CAS Watercolor Card Challenge - September

Good evening, and hope you've had a great week. Ours has been fairly busy. Going to exercise classes (or therapy) 3 times a week, keeps us on the go a lot. By the time we spend about 90 minutes doing the routine, perhaps get lunch or run a couple errands, get back home, I'm tired! I feel the exercise/therapy is helping...but it's a slow process. I'm able to do more than I expected to do, and while I'm walking, I'm wearing one of the gadgets on my finger that is measuring my oxygen levels as well as my heart rate. The oxygen level stays up pretty well, but when I walk outside into the humidity, still get quite short of breath. I expect it will improve, in time, and with cooler weather. Gosh, we're into Fall. And the folks at the CAS Watercolor Challenge selected the theme of Trees.

I knew the perfect stamp to try to watercolor, so hunted it up. Did it first with DI markers, then used some zigs to do the same image - just to see the results. Stamped, die cut, and then couldn't find either piece. Soooo....got the stamp back out, and redid again for this card, using DI markers, huffing, stamping with the misti.

Rubbernecker Cling Stamp

PB Snowflake die

- stitched die for the mat (it was handy, and I don't know what set it came from. Thought it would frame the fall tree nicely if I heat embossed it with Brutus Monroe Gilded Gold)

Here's the card and the stamp shown together, and I tried to color the image with the stamp photo as a guide. Couldn't quite get the reds in the foliage just as I wanted, but maybe next time. Put a little more green in there than Rubbernecker did too. 

Got this Rubbernecker stamp at a stamp show some time ago, along with some florals. After I finished this card, picked up something on my desk, and Voila, there were the 2 other images that I had done. I swear, I had looked under all the stuff, and they were either hiding from me, or Pixies live here!!!

There's still a few days to enter the CAS Watercolor Challenge for September. Ya'll have a great weekend, and thanks for visiting. Hugs. 

Watercolored Sunflower (CAS August 2018 Challenge)

Good evening. Tomorrow is Friday..YAY. Even though I've been retired quite a few years, I still get happy when Friday is the next day. I guess it was ingrained in my consciousness for too many years :-)

I've been trying hard to get into this month's CAS Watercolor challenge, since it's sunflowers. Have a lot of those images (but when I went hunting in the flower stamp drawers, I wasn't finding as many as I thought I remembered having!!!)  I was looking for something that would be easy to watercolor, since that's a bit of a challenge to me. Finally settled on a clear stamp that probably was from the Michael's Dollar bin. I knew I was going to stamp on w/color paper, and  with that texture - it needs to be restamped multiple times, so I wanted a clear image I could keep reinking. Now please don't ya'll laugh at this card-----

used Distress markers in shades of yellow to ink up this stamp, and can't even remember how many times I kept reinking, restamping. The outline part shows up as though I'd outlined it, but that was the Rusty Hinge marker that showed up nicely here. I also had some of the Mustard Seed and Lemonade inked on the edges of this outline stamp. Then used a waterbrush to try to pull out the colors...that worked fairly well. Wanted a bit more shading, so scribbled the Mustard Seed on the kraft mat, and used the brush to add some more layers around on the petals. Center was done with adding a little Spiced Marmalade first, then using Tea Dye, Brushed Corduroy, and just going to darker browns until I got something that looked like the brown center of a sunflower to me.

Now here's where I said Don't Laugh! This was just a single flower...so I free handed the stem and leaves with the water brush. That little blossom just looked too lonely all by itself.

Mat was colored with brusho greens and yellows, also on watercolor weight paper. For some reason, it didn't want to spread well so that's why so many of the specks still show in the colors. The c/s was quite wet, but the crystals just didn't want to spread around even though I kept spritzing with water, finally with a gold spray. Decided I liked it anyway behind the sunflower and cut it with a S/B Wonky die.  The sunflower looks like it's on white paper, but it was cream colored..the card base is also cream color, and IRL these 'creams' look the same color.

OK, off to link up with the CAS August Watercolor (AW, heck, go ahead and laugh if you want! I'm still trying to get the hang of watercolor). Skating in by the skin of my teeth----

Ya'll have a nice evening. Thanks for joining me & maybe see ya again tomorrow if I can finish a card tonight. Trying to sneak in the 2fer also! Big hugs.