphics again, the "friends ALWAS" part and the black scallops on the border of the patern paper strip are Papertrey. I colored this with copic and prismacolor markers.

Here's a copic/prismacolor tip. Because you can layer and layer without tearing up your paper you can layer colors to get new ones. I do NOT have this shade of green. I have copic's "light olive" which is a good color, but a bit drab, and prismacolor's "apple green" which is BRIGHT. So for almost all my grass and leaves I layer the two! Also her hair is prismacolor's "yellowed orange", which is VERY BRIGHT ORANGE, then prismacolor's "goldenrod" layered over that. (I'm refering to the bottom pic)

Actually I'll share this too. The girl's hair in the bottom pic is way oranger than I usually do. I was watching Calliou. Do you watch that? My kids love it. So anyhow Calliou's teacher's hair is red. But it's orange in the drawing. Now I've never seen orange hair like that. Even that Carrottop guy's hair is not crayon orange. But in the cartoon it looks great. So that gave me the confidence to do orange hair. I like it.

Also I've been playing with my cat coloring, I'm looking at my kid's books for ideas. Because I hardly ever see solid colored cats either. (although two of mine are solid black, but again, I have problems coloring black animals and them not looking like blobs)

Ok, I'm sure no one is still reading, I'll stop. :)

More Eat Cake Graphics Design Team News...

OK, I'm not the only one on the new Eat Cake Graphics Design Team of course! I've been watching Colleen's blog for her to announce, I didn't want to steal her thunder in case someone read my blog and hers. So here it is:

Colleen is also on the team. Here's her blog link. Do look at the whole blog because she is super talented!

*I did make new cards yesterday, I'll post them today*

Cats in the Window

Finally I'm using the cat's in the window stamp as it's actually drawn. This is a very simple card. I stamped the window, drew the siding on the house, stamped the tree hill, then stamped the tall grass over and over until it filled the bottom. We have this next door neighbor who is a nice lady and loves cats, has several. She never ever mows her yard and it's all weeds. So this is a tribute to her. (And also I happen to have "tall grass" stamp, not "neatly mowed grass") I don't know what those cats are watching, but with that long grass it could be ANYTHING.
All stamps are Eat Cake Graphics. I colored with prismacolor and copic markers. I drew the house. This is the same window from those window cards I made. :)

Another Window Card

Last night at midnight it occured to me that this sleeping cat may like to sleep on my window. So you know what I had to do. Yup, get up and stamp him! This is that same window with the three cats peeking out that I have not used in it's normal form yet. I stamped the cat then made a mask of him by stamping him again on a post-it note and cutting it out.
Then I stamped the window overthe masked cat, using my stamp-a-majig for placement.
I wish I had taken a pic of it at that point because you could still see the peeking cats and it was funny.
I took my pen knife and cut away the inside part of the windows but just left this sleeping cat. (then went to bed, the rest was done this morning)
I colored the cat and window with copic markers then drew in the "wallpaper" lines and flowers. I chalked the wallpaper with yellow chalk.
(this is getting long, lemme speed things up)
cut down some plastic off packageing from who knows what and stuck it on the back as "glass"
Stamped the sun and chalked the blue.
Layered it all with foam tape for depth.
Mounted on black then folded white card.

It took almost as long to type as it did to do, it's really very easy, everyone should try.

(Someone should do one where you are looking out at a birthday party then trap confetti in there so it can be floating at the party. OH or a cupcake and floating sprinkles!!!)

All stamps are Eat Cake Graphics.

I took this pic out on the patio in the sun, do we like this better than with the two lights in my studio?

Oh and you can't ship cupcakes

At least I can't:

Tiffany took this pic when they arrived. :( She said they were tasty though. I am BUMMED. All future cupcake shipments are on hold until I can think of something more clever. At least she saw the "before" pics. See this post for before pics.Also I'm freaked out by how oily they apparently are, they don't taste oily like that. Tiff says it's over 100 degrees there so that's a factor, but it looks like they were just kicked to her house!

If anyone has successfully shipped cupcakes please let me know how.

Cupcake and Cat Attack.

