Making a Giving Plate or 3

This is an idea I first saw on Pinterest and I love it.  The idea that a plate has no home because it is continually circulated from home to home full of Home baking to give someone a hand or show them that you care, is SOOO cool.  I love it! I just had to make one, Or three!!!

Please
Check out My Tutorial How to Make a Giving Plate by Siann Watts on Snapguide.

Canson Paper and Schmincke Watercolour Sketches!

Schmincke, Canson, Princeton!

Hi all!

Unfortunately I was a bit hard-pressed for time in delivering this tutorial because I am under the pump with my final semester at University, so I will hopefully deliver another tutorial on drawing proportions very soon. However, in the meanwhile, I thought I could share with you some of the paintings and sketches I have created using Canson papers and Schmincke Horadam Aquarell Watercolour Paints.

I bought these gorgeous paints a while back and have fallen in love with watercolour all over again. I bought a set of 24 1/2 pans and have had so much fun with them.

The Schmincke watercolours have such a strong pigment and make painting and using the paints so much easier. You know those paints that you've had in the past where you have laden your brush with paint, only to find within a few strokes it's practically all gone? This is the exception, I remember when I first tried them and I touched my wet brush ever so lightly onto the paint and then used it and the colour was amazing! It also lasted so long and this works out in your favor, for not only does it save time and makes working more efficient, but you end up using much less paint because you don't need so much onto your brush.

Tip: Wet the paint brush, rather than wetting the pan, this way you can keep your paints much cleaner.

 Here are some examples of the more involved paintings I've done using these paints:

Truth

 

 Life

 Way

Tip: When building up a painting like this in layers, start with a wash that covers your whole background, so you aren't left with noticeable white spaces.

 The Glass Slipper

Tip: I built this painting up from the lightest colours to the darkest.

A Psychedelic Forrest

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This is mainly what I use in conjunction with the Schmincke Paints:

Canson Watercolour Paper: This one is a Medium, 185 gsm. I use both the A3 and A4 sizes. I have been using this paper since I started painting when I was 14, I used to save up my pocket money for buying pads of paper!

Princeton brushes, I have a number of sets that I've used which work really well and are affordable too!

Now here is a bit more about the paints:

You receive this super cute colour testing page where you can use your colours and then refer back to it when selecting colours.

The box mine came in, I nursed it preciously home.

Inside the box!

This is what my paints look like now after the dozens of paintings I've used them for!

It appears I am fond of the green colour.

Tip: If you want to keep reusing the same colour mix that you've created, mix the colours on either a plastic or metal surface (like this one) so it doesn't dry so quickly and can very easily be re-hydrated. If you use paper, it just absorbs the paint and dries out super easily. Especially with the pan sets opposed to the tubes of paint.

Some more sketches:

This really shows off the vibrancy of the paints.

 You can see a bit of the bleed effect in the tulips where I overlapped the red onto the yellow.

 This really shows off the nature of the paint. I just wet a part of the paper and transferred paint into the patch and then nudged it with the brush.

 Using a slightly dry-brush technique to achieve this textures.

Tip: Using a brush with a flat/square tip can give you these beautiful marks shown above. Simply wet the brush but then only touch the very tip with the paint and drag it in short succession.

 This was actually the very first thing I painted with the watercolours as a test, was a lot of fun!

Mixing the paint with other mediums.

I hope you have learned a little and hopefully been inspired!

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Instagram: @mepxymarkers

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Please send us your work or anything that you create! Thanks for watching!

 

Natalie Wyatt

Natalie's Facebook Page

Easy kids Fathers Day craft

Hello. Felicity here today.

Fathers Day is just around the corner. For me is always hard to think of 'something' for my little boys to make for Daddy. Because hand made gifts are the bomb, right!

I got out the Canson watercolour paper pad and the schmicke watercolours. I gave the boys a paint brush and told them to just paint.

My Mister 6 came up with this.

I then found a quote on pinterest that was very fitting for Daddy.I then used a black maker to right the saying.
Tip: Make sure the black marker is one that doesn't bleed when its wet.

I then got Mister 6 to colour in the words he wanted to colour in with water color pencil.

Now he has a cute little quote that he can frame and give to Daddy on Fathers day.

Cute little inspiration notebook

Here is a cute little project that you can do with your kids or as a gift.

My son loves little notebooks to draw in, (just like his mum) I came accross these cute little ones in Spotlight that you can put your own paper into. This is a great idea for me as i love to sketch on speciality drawing paper as well as bits of watercolour colour paper that I can reuse that I have lying around.

My son on the other hand goes through sketchbooks very quickly as he likes to sketch then gets frustrated and wants to start a new one, so i thought this would be a great way he can keep some good works together and also we can add in  some of the Canson coloured papers inbetween to keep life interesting.

