Art Journal: Valley of the blind - VLVS!

Over at VLVS! blog I am sharing this art journal spread using lovely Banksy stamps and a Whimsical Cyclops.  Go check out the blogpost to see how I have made it. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day. 

Follow your heart - AALL & Create

Today I wanted to share a card I made using wonderful stamps and stencils from AALL & Create. I've used stamp sets number 127 & 128 designed by Katy Paltridge and the sentiment is from set 138 by Olga Heldwein. 

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The sketch type stamps by Katy Paltridge has such a wonderful whimsical feel to it. I love using watercolors with them. Above you see the process of getting the color in this young lady done. I'm using Jane Davenport Glitz sea set on Caran d'ache mixed media paper. When The colors were blended to my liking I drew in the hair in the same sketchy feel as the stamp. I trimmed the piece to 6x4 inches and made the card out of it.

I masked the woman and took stencil #39 - lotz of dotz and a blending tool & sponged distress oxide fossilized amber through it. It created the background pattern with beautiful golden tones & makes the front image pop. 

On the bottom I stamped the foliage in set 127 in lavender tones & added the banner and sentiment from set 138 to finish the card. I had to cut the sentiment apart to fit into the banner how I wanted it, but I personally do not have an issue with that. Just goes to show how versatile clear stamps are. 

This could be the type of card you can send to a young woman entering adulthood, reminding her to follow their heart amidst the turmoil of growing up.

AALL & Create Products used 

Hope you liked seeing this project with gorgeous AALL & Create stamps. Please visit their boutique to shop online or to see where you can get these stamps from their many stockists world wide. 

Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome weekend!

WCW: We're all different & eventually everything mixes

"We're all different, but there is something kind of fantastic about that isn't there?"

- the Fantastic Mr. Fox 

A couple of weeks ago I got my amazing watercolor order in the mail which are made by Amé from Eventually Everything Mixes which is based in Berlin, Germany. She makes "handmade, cruelty free watercolour paints" (as her websites states and I wholeheartedly support!)  and with my order she kindly sent a few of her colors in dot samples which works so amazingly well together & form a beautiful fall palette.

The order came in the lovely matchbox and I decided to stick the dots on the business card which then can be placed in an ATC pocket holder for storage. I ordered Ludwig in the "full pan" which Amé uses recycled bottle caps for, which is wonderful! Oh sadly a little dot broke off, but I had some empty pans and could manage to get the most of the pieces in there, so no loss there. Plus this way I also get to use that sweet little matchbox! The sizes of the dots cards are super generous and they will last you quite a while, depending on the size of paintings you do of course! 

These are swatches of the colors: Monte Amiata/Raw Sienna , The cardinal from the ritual set, The Bloodmoon, Celadonite from her Earthy Trio set, Mossy McMoss & Ludwig (which has a beautiful golden sheen/mica in the paint). I absolutely adore these colors together, some are granulating and have a great dispersion pattern.  Some of these colors are from sets, but eventually she might release them individually as she did with the Berlin set, but that is still unsure at this point. As her paints are hand mulled they are subject to limited stock, so as always it's best to stay updated via Instagram to see when the new update will be online at her shop.

I wanted to see if I could use the dots card colors for a project for fall and I decided to use this great fox stamp designed by Olga Helwein for ALL&Create, which really suited the "mood" I wanted to convey. These colors just play SO nicely together! I LOVE the granulation the Blood moon has, the soft earthy green tones of Celadonite and Mossy McMoss are beautiful for the colors of foliage and gives a nice counterweight to the red brown tones. A pop of the raw sienna as an eye catcher (literally, LOL!) and spatters to blend in the background as a finishing touch to the coloring.

The quote is written with Tombow Fudenosuke and highlighted with a sakura gel pen. This was such a wonderful water color play session and I am super delighted to have found a handmade watercolor brand/shop based in Europe :) I'm super excited to see her next newest releases as I do believe she has an awesome unique color range offered at her shop. I mean, check out warlock & Pluto! 

Adding this art journal page to Art Journal Journey theme of Fantasy - because of the fantastic mr. Fox quote - such a great movie which i highly recommend if you haven't seen it yet :)

Hope you found this week's WCW show and tell useful and hope you have a great rest of the week!

WCW: Let me be that I am & let's go camping

I wanted to share another page from my moleskine watercolor sketch book which I made last week.

"Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me" - Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing by Shakespeare. 

This gorgeous watercolor set is called "let's go camping" from Designs by Rachel Beth which came in the mail earlier this month. I have used Toasted Marshmallow for the face (lightly shaded with midnight) and I'm loving that it looks like a marble statue.  The Beatrice stamp is by Pam Carriker's Art from Stampington & Company which I picked up at Blade Rubber Stamps in London this July. I just LOVE the hand carved stamps Pam Carriker brought out and I bought a few of them for my projects. The lettering made with Tombow  fudenosuke brush pen & highlights with Sakura white gel pen. 