Cupcakes are HOT right now! I actually thought I was being original when a few weeks back I started getting into them, but I was WRONG! I'm a day late AGAIN! heehee
This little girl is also late! Late for cupcakes. Poor thing. Don't you just want to give her one?
she's colored with prismacolor and copic markers. I outlined her with a very light gray marker. To get the extra super duper jumbo scalloped border I layered 4 mega scalloped squares. The rest is pretty simple. The girl and the phrase are two seperate stamps.

I stamped the window, actually it's this ADORABLE window with three cats looking out, I don't have a plain window (can you say next order?) so I stamped it with the cats then cut them out. I wanted it cut out anyhow so that worked fine. Then I did the grass and stuck that cat in the grass. I didn't mask or anything but I think it looks pretty ok even without. The idea of cutting tiny masks of those blades of grass was more than I could bare. I drew the siding lines on with a pen. Then I stamped the lady and cat inside. I used a stamp a majig to get it in the right spot to show through the window.
Here's a close up of the sneaky outside cat.
Inside view. I drew in the floor line, you know I'm a freak about that.

This ADORABLE stamp is what I started with, of course I'll have to makea card with it as is too!

In other mail I got all my cards back from Rubber Stamper! They didn't want them. :( It's alright, I can use them and send some to other magazines. *SIGH* :)

Time for some cake... Eat Cake that is!

Sorry these are a but blurry. I wanted to just get quick shots of them before I put them in the envelope to send to Holly!
This one uses all my favorites. I wanted to do a long card so I could so a lot of this scene. I colored with watercolor pencils. I think I may need the other stamps that do with these. See these and these. I think I may need ALL them! heehee
This is the same kid in a float as I used on the top card. I masked off his underwater parts on that one (cuz it's in the pool of course). This was fun to do. I colored his above the water parts with copic markers, the underwater I did with watercolor pencil then went over it all with the blue copic marker to give it a under the water look.

That's all for now!

More Cupcakes!

I love cupcakes.

Today I bought the adorable holder box, pink die stuff for the icing and a new tip for the piping bag that makes it have ridges. I'm a total dork so I decided to taste the straight die! Don't do that. Just trust me. Turns out a little goes a loooooooooong way. So having learned that by dieing my teeth and tounge BRIGHT pink I only put a touch of die in my batch of white icing and it was perfect bright fun pink. This cool box is awesome. I'm shipping these to a friend. I don't know how they will turn out after the PO gets a hold of them but I'll let you know.

Being silly and trying a different type of icing job.
Here's the card I made to go with them.
close up:

Truck and dogs are SU, (Loads of love and Loads of Love accessories) The cupcake is from a Michael's dollar stamp, I had to rip it off the block and cut off the "happy birthday" part but that's fine, now it's TWO stamps. I colored with copic and prismacolor markers. I drew in the motion lines on the truck wheels and the falling cupcakes. I also did up the envelope for fun. AND I put stickles on the flames and icing. Finally a bit of fun ribbon.

Still loving these single layer cards.

Still on cloud nine about Eat Cake.

It's an Eat Cake Day!

So of course you'll be seeing even more Eat Cake Graphics cards now. Course I'm such a stamp piggy I'll be using all sorts of stamps too.
This one is called "Pee Kid" and it's for my friend Shanon. She really likes potty humor. The inside says "...too late" heehee, as you can see by the pants, it IS too late. :( She has this new stamp that says, "never miss an opportunity to pee" and that made me think of this. I watercolored him. All the stamps are Eat Cake.
This was inspired by a card I saw on Split Coast Stampers. Here' the inspiration link. It's by Sweet Miss Daisy. I had to put a cat on my chair of course. I don't have a rug stamp either, I may need one, that's pretty cute. The cat is watercolored with pencils and the chair is paper pieced with My Mind's Eye patern paper (from Costco of course). I used maker on the feet of the chair. The chair and cat are Eat cake, the skinny oval is A Muse.
This is as simple as it gets, one stamp and then colored. I think it's cool though. That stamp cracks me up. It's also Eat Cake. I did draw in the floor line. I've done this lady a few times before thinking to make her a red hatter. I have a few friends who are red hatters, I think they may like this. (Not me of course, I'm young!)
This time I wanted to do a card with layers and ribbon and all. I really love the cats they have at Eat Cake. The cats are actually what originally attracted me. Doesn't this cat just look so demanding? I used watercolor pencil on it.
This is a hybred. I used the cat in float from The Cat's Pajamas and the pool and boy are Eat Cake. This one was for Brian for father's day. I made it but it's from Ethan. Stephen made his own this year and even said, "Happy Father's Day". :) I colored with watercolor pencil on this one too. Masked to get the cat in the pool.

