Art Journal: Thoughts and Dreams with AALL&CREATE

Today I am sharing a project for AALL&CREATE as part of their guest design team for the coming months. I'm super excited & honored to be part of the amazing team and to be creating with their wonderful stamps designs. You'll see weekly projects from me on the weekend and to kick it off I'm sharing an art journal page in my moleskine pocket water color sketchook. 

After a long day I like to relax with my sketchbook and watercolors. Having stamps that inspire me to color is very valuable to me because I don't need to worry about a sketch that I need to make myself & get right to the coloring.

When I saw the designs of Tracy Evans and Katy Paltridge I knew they would go well together! In this project I have stamped a female figure of set #129 in combination with the flower of #123 in my Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. A few work in progress pictures: 

I am using Jane Davenport Glitz Sea  mixed with some of the Neutrals set. 

I like using stamps in different ways than designed, so I used the flower petals as Faerie wings & the stems as water waves.

I did color the  petal wings with a flower color because I love the contrast of the warm red pink with the blues and lime greens. 

It's very fun to see how the stem is quite effective as water waves! And I love the many blues in the glitz sea palette to give the body of water some color nuances. 

Looking at her serene face, I think she is enjoying the stillness in nature, lost in her thoughts and dreams. So I decided to stamp those words in the scene. 

I also used the grungy flower to create a bit more texture in the background by partially stamping it randomly over the page with lighter colored stamp pads. Some more close up shots of the finished piece. 

I have used a sakura While Gelly roll to add the highlights for finishing touches.

The stamps sets I used are the following:

123 by Tracy Evans and 129 by Katy Paltridge

Hope you liked seeing this project with watercolors & 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: The Little Mermaid - Jane Davenport Glitz Sea Palette

I have been a lot of fun using my watercolors from Jane Davenport which I bought at a Michaels in Canada on my vacation there in May. The sets are of such a great quality and it's the glitz sea set I bought there. Great colors for watery landscapes and my first try out was to color the mermaid (which is a stamp by sweet pea designs) and make the background into an ocean scene.

A little process shot of when I colored her and was sketching in the background. Those wee little brushes are amazing for details in her hair.

Here you can see the swatches in my swatch book and the larger pans you see and I filled with Daniel Smith interference paints. When you tilt the page at an angle you can see the color shifts in her hair and tail. 

And you may have seen my little watercoloring hyperlapse video's on my Facebook Page or Instagram on IGTV - if you are following me there, but I've also compiled a playlist on my YouTube Channel and add the recent process video's there too to have it all on one place. I might do another mermaid one with a process video later this week too. 

Have you tried this set or any other Jane Davenport sets? If so let me know what you think of it!

Sharing my desk shots with my friends over at Julia's WOYWW#477 this week. I'm so glad the weather is cooling off a little bit here and hoping for a little bit of rain so the succulents and poor wild life animals have some relief! 

Thanks so much for stopping by and hope you all have a great wednesday!

WCW: Alis Volat Propriis

The past weeks I have been inspired to work in my Moleskine watercolor pocket book more and decided it would be fun to share those pages in a new segment called WaterColorWednesday. This page was done with all VLVS! stamps and Daniel Smith watercolors and handmade colors by Designs by Rachel Beth.

The under layers started with the blending a few greens of the Irish Luck set by DbRB as a test page. I found the pot of gold, which is only glitter with binding, very difficult to work with sadly. Maybe I just need to get the hang of it, but when it dried, you can easily rub off that glitter from the page. The rest of the set is amazing and the two extra colors are spiced mimosa and berry cake. Berry cake I used a little bit on her dress but found it doesn't really work with the color scheme I had in mind. The red on her dress is from DS and I continued working with the dot cards I have of the brand.

It's amazing how much you can use from those little dots in the 66 colors try it set! I cut the sheet up so that it would fit easily in the back pocket of the moleskine watercolor pocket book. I added more layers of color, then some shimmer glazing and white gelpen for highlights. Stamed some mixed media stamps to give the background more interest. I thought the page was done, but then added the sentiment and a border around it with a fineliner.

Sharing my Watercolory desk shots with my friends over at WOYWW this week - it's been a while, hope you all been well. Looking forward to catch up with you :) 

I hope you can see the shimmering effect the watercolor has, it's so lovely to see in the light! With my watercolor experiments I am completely falling inlove with this medium and how it works and the pure whimsy of it.

By the way I used the following VLVS!

Alis Volat Propriis

Row of numbers

Scribble Circle

Sequin waste border

Cross mark background

Whimsical Fairy Lady 

I also would love to enter this page in the following challenges:

VLVS! june challenge is all about nature

There is still time to play along, you have until the end of the month to link up!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!