I have found this really cute design of a bird in an adult colouring book that i just loved, i wanted to draw something on the front that really inspired me and these brown natural carboard looks lovely with a white gel pen but you could use black or pencils or anything else you wanted that shows up.

So i just started marking out my design in pencil, and then started going around it with my white gel pen.

As i continued on i just played around with the patterns and added a quote at the bottom.

Cover it with a quick coat of gloss medium to seal and insert some nice papers inbetween the brown papers thats included and thats it. 

I will be getting my son to decorate his, but ofcourse wasn't able to at the time of this post but  add to the end of this when we are done.

Guest DT Geri McLeod- Schmincke Inks

Hi Crusaders,

Geri with you again today. :-)

This time I wanted to share with you how wonderful the Schmincke Aero Colour inks are.

I was at the Brisabane craft show and saw them at Jane Davenport's store. I bough a set of 5

with white black magenta yellow and blue. 

The first thing I noticed was how intense the colours are. I mean knock your socks of awesome bright and beautiful colour that makes you gasp. They are little bottles full of joy.

I got a pack of empty dauber bottles from Dick Blick. I put in 5-10 drops of the Schmincke Aero Colour ink  and then filled them up to half full with water.

The colour is still really bright even when diluted in the water and I thought I would go through an old art journal and just add a bit of new colour here and there. The yellow is like sunshine and happiness and immediately lights up a page.

I especially loved when the yellow blended into the magenta and you got a beautiful orangey pink. The inks melt together beautifully.

Using the dauber bottles makes fantastic backgrounds. I love that the water in them makes them so fluid and they flow on so easily. They work well with the liquitex Gesso I had used on the old book page. They resist coloured pencil and this was a really nice effect. I also used

neon spray paint with stencils and then put the ink over the top and really loved the bright ink colours.

I had an altered book with a  white gesso layer and did a basic sketch using a coloured pencil. I then used the Aero Ink in the dauber bottle to add colour for quick backgrounds. I loved using it and love the colours. 

I then got my Schmincke watercolours out and added some more detail in flesh tones. I could also go in with colour pencils  and white sharpie next. The water-colour set is from Jane Davenports shop Institute of Cute. They are her special hand picked colours and I love them.

The Schmincke watercolours are probably the best art supply I have ever bought. They have incredible pigment and the colours are bright and beautiful and are a pure joy to use. A little bit goes a very long way because they are excellent quality.

I was pleased with these dauber bottles as they are a very handy way to use ink and the quality of the ink is so excellent you only need a few drops with water. I'm looking forward to lots of other experiments with the Schmincke aero ink.

May the Schmincke be with you. 

Follow your art hearts.

Till next time. Geri xxx

Book Week is COMING!

Good Morning!
 As many parents are already aware book week is coming like a freight train at us! where our little ones dress up like characters from the books they love and adore! My niece happens to be one of those kids! She ummed and ahhhed about who she wanted to be and finally picked a book character from a book that she loved, she picked Ruby Redfort.

This character wears a lot of slogan tshirts! so being the awesome aunty that I am, I handed over my stash of Pebeo Fabric Paints and Fabric Markers! So she could create her own costume slogan t-shirt herself!

I wont go into a huge tutorial as the photos my sister in law took are helpful enough! but the supplies are so user friendly that even kids can have an amazing time creating clothing items for themselves!

Other supplies I handed to her was a few sponges to bounce the paint across with ease, and stencils to help make text and images easier! Even though Amy is super creative having stencils to use makes it universally easier to create works of art without having any drawing skills!

She started by colouring in the bottom of the cupcake stencil image with the Fabric Markers - Setaskrib from Pebeo.
Then using a sponge she bounced the yellow fabric Paint for the icing.

Then waiting for that to dry a little, she also used the alphabet stencil to create her character's signature tshirt slogan - Let them eat cake.

 

She used a paintbrush for this step as she needed more precision on the letters! (I'm totally proud of her)
 Once the shirts where dry we heat set both prints with a iron on low heat to make them machine washable. (the red shirt was a practice one to get her confidence up)

Amy is also going to be embellishing the cupcake with some beads to give it a 3d looking quality.


Once her Book Week parade has happened I'll add a snap of her finished outfit at the bottom of the post! but for now here are the two finished shirts she made with absolutely no adult help! I must say they both turned out super!

The Fabric Line from Pebeo is so versatile for adults and kids! This post was to show just how truly user friendly they are! Make some custom shirts for book week if you a stuck for ideas, they are simple, fun and unique thing to do!

To all the kids, have an AMAZING book week parade!
Seeya next week, with some graphic cushion cover ideas!
Courtney