#967 – Let’s Try Stitching!!!

Hello and welcome! We have a new challenge up at Seize the Birthday and the optional Topping this time, chosen by Barbara, is to ‘Use Faux or Real Stitching‘. Since the topping is optional, as long as your project is birthday-related, you can join the party!

And here’s what I made –

I finally dipped my hands into cross-stitching!!! Yay!!! My sister was a major inspiration, after all, I’ve been seeing her use the needle and thread for years now! 🙂

I’m glad to also have used the Simon Says Stamp Stitching Panel, for what I think, is the intended way of usage (no, I am not saying you can’t just just use it as a background, it looks wonderful either way!). On this, card, since I didn’t want to waste embroidery thread with my amateur stitching, I used normal sewing thread instead, since I had access to plenty of it from my mother’s stash! Also, I did choose colors on my own this time – I usually have a couple of colors in my mind and use my color inspiration board on pinterest to pick the rest of the colors – but this time, I chose all of them, and I am super happy that they worked so well!

I did have a great time stitching. I did all the amateur mistakes – felt so bad when I had to cut off a lot of thread because I didn’t pull it right, made the top stitch come out from the wrong side, stitched over one hole, measured wrong – the whole shots – but I truly did enjoy the experience. In fact, I would like to make more (and maybe use embroidery threads this time? What say sis?) if I am not time constrained!

All that story, since I didn’t have much to write about the card itself!!! 😀

Anyway, coming back to the card – Once I finished the sewing, I cut out 2 sets of the frames using dies from Simon Says Stamp Stitched Squares and Waffle Flowers Nesting Squares, along with extra pieces from scrap cardstock to stack them for dimension. I then adhered these using liquid glue and then mounted that over a square Beige card base. The sentiment comes from Neat and Tangled Hand Stitched stamp set, which I thought suited the card to a T. I also added a thin strip of copper foil washi tape on the sentiment strip, since I wasn’t going to add any other embellishment – sorry you can’t see the shine here.

And I’m joining the following challenges as well –

Watercooler Wednesday challenge #324: All About Occasions

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge: Anything Goes

Addicted to Stamps and More challenge #414: Any Occasion

And that concludes my report of my new crafting adventure! 😀 Checkout more stitching inspirations from our Surprise Party Guest Jenny Martin and of course, our fantastic crafting team at the Seize the Birthday blog!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

#948 – Flowers & Leaves

PE: Runner up at Color Hues challenge!

Hello and welcome! Presenting another experiment of mine – which other people have already tried, tested and attested, but it was new at my lab, and I am happy with the results and willing to attest as well! 🙂

I was basically trying to color over an embossed image. Since I don’t have very many 3d embossing folders which are ‘colorable’, I conducted my experiments on the two Altenew ones that I have. Of course, the second one is for a leter post! 🙂

I used the Altenew Flwoers and Leavs embossing folder on Hndmd Cotton Watercolor paper – this paper had good texture on it, and was pretty stiff so I thought it might be good for trying out some media other than watercolors. I used Faber Castel Oil Pastels on it and used mineral oil/baby oil to blend the colors. I had to color over twice, to make the colors stand out more. I t was pretty easy and fun to color the entire panel. 🙂

I then trimmed th panel and foam mounted it over a kraft card base. or the sentiment, I adhered a black matt washi tape over the same kraft cardstock, then die cut it. I also die cut a few more pieces using the same kraft cardstock, and adhred the pieces together. I also cut out the shadow using vellum. I then adhered this over the card. I used a few gemstones in blue and brown to embellish. And that finished my card!

I am joining the following challenges with this card –

Color Hues challenge #19

AAA Birthday card challenge #26: Flowers

Timeout challenge #189: Inspired by Words

Thank you so much for stopping by!

#902 – Autumn with Birch Trees

Hello and welcome! It’s my favorite thing to post now-a-days! Because if I get to post this, it means that I’ve been practicing, and that, hopefully, also means that I’ve been improving with my artwork! Its my drawing/painting series!

