All posts tagged: watercolor

halloween watercolors.

Published by

Happy Halloween! I am fully immersing myself in all the crafting I can get my hands onto before Bebe arrives. This week I participated in two Halloween watercolor events, one with Michaels and one with Jenny Lemons! Up first: Watercolor and Ink ‘Boo’ Art with maker Jess Park and Michaels. Jess specializes in watercolor, illustration, and modern calligraphy, and she’s based in Napa, CA. For this project she demoed the most kawaii Halloween characters and showed us how to arrange them so the images would spell ‘BOO.’ First, we sketched out our block letters. Then drew in all of the characters with pencil, then waterproof pen. I’m sure as you practice this more you can go straight to pen and skip the erasing part. After cleaning up the eraser marks, we painted! Daaaa, so cute! And next: Ghostly Celestial Watercolor with artist Vica Lew and Jenny Lemons! For the third month in a row I participated in the Jenny Lemons craft night – I’m on a roll! 🙂 Vica showed us how to block out …

family crafts.

Published by

This year for Christmas Craft Camp, we decorated tiny trees and painted watercolor wreaths! Mini Tree Decorating. I recycled an activity from last year because I hadn’t yet shared it with my fam: mini brush bottle tree decorating! It’s the most adorable-ist. For this craft you will need: mini brush bottle trees beads beading wire or cord (I find wire works best) sewing needles felt or fabric (for a tree skirt) additional (optional) embellishments: sequins, bells, confetti The full “how I did it” on my previous mini tree post. Watercolor Wreaths. And since I’ve been wanting to practice my watercolor more : watercolor wreaths! For this project your will need: watercolors watercolor paper water brushes pencil paper cutter (optional) picture frame (optional) circle template – can use a bowl or cup (optional) If framing, cut watercolor paper down to appropriate size for your frame. Draw a circle in pencil. For this step you can trace a circular bowl or cup. Begin painting leaves using light shades. Work your way around the wreath with one type …

paint sesh.

Published by

Hey universe, I want to be a surface designer. Just putting that out there as a life goal. In the meantime here are some watercolor doodles from recent painting sessions. I received a special request to create lantana-inspired watercolor paintings. I tried painting them from different angels. I also played around with painting succulent-like images. This was a fun color blending exercise. I love the portability of watercolor. I have a small pouch I carry with my Case for Making watercolor palette and brushes, plus a small jar for water. Unlike all my other crafty interests, watercolor doesn’t require electricity or a lot of space. It’s so convenient! On another watercolor outing, I used this cool postcard watercolor paper deck I got at Jenny Lemons. They are cut to postcard size and the backs are preprinted with postcard address lines (plus a spot for a stamp!). Brilliant! These paintings were inspired by the nearby plant life in the Elmwood neighborhood of Berkeley. Create on the go much? Share your favorite creative outings below!

i heart you.

Published by

For all you lovers: watercolor hearts! Here’s a simple Love Day DIY! Materials: watercolor paint watercolor paper paint brush water scissors brush pens Brush water directly onto paper in a heart shape. Drop or brush on some paint while the paper is wet. Drop or brush on another color if you want colors to blend. Allow to dry. You can keep your watercolor hearts as is (I intentionally started with postcard size paper in case I wanted to use some as notecards), or cut out the heart shapes. I personalized some of the hearts for Galentine’s gifts. These would be fun as treat labels, too, for a Valentine’s parrrtay. Yay!

case for making.

Published by

I learned how to make my own watercolors! Talk about taking my crafty skills to the next level. When I discovered Pinta PH I became interested in learning about making watercolors by hand. Then, I discovered Case for Making – and handmade watercolors is what they are all about! I quickly signed up for one of their watercolor making workshops. When I arrived to class these beautiful pigments were all lined up on the workshop table. AHH, I couldn’t wait to get started. Our instructor (and shop owner) Alexis shared her watercolor making wisdom and demoed one of the colors – fluorescent magenta! The watercolor base is a propriety mix of distilled water, gum arabic, and honey. You gradually add the base to the pigment and mix and smash until you get the right consistency. For the fluorescent pigments we also used a few drops of rubbing alcohol to get the pigment to mix well with the base. We each got to make two colors for the entire class. Each pigment behaves differently so it was …

what a color.

