WIP: Water Col-O-Ring testing

A few weeks ago I received a set of amazing shimmering watercolors I purchased from Cloves and Honey and finally got around playing with them. The Cup of Roses is a stamp I have received from my challenge winnings from STAMPlorations a few months ago and used an embossing resist technique to test the water colors. They are so vibrant and wonderful! The paper I used here is Van Gogh cold pressed 25% cotton water color paper which I purchased at TOWI in Leiden. Such a wonderful local art supply store I frequent and they have hidden gems! I also bought a bunch of old stock Schmincke water colors which I integrated in the palette above. 

I was pleasantly surprised how the paper held up! Minimum buckling/warping, great flow of water and workable time is great as well! By the way, that tin is a DIY watercolor palette. And the tin was given away with a female hygine product! I think I am making so much better use of it now ;) I filled it with different brand watercolors. This size can fit 20 half pans to fill up the tin or 16 half pan and your travel water brush. THIS FITS IN YOUR BACK POCKET OR A SMALL PURSE! I'm trying to find a minimalist way of traveling with art supplies but still with enough colors on hand for our up coming vacation and I think I have found it :)  Super excited to bring it with me on vacay!

Also another paper test I was looking forward to, is this Col-O-Ring by Ana  from the Well Appointed Desk. Initially this booklet is made to use for your ink tests, mainly for fountain pen ink swabs to see how the properties of each ink behave. There are all sorts of great reviews out there and I esp. love this video from my friend Azizah (Gourmet Pens) which shows you how you can make ink swabs and how to use this little booklet for that. Because I have stocked up on Maruman Word Cards when they announced the discontinuation, I thought I could test and try different things with this beautiful hand cut and letter pressed booklet. So I did a watercolor and mixed media test over on my Instagram stories, showed the work in progress of the above little mixed media piece, which I called the 'SS Regina braving the storm'. Made the little boat from vintage postage stamps and I loved that the word Regina was used to indicate our queen back then. The paper holds up to mixed media quite well, I was very impressed to see! So you can try this booklet for different things also, little water color or Mixed Media work and even embroidery (I have used some black embroidery thread between the sails and the paper doesn't rip what I poked it with an embroidery needle!) 

I absolutely LOVED playing around and testing these new products and am happy to support these small business owners whom are providing stellar quality products! 

I'm also happy that the Col-O-Ring is now also accessibly available in the EU at Fontoplumo and thanks again Frank for providing this booklet for review :) 

Sharing these desk shots over at Julia's Stamping Ground for WOYWW#427 - have a look and see more shared desk stories and maybe even share your own work in progress/desk shot to fellow deskers :) Missed you gals and I'll be over for a visit shortly!

Thank you for stopping by and have an awesome day!

Mail Art Monday: I'm not weird, I'm a limited edition

It's another beautiful Monday out and I'm sharing this postcard I made with a bunch of the new stamp releases from Stampotique Originals! I love using book pages in my postcards lately and the background is one I had in my stash a while, it's got left over paints from stencil wiped off it like the star you see on the top left. These new releases really do combine very will together!

Stamps from the new releases I have used in this card are:
Funky Town by Kate Crane
Hive Flower by Arwen McCullen
Little Whookie by Daniel Torrente
Short and Tall Tress by Jill Penny
Phrase Cube #3 from Teri Richradson
Other stamps used
Brick Road by France Papillion
Texture Cube 1 by Kate Crane

I would love to enter this work in the following challenges:
Sunday Postcard Art - Stargazing
Try it on Tuesday - Postcard

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

Always remember you are beautiful - VLVS! (+ process video!)

It's my turn on the VLVS! inspiration blog and I'm sharing how I made the above piece with you.