This time is a piece with autumn/fall scene and I tried incorporating some Birch trees. Why Birch trees? Because I thought they would be easiest! And I still think they are the easiest now too, after having tried to watercolor them. At least, better than me trying to watercolor any other tree! 😀

So, here’s the piece –

I started out with drawing the ground at an angle, and then drawing a few trees and branches here and there, with some criss-crossing branches and all. But the final piece that you see here isn’t exactly the same – I would say some 90% is retained. That’s good for now! 😀

Well, I did somehow manage to retain my original idea of the trees, but couldn’t do that with the ground. I had wanted to make it look like there were a lot of fallen leaves, but I had to turn it to grass once one of my strokes went wrong…I thought of adding a little grass on the left end, but I ended up covering the entire ground with it. I also had thought of making it look like the floor where the trees are standing on, but this one looks like a bit of a mound or something next to the trees. Ah, well.. its still not that bad! 😀

I don’t know what watercoloring I’ll do next – I’ve nothing planned as of yet. But I plan to make a small booklet of out things like this. That’s a lot of watercoloring I’m looking to make! 😀

That’s it for now. Thank you for stopping by! 🙂

#894 – Some more drawings…and coloring!

Hello and welcome! As you might know, I’ve started to dabble on drawing, and free hand water-coloring, along with my regular card making activities. I had posted some of what I had made in a previous post. This here is the next installment! 🙂

I have bought a A5 sized book for practicing by drawing and simple coloring – Brustro Artists’ Sketch Book. And all the art work featured in this post, are what I’ve drawn there. I find the book to be adequate for my practice as of now.

This one is inspired by Alex Siberia’s designs. She has got a ton of awesome digital images at her shop, and I found them really inspiring to draw. Of course, I am not commercializing mine, neither have I outright copied her art – this is my own style.

I drew the flowers using a pencil and used Uniball Fineliner pens to outline them – I do have pens of different thickness – 0.05, 0.1 and 0.3 – and I use them however I feel like. Once the outline was complete, I erased the pencil lines and colored the whole thing using Zig brush marker pens.

Of course, the paper is not think enough to handle the coloring. The color was showing through the page, but thankfully, the paper’s thickness was enough to not let anything bleed though to the next page. 🙂

And this one proves that the pages aren’t exactly meant for watercoloring!! 😀 I tried to get a look of illustration, but no..not meant to be!! I’ll attempt the next one over actual watercolor paper, and use this one for pens and my Zig markers… maybe pencils too, if I can manage it! 🙂

But I did looooveee those butterflies!! 😀

Some autumn/fall artwork, going along with the popular theme in the card-making world at this time! I tried drawing myself and some no-line coloring with the Zig brush markers. Loving the look of the marker’s colors on this one – a little more practice, and I think I’ll get a hang of it! 🙂

And back to only sketching! Its full of leaves this time. And I really wanted to try out drawing some Gingko leaves!! They are so pretty – I think if I use any color other then green for them, they would be mistaken for flower petals!! 😀

So, on this one, I tried to create texture by varying line thickness and density – but I don’t think I established it very well. But I did like the look of the leaves here! And all the dots accompanying it! 😀

I’ll join the Paint Party Friday: Week 31. What a wonderful platform to show off some artwork! Thank you Eva and Kristin for hosting it!

Well, that’s it for now! I’ll hopefully make the next set soon!

Thank you so much for stopping by! 🙂

#890 – Drawing and Painting

Hello! Something a bit different from my usual cards today. I had mentioned in a few posts previously that I have also developed an interest in bettering my drawing and free hand watercoloring skills. Of course, I am also including a couple of media other than just watercoloring.. and also mixing up drawing and painting. It is not really an everyday effort, but just something I like doing every now and then, so, there’s very little of what I’ve created.

Here’s some of the better works of what I made in the past few months –

I have used a simple spring bound drawing book for all of these. For this one, I used watercolors and then used Uniball fine line markers and Uniball Posca white marker.

I was inspired by this gorgeous piece I found in Pinterest. I first drew everything using a normal pencil, and went over it with Uniball fine line markers. I used color from Zig Brush markers, coloring the umbrella, cloud and cup by first applying it on a piece of transparency and then picking it up using a wet paint brush to use. The ferns/leaves are all colored by direct to paper method.

I wanted to sketch the poppies that I watercolored in this card. I used Uniball fine line markers of various thickness on this. And I used Uniball Posca white marker on the flowers’ centers.

And that’s finished! I’ll try to show what I create as and when possible in the future too.

Thank you so much for stopping by!