Published by

More watercolors + cafe shenanigans with Hubs. This time around I’m taking my Pinta PH handmade watercolors out for a spin. These paints are made with Philippine rocks and soils. Amaze. Look how adorable! I almost didn’t want to open the packaging because they were so cutely wrapped. 😜  Each pot is labeled with colors in Tagalog so every time I open up the box I can do a vocabulary review. And the pots are magnetic, too, so it’s easy to take these paints on the go. I’m no watercolor pro (yet! ;)), but these paints are amazing — lovely, bold, and vibrant! Timeless Coffee, Berkeley / Plants and Mirror Images Devout Coffee, Fremont / More Plants It is safe to say I am addicted to these watercolors and to painting plants…and perhaps also to visiting new cafes. But these are all good addictions, right? 🙂 What’s on your current skills-to-improve-upon list? Share below!

make your mantra.

Published by

Hey, be you tiful! An evening at Paper Source for their Make Your Mantra mini workshop! Lucky me, I was the only one who signed up for the mini workshop so I got a private lesson! The project for the evening was to paint and decorate a plant print and to include a personal mantra. Teacher example above –très cool. What’s fun about Paper Source workshops is that you get to try out supplies and materials before committing to buy them. I got to play with watercolors (including metallic watercolors!), an aqua brush, Prima Press letters, a heat embosser, and a watercolor resist pen. Paper Source preprinted images of plants. I chose this lil guy – so trendy. I absolutely loved the metallic watercolors. I didn’t know they existed before this workshop. Look at the shimmer…. I ended up getting the palette after class. Here’s my instructor Erik demoing all the tools and supplies, and getting crafty. The watercolor resist pen is pretty fun to use, too. It’s basically like removable glue blobs. You can …

watercolor.

Published by

Hubs and I finally opened our watercolor brushes and paints! I picked these up from the Scrapbook Expo…two summers ago (whoops). We’ve been taking our painting on the road to local cafes. We pack our brushes, paints, paper, boards, paper towels, water, and a jar for our watercolor excursions. It’s been really nice to sit and peacefully paint next to each other. I for one do better when I paint what I can see in front of me, so sitting in new environments is inspiring. Here’s a look at our first couple of watercolor studies. Coffee Shop, Walnut Creek / Greenery + Still Life Allegro Coffee Roasters, Berkeley / Pattern Play + Painting with Leftover Coffee Here’s to more watercolor wanderings in 2018! Not sure where we’ll end up next, but I’m excited for it! What’s on your creative development list for the New Year? Share below! 

live drawing!

Published by

One of my favorite artists Genevieve Santos had a pop-up shop and live drawing session last week. The first time I met Genevieve I totally fangirled; this time, I totally fangirled again, but hopefully I was less creepy. 🙂 Her artwork is totes adorbs! I love all the color, the cute characters, and how much I can relate to the pieces. I mean…boba girl, am I right? I absolutely love her displays, too. Wooden shelves, vintage boxes, table cloths with sparkles… She had stickers, prints, cards, and magnets for sale. Even some originals, too. I wanted it all! We arrived early so we could shop her collection, but we were really there for the live drawing. I had been eagerly waiting for a custom session with Genevieve. The Hubs was excited, too; he brought the GoPro and filmed it! We asked Genevieve to draw us in our wedding day outfits with a similar pose to the characters in her Celebrate Wedding Card. Look, it’s us! The details, the colors, the pearly white teeth… 😉 It was crazy …

watercolor workshop.

Published by

I recently attended a workshop with Alessa of Life After Breakfast on a mini-US workshop tour. Even before the workshop began all of us were going ga-ga over our art supplies for the evening. Pouches full of glorious brushes, vibrant pigments, and oh, this nifty & informative watercolor pamphlet! We used Dr. Ph. Martin’s watercolor paints. The colors were so vivid. We started with a lesson in paper types and brush techniques. For many of us, it was our first introduction to watercolor and lettering. Here is my first take on a watercolor alphabet. Notice how I drew guidelines and then completely ignored them. We spent most of the class lettering and then dabbled a tiny bit in gold leafing towards the end. The gold leaf pretty much ruined my piece, but let’s just say I meant to put the leaf there. Oh, and I got two ‘likes’ in our class vote. (Oh hey…) Here are some student works from the class. And here is a piece that our instructor created during her live demos at each table. Since this workshop, I’ve …