art

100DayProject Day 31

Nothing to report on my Altenew courses and the assignments of making cards. Still busy working on a few totally different craft projects for a friend’s birthday which I can report on a bit later.

Another of my crafty projects; putting a lot of accumulated decorative boxes that I’ve made to good use.

My idea for tips on Tuesday is to give some cardmaking tips for techniques and design but I don’t have many to pass along today. The class I gave did enjoy colouring with watercolour markers. One of the class participants mentioned that you can also use a regular marker along with a wet brush to blend out the ink from a regular marker. I will give that a try with some of my regular markers soon. Actually I couldn’t resist so I went down to try it out before posting this. I think it will work best with brush-tipped markers rather than fine tipped, but I guess it depends on how much colour you want to put down in a particular area. And the type of paper as well as the type of marker likely will make a big difference in the success of this technique. It definitely doesn’t work well if the markers are too dried out (I had to throw out a few markers from my stash). I will eventually try a few other brands of markers but so far I am still very taken with watercolour brush markers. Or I like to use a few drops of ink with a bit of water. Which I couldn’t resist going to try. This is what happens when I have a nap in the afternoon because I’m so tired. And have chocolate tuxedo cake for dessert. Fortunately I’ve already decided to skip pickleball in the morning to focus on a few crafty projects. And to bring Luna for her 10:50 mani-pedi appointment.

I prefer to just mix a few drops of ink with a few drops of water. These flowers and leaves are still wet; I’m curious how they’ll look in the morning when they are dry. I did try to apply a few layers in some spots to see if those areas come out a bit darker. I don’t think this paper is the best for trying to blend colours. I may try to blend a few different colours on watercolour paper,

I forgot to take some photos of the cards that the participants made in my class this afternoon or I would have shared some of their finished projects.

Tips on Tuesday

I was on the search for some evidence of spring bulbs starting to peek out from the frozen earth on my walk with Luna this morning. And a garden on the street behind our house didn’t disappoint. Sure enough, there were some leaves starting to poke their brave tips out. I expect it won’t be long before there are a few blooms popping up in gardens around the neighbourhood. My spring bulbs of choice are daffodils but every spring when I see the crocuses and other tiny flowers I think that I should try to add some of them into my garden as well.

I got in my morning swim with Flora this morning. Soon I’ll be heading out to Canadian Mental Health Association to lead a card making workshop in their 11:45 Arts for All program. A bit of further prep work is still required for that which I’m off to do now.

A fairly busy day. A quick walk with Luna before 8:00-10:00 Pickleball. It’s a good thing I deferred an originally planned walk with a friend I used to work with because I just had time to get myself organized for my afternoon Card Crew class at the Dementia Society. I arrive there for 1:00 although the program officially runs from 1:30-3:30 I like to there for when there are some early arrivals. There were 3 participants today and a good number of volunteers. Now that we are getting more regular volunteers the program coordinators may promote the program a bit more. I’ll include a few photos of the participants cards. One of the volunteers stayed after the program until 4:30 to help me prepare kits for the class that I’m doing at the Canadian Mental Health Association tomorrow; I thought that the design we did today worked quite well so we’ll be making more cards like that tomorrow.

I had a quick stop at Michael’s to pick up some more watercolour paper then just had time to each some of the soup I made yesterday for supper and walk over to the curling club for our 6:00 6-end game which finished just after 7:30 then drinks and here I am now at almost 9:00 with about 200 words written.

No theme for the day yet, but maybe it will come to me as I create a blog post by copying my daily writing from the 750words website into a post and add a few photos. I rarely get to 750 words but it’s nice to have it as a target. Update at 10:00 as I finalize this post: Mail it Monday is (and always should be) my theme for Mondays. I dug out 4 cards from my stash, addressed them and wrote a note in each one. They’ll get into the mail on Tuesday, but I’m counting them for this week’s Mail it Monday since I did get them all ready to go in the mail today. I hope you’re considering taking up the Mail it Monday challenge – and it doesn’t have to be a card that you mail – you could simply send an email or text message. The point is to reach out to someone. I’m sure that they will appreciate it.

Card Crew

Here are some of the cards that were made at the Dementia Society today during our Card Crew session.

This one was coloured with water colour crayons which were then blended with a wet brush.

The volunteers help guide participants in where they should add some colour and likely prompted this participant to match the centres colours on the card front and on the envelope.

The bright green card base looked very cheerful and coordinated well with the green leaves.

It’s nice when the envelope coordinates with the card.

This one was coloured with watercolour crayons which were then wet to spread around the colour. The same technique was used to create the background layer.

The inner layer adds a nice pop of colour to the inside of the card when the participants colour in the image.

I love how this participant made a water colour drawing for her card front background rather than just making a random blended style of background. The watercolour markers give such fun, vibrant colours.

The watercolour markers seem to work very well for some of the program participants.

Arts for All Program Preparation

This is part of the kits that I’m putting together for the monthly cardmaking class that I do at the Canadian Mental Health Association during their weekly Arts for All program.