Well that's all for now. I'm still on cloud nine about this design team business. I think I emailed Holly about a million times when she told me. If you were concerned I already discussed the lack of cupcakes, while there being a great number of adorable cupcake phrases. She's on top of that, expect cupcakes soon. YUMMY! Cuz you know I gots to make some cupcake cards. Did you know I don't have a single cupcake stamp? It's sad. Really sad. :(

Holy cow I'm excited!!!

Ok, if you know me you may know that I'm a FREAK for the stamps over at Eat Cake Graphics. Well guess what??? Ok first, Holly the owner, has new stamps out! They are under "newest stamps". They are adorable as usual. There are a bunch of cupcake phrases! But more exciting for me is that I just got an email from Holly and I'm on her new Design Team!!! I'm so happy I could just freak out. Ok, nevermind I totally am freaking out.

Here's some reasons I love her stamps:

• The boy kids all sorta look like my boys.
• You can build fun scenes with them.
• The cats are just adorable as are the doggies.
• The phrases are so funny and with a bunch of humor.
• They are very affordable and shipping is reasonable.
• Holly is a doll to work with.

So go on over and check them out right now! There is one of my cards in the gallery already along with some other awesome cards. Seems I'm not the only one inspired by these cute stamps.

Be sure to check out the Tips page as well because they are great and easy to master techniques! Really truly a lot of what I do I got from that tip section.

Ok I gotta go back to jumping around and telling all my friends! I even called Brian's mom just now! (she's a night owl)

Update to "companies I love to shop with"

I changed my "Shopping time" list a bit. I had companies that were super cute in there, but that I had never purchased from directly. I've changed it to only include my very favorite companies to purchase from. I will update it as I fall in love with more companies. (can already think of one I need to add) These companies have all given me great service. I highly recomend them for your shopping.

My LSS is on there, I know you all can't get to Jacksonville to shop there but guess what? They are happy to ship! So if you think they may have something you may need I'd drop them an email or phone call. (They have Copic markers for the great price of $3.99 a marker!)

cupcakes anyone?

I randomly decided to take up cupcake making! These are made from scratch and I even made the icing! I made it with whipping cream as I like that type and you know... baker's choice. I had fun with them. I think I want to do cookies too. I'm trying to learn more things from scratch. Especially with Teeny (Stpehen)'s peanut allery I want to be able to make plenty of good treats.

This top one is Spice Cake. I made the icing with the whipping cream and a bit of nutmeg.
This one (with the funy top) is a cookies and cream one. I LOVE how this one came out. It has sour cream and Oreos in the mix. Then for the icing it called for plain. BLAHH on plain, so I crushed up some more cookie for it. Now note to new icing makers: if you are piping icing on and want crushed cookies in it you MUST crush them TINY. I kept getting clogs where a cookie bit was too big. Just to let you know I'm a freak I would dig the cookie out with a toothpic and flick it back into the icing bowl! Duh! I had to do this with the same cookie bit several times before realising I was being an idiot. I tell you having babies took half my brian!