The really fun Whimsical Jester stamp and You are Beautiful phrase are my focal points. I have used some pigment powders, modeling paste, gelli printed deli papers and home made stencil for this piece. A full list of the stamps and materials used are listed below. I also have recorded the process video for this which you can see here on our Time2Stamp channel:

Stamps used: 

Whimsical Jester 

You are Beautiful 

Numbers set

Butterfly Specimen 

Doodle Dots 

Others:

Staz-On jet black, midnight blue, vibrant violet, black cherry, royal purple 

Color Bursts mustard, merlot, indigo 

Lindy'magical shaker oompah loompah pink 

Liquitex modeling paste and INKS! in white and gold

Art medium glue 

Tissue papers 

Random collage papers and gelli printed deli papers 

Tim Holtz Sizzix mixed media die cut for my stencil 

Black pearl rub on

Black soot distress crayon.

Also don't forget our August Challenge is up and running :) I will be back mid month for some inspiration for it :) 

Hope you enjoyed this :) Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome weekend!

Art Journal: Remember, I'll love you more after coffee!

Today I wanted to share a fun page I created in my spiral pocket art journal. I incorporated a bunch of different elements and experimenting with a little scrapbook lay-out style. Most of the elements I used are combined from different projects out of my "lefTOVERS-scrap box".

The background is made with Distress Oxide, I still have so many left from my very first play session with them, and stamped on it Indigo Blu Ledger, Tim Holz Coffee Rings and splatters, Large VLVS! Coffee rings and Joy Crafts script stamp. All stamped with Java dye ink from Ranger. Then I sprayed some Kiwi perfect pearl mist over it. IRL it does shine a lot more.

Then I built up the layers using die cuts, the coffee mug is from Stamplorations and one I cut from this project, some left over hearts from this project and used some left over papers from yesterday's project to stamp the sentiment on. Which is, as well as the bird, from Stampotique Originals.

I put in a little "remember" tag before the sentiment to make it a sentence. The bird is colored with letraset promarkers on sticker paper and fussy cut out. 

I grounded Cocoa Bird on some washi tape and tape a little bit on the right top corner for some balance. Gave the hearts some shimmer with a wink of stella marker and called it done. I really love this page as I imagined the bird being a parrot, echoing this to people who want to talk to me before I had my morning coffee :D

Entering this journal page in the following challenges: 

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Food and/or Drink 

Stamplorations never ending anything goes challenge

WCW130 - Feminine "anything goes" challenge  

We gals love our coffee and bling, right? :) 

Art Journal Journey - Poetry in Motion

I thought this would fit the theme as well, though I am SLOW-motion before my coffee, LOL!

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Splatter it

Thank you so much for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Bee Hive - SDC279 Only Animals

It's hard to choose a favorite among the august new releases as they are all super fun to work with, but the Hive Flower by Arwen McCullen would be my fave. Here I made a little note card and stamped it on a piece of Distress Oxidized backgroud.  This was a combination of blue and green inks and I just love how these inks work so well together. I colored the flower with my Caran d'ache Pablo's and stamped the little bees on it which I then colored with Wink of stella markers for some shimmer. The edges are doodled with a Faber Castell Pitt marker. I just LOVE the combination of the bees and the hive flower!  I also have been spotting bees back in the city again which is great! These little creatures do have a hard time and I am happy to see them in unexpected places.

In a small little lavender garden along the side walk...

and in poppies at the side of the tram/bus stop. I've read our country is making an effort to plant more flowers near the highway (the Honey Highway initiative) and are now initiatives in the city (like in Amsterdam) to plant flowers near tram stops to attract more honey bees to do their work. It's a beautiful effort which I hope will spread to other cities as well. 

So an ode to the honey bee here for our SDC279 challenge in which you are invited to use animals/insects etc in your designs. There is also some exciting news which are going to be implemented from now on for the challenge;

People have been asking SODC to let them join our challenges on our Facebook group. Well, we are listening!! You can now join in our challenges on our Facebook group. We will be creating a photo album for each challenge, all you need to do is add your project to the proper photo album in order to join. We do encourage you to add your creations here on the blog but if you don't have a blog or don't know how to upload your photos to this blog, you can now join on Facebook.

So now there are two ways to join in and I hope you will join this fortnight's challenge as well :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!