This is a pocket sized tin which makes it great for traveling and the color scheme is wonderful for out doors scenery! You can fit another half pan in the tin, which I did and I chose cobalt light turquoise by schmincke for those bright blue skies & compliments the rest of the colors in this tin very well.

Rachel hand mulls her colors and she has batch releases every friday on her Etsy shop. If you wish to stay updated on the releases I suggest to follow her on Instagram where she updates that. I have a few of her sets already and I just love the colors she makes.

I would like to share the top art journal page at Art Journal Journey - continuing with my fantasy women theme for this month :) We all have a bit of Beatrice in us, at least I may hope so!

Thank you for stopping by and have an awesome day!

WCW: Joan of Art watercolor play (& Review)

A few weeks ago I ordered some fun watercolors from Etsy by the brand Joan of Art and I finally had time to play around with them a bit. I've bought the 4x aquarel sets and you could choose which of the sets you would like to have included. They at the time had a limited edition set called Mardigras and I added that one instead of their earthy tones set. The shop is based in the UK, so shipping to NL was fairly priced (36€ for 4 sets including shipping) and they arrived in a little over 12 days. Bit slow than average from UK, but the UK mail and NL mail delivery were having some issues around that time, so they could be delivered to you faster.

But they arrived, beautifully packaged and I just LOVE unwrapping watercolors! It's like colorful candy but so much better & healthier for you ;) I love that they come with a card which shows you the colors you can mix with them. I do keep the wrappers in a sketchbook with watercolor swatches, but here they are all piled up and the colors swatched out for you to see. They are definitely very pigmented and lovely to work with. The pans come with a little magnet attached to the back so you can create your own palette in an Altoids tin or other metal tins. They also have a fun Watercolor Sketch tin available if you want a complete travel set. The swatches you see here are made in my Strathmore visual journal, with 100lbs watercolor paper.

You can find more information on Joan of Art HERE. Joan of Art (seriously though, what a cool name for an art supply product company right?!) was also kind enough to provide the pigment info on their blog in case people are wondering which pigments are in the set. The Mardigras set was a limited release and sadly already sold out. 

I did a quick color sketch in my moleskine watercolor pocket sketchbook. The base is a small face from the Jane Davenport face stamp set. I drew the rest of the body with a faber castell pitt marker and added some accents with a stabilo all blue pencil (which also activates with water) I was wondering if I could create a skin tone color with all these bright sets and made a mix of van dyke brown with golden yellow and added accents of permanent rose for cheeks and indigo for the shadows. So this sketch was done at night when I didn't have natural light and at first I just didn't like it, too yellow in the face. Later when when I added more blue in shading and warmer tones in orange red around the face in the background the color of the face looks more as a tanned/east asian/indian skin tone. Still really need to practice more but that is what these sketchbooks are for - to play and practice color combinations and see what it brings you. These colors are definitely fun to play around with and I would certainly recommend them to fellow watercolor enthusiasts at any stage in their journey.

Sharing this painting sketch of at a fun - new to me blog- Paint Party Friday.
Art Journal Journey - this month's theme is "world of Fantasy" and this woman borne out of my fantasy also lives in a fantastical colorful world. In my fantasy the world always appears way more colorful as well.  

Hope this little review of the paints was useful.
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this review & bought these paints with my own money and all views posted here are my own. 

WCW: Micro Art Journaling with Mini Traveler's Notebook

The state of my desk this morning - after finishing day 1 of the new challenge I am taking part in, which is #30dayswithminiTN hosted by Cafe Analog and Akay Writes on Instagram :) There is a list of prompts which you may or may not use. It just really tickled me to practice my watercoloring routine on a very small scale. The size of the 10th anniversary traveler's notebook mini journal is under 1 inch, 4,6x3.7cm . So you see here one of the Tins that I kept with Watercolors, I am using now for this challenge. The watercolor dots by Daniel Smith are just fantastic to use for this project! Everything fits in a pocket or a small purse so I'll be going on field trips with this as well :) 

 I also made the water color notebook inserts myself. Crazy, right? But super fun and I'm so curious to see where this challenge will take me artistically :)

I've shared the fist page on my instagram

And the tutorial of the spread you can see below

My goal is to keep posting these mini daily watercolor tutorials/process videos on my Facebook page for 30 days of august... and if this inspired you to join the challenge, please do join in the fun :) 

Sharing the desk shot over at my friends at WOYWW478 (Julia's awesome blog) this week. And let me know what you think of this whole concept of micro journaling :) 

Thanks so much for stopping by and have an awesome day!