They came out yummy though. I sent tons to Brian's work. I want to be known as that wife who makes the great stuff. (I'm so vain.) I think cookies are next! :)

Sprinkles! (Cat's Pajamas)

OK, I know they are not truly new, but I somehow JUST discovered The Cat's Pajamas. I am in love! I had to order a few of their stamps right away. I may have to order more too! (Who am I kidding of course I'll order more) One cute thing is they put candy in your order! Adorable. They shipped super fast too. I ordered unmounted and they are really deeply etched red rubber. They stamp fantastic even with Sprinkles (that's the cat's name) being a solid image, she still stamps great.
These cards both use the cat stamp called "Relaxing". Also the "Hot stuff" stamp is seperate. I made the white one really simple. My good friend Sherri has been making these really cute simple cards and she inspired me. I put a bit of glitter (stickles) on the eyes and necklace. Then a bit of UTEE on the glass. It was neat, the UTEE didn't go on really even but it looks like drops of sweat on the glass, so I left it. I colored with prismacolor and copic markers. I was going to put ribbon down the fold side, but I felt it was complete without it.
This one was colored the same way with the glitter and all. I used the marvy mega circle on the image then the marvy giga scallop circle on the black. Then used tulip liquid pearls on the black part. I did the penwork on the edges of the paper with a normal black felt pen.

The ribbon is from Ribbons And Bows Oh My I got it in a share that my friend Kerry did. She does them awesome, I've never seen anyone do them as cheaply as her, she's not trying to make any money, just get TONS of ribbons for herself. (Not that other share girls are trying to make money, but I wonder if Kerry is loosing money, she does it sooo cheap). Anyhow I buy 10 yards of whatever she has to offer. She's never done me wrong. But I'm so freaked out! You remember me going on about ribbon that matched Cool Caribbean paper, I got 100 yards of it and loved it? Well in this set of ribbon Kerry had this blue and it's EVEN CLOSER in color! Mine is a bit darker. So I'm deciding if I need 100 yards of this color too, or if I should use the darker shade I have... I know it's a tough life when turquoise shades are a big issue for you. ;)

As far as my illness, the Dr's are not sure what's wrong but they gave me medicine, I have to take TONS for yesterday and today and it has me all jumpy like I imagine people on drugs feel. I just lay in bed till 6 am with my mind racing. I did think up a cupcake card in my head which I just may have to buy the stamps for. Anyhow tomorrow I get to start just taking 2 pills a day for 10 days and that should be better for me. *twitch twitch* But the good news is that the meds are doing the job, no pain and I'm feeling MUCH better. Thanks for all the well wishes!

random cards

I just realized I never put these up.

The girl is Missy B Designs. I needed another one of these cards. She's stamped with versafine ink on watercolor paper then watercolored. I really like her hair. It says "Put on your big girl panties and just deal with it". Suprising how many of these a girl needs! heehe JK.

This was a fun one. I am in love with these bitzy bugs I got from All That Scraps. I stamped it first on a scalloped white oval and colored, then decided it wasn't gonna work, so I threw it out, then stamped it again and colored, but the coloring looked funky. I lamented the great job I did on the first coloring when it hit me; Just cut it out silly! So I got it out of the trash and cut it out. Then layered it back on the yellow paper. Course you see GREEN paper here... well I made the card with yellow and wasn't happy still so I shimmied everything off and replaced the yellow with green. The "You're so cool" stamp is by Green Grass. I inked everything with my colorbox fluid chalk inks and then used my cool new hemp twine around the patern paper. Oh the bug is popped up. And colored with watercolor pencils.

lobster get well...

I needed a get well card. Yall I stink at them, this card is still on my desk, the person it's for is going to get well before I send it! Sheesh!

Anyhow I didn't know what stamp to use and I think the girl this is for will really like this lobste so I said to myself "Self, just use that stamp!" So I did. The lobster is Hambo Stamps and I LOVE them!!! I colored with watercolor pencil. Then I took my versafine marker (which I have because Belinda said I could do a resist technique with it and of course it didn't work, resist techniques NEVER work for me) and colored over the lobster. then put UTEE on him and heated him up. That made him all glossy. This is in a way nicer than the glossy accents I usually use because it dries right away. Course when you are a big fat slacker like me and never actually get the card in the mail it doesn't matter does it?? So then I cuttlebugged the coral paper and slapped the image on there. The phrase is by Greengrass rubber stamps. I LOVE that company too. It is actually in a dark circle on the stamp but I had this punch that would punch out just the words perfectly then layered it on a tag I did with the cuttlebug. I thought it was pretty cute. A little bit of ribbon and cool caribbean paper and I was done. (Oh I did the penwork on the scalloped oval myself)

I'm sick again can you believe it! I'm going to the Dr tomorrow. Maybe I have a parasite or something. Lets hope if I do it is one that makes me skinny with no long term negative side effects. I've already lost a bunch of weight with whatever is wrong with me. Course I feel like crap...

