Author: Catherine

I am an on-the-side and increasingly up front papercrafter who loves nothing more than getting inky and creating pretty things with paper and stamps! I am also a wife to lovely hubby and mummy to a wonderful 14yr old princess.

Lillypea designs paint a long

Catherine

Another little watercolour painting, this time following a tutorial on Facebook from LillyPea designs.

This was a beautiful bee tutorial.

I started with drawing out the image…

And then colour blocking…

It was at this point I realised I had added black to the wrong part of the bee… so then I had to improvise a new style of bee!

The wings were interesting, as the brown was looking odd at the beginning.

I had a lot of bleeding on the yellow at the bottoming decided to go with it.

Loved doing the legs and adding shading and texture on it.

There were a few more layers on each section and then started adding in the background colour of the turquoise and blue.

The final stages included lots of little marks using watercolour pencils and then my favourite thing… splatters!

Love love love this!

The whole painting is 8×8 so I am going to frame this in my craft room.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Gelli print cards

Catherine

A few weeks ago I had playtime with the gelli plate and created lots of papers which I then turned into cards.

I chose random embellishments from the stash to make up the cards and bright coloured cards to make the card blanks.

A fun selection of cards using some prints. What a fun play time this was?

Happy crafting!

Catherine

DT: CHNC: candy canes!

Catherine

Hello! This week the theme Hazel asked us to follow for our Design Team contribution for CHNC was Candy Canes.

I went super simple with this card.

Some cute stamped candy canes, a robin and a sentiment and a beautiful striped bow! I chose the shaped card to make it a little more special!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Elle Smith Art Facebook paint a long sessions

Catherine

My friend Darcy let me know about another artist offering watercolour tutorials, this time as Facebook videos, so I thought I would have a go.

The artist is Elle Smith (Facebook name is Elle Smith Art). She does a loose watercolour paintings with animals mainly so very different in style to Matthew Palmer who we are doing the landscape paintings with.

I started with a pheasant in flight…

There is a lot more drawing for these ones but it was still an enjoyable couple of hours. I would say its about half drawing and half painting.

The next I tried was a giraffe, this time I did the drawing in one session and the painting in another.

Super happy with this … think the head should have been a little longer but happy with how it turned out.

So far I’ve also managed to do the drawing for a highland cow but not got around to the painting part yet. Will share when I have!

Am enjoying playing with watercolours and learning new skills. Would recommend Elle’s tutorials for people just starting out as they aren’t too difficult. Matthew’s are more complex but he talks through each stage really well so again anyone can have a go and learn.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

Watercolour Painting … moonlit city scene

Catherine

Once again the family gathered last Sunday to do a Matthew Palmer watercolour.tv online live workshop. This time he was teaching a moonlit night city scene… Think Venice.

This is what I created…

Not exactly Venice in style but happy with my made up scene!

And here are the families efforts…

Each has its good parts and bad parts and once again fun was had… although the stress of adding those lampposts at the end was big style tense!!!

Didn’t take many in progress shots but here are the couple I took!

As you can see it goes through the “hot mess” stage before it starts to pull together into a picture.

Once again pleased with what I created. This weekend not doing a live one but instead one that we’ve purchased from a few weeks ago as we didn’t fancy the theme this week. So will of course share the results once we have them!

Happy crafting!

Catherine

DT: CHNC: bells!

Catherine

This week’s challenge from Hazel is to include bells in our Christmas card design for CHNC.

I chose to add stars through a stencil using modelling paste and then stamped the bell inage in the centre. I added colour using watercolour pencils. Then I stamped the sentiment onto the banner and added it using foam pads.

It’s quite a simple but elegant design. I’m very happy with it. Love how the stencilling works and how clean and simple the design looks.

Happy crafting!

Catherine

DT: Craftyhazelnuts patterned paper challenge

Catherine

This month I decided to use a Christmas gift. The papers and embellishments were a secret Santa present from a crafty group. It was nice to use some coordinated bits to create these cards.

They are so bright and cheerful. Perfect for times like now I think!

So good to have a play with the bright and cheery papers.

Happy crafting!

Catherine