Oh I know this is the craft blog not the family one, but I gotta share! Ethan walks now! He's CUTE with it too.

Tulips out the window!

So here's the backstory, you remember my AWESOME LSS, the one with the great sales and Jodie works there (HI JODIE) (she doesn't actually READ the blog, I gotta shout at her) Well anyhow a few weeks back I was in and they had this beautiful stamp in the super discount bin so you know what I had to do!

Right, I had to buy it. Then I tried to color it. WOW it was bad. I almost threw the thing out the window! So before drastic stamp chuckings I put a post on The Stamp Shack and wouldn't you know those girls had ideas.

The pink one here is the "torn paper technique". You just stamp it a few times on different paper and tear them and glue them back. I did it all in strips like this because I'm a nut, but all the other ones I've seen have been done randomly. I did like this though.

Then I got out my alcohol Inks. I'm not a fan of them. Anyhow this is acceptable. I glued the whole image to a piece of chipboard and inked the edges. I don't know why, it just seemed to need the really firm base.

I'll post more later, I have to be at Costco at 11 and just realized it's after 10!

It's a Party

I got this Party Animal set from a friend on The Stamp Shack. It's a HUGE set and I only paid $14 with shipping! Anyhow it's old, 1999 old! I loved it though so of course you know the rest, I bought it. It came today.
I colored the dog with watercolor pencils and the rest with prismacolor markers. Then tied a bunch of ribbon because I felt it could handle all that ribbon.
This is the inside, sorry it's blurry, it's of course, not blurry in real life. I LOVE that chicken and may have paid $14 just for him!
As you can see in this close up I put UTEE on the balloons. You must ignore the few stray dots of it. I'm gonna see if I can scratch them off with my finger nail later, but if not then I'm going with "They are clear who cares."

Baseball Season!

It's baseball season and for us in this house it's a big deal. We probably go to 3 or 4 games a month. Maybe even more. Stephen LOVES to go and almost every day he asks about if we will be seeing "Southpaw" which is our local team The Sun's mascot. So of course I had to make a baseball card to celebrate the season! These stamp are TAC. I colored with a pen (red) and watercolor pencil. Then a bit of cuttlebugging and it was done. :) OH I just got this huge ball of hemp twine so you will be seeing more of that I'm sure.

More Bugs.

Decided to make a few more cards with my Papertrey Inc Bugs. I used ColorBox fluid chalk ink on them and then accented with stickles glitterglue. I now have the giga scalloped squre AND the mega scalloped square so I had to play with the layering of that a bit too.

Stephen Stamps

Stephen wanted to do some stamping with mommy today. He used TAC
stamps and colored with tombow markers and a bit of watercolor pencil. (CUTE, he carefully put each pencil back point UP like mommy does after using it, I thought that was very cool.) He used versafine ink (because it washes off well if it gets on him, but it didn't). Then he selected a K&Company sticker to accent his card. I tried to get a pic of him showing it off but he wouldn't turn it so I could see it, only would turn it so HE could see. I had to sneak behind him and snap this shot.

Special Post...

I *heart* Tracey.

if you are wondering why I didn't *heart* YOU specifically:

I *heart* YOU too.

Published!

If you love me you will buy this magazine. (I'm teasing, you buy it if you want)

Because that's my card in there! (Asian lady one on the top left of the right side page)
ps, I THINK it's ok to post these pics, if someone thinks not PLEASE tell me, I don't wanna get sued or anything.

My good friend Tracey gave me this link that says what stores sell the magazine CLICK HERE. This is local stores that sell it, like locally owned ones in your town (hopefully) not chain stores. I got mine at Michael's chain store, but do check, if a LSS has it you should always get it there of course!