Spring in snow

Hello there!

It’s been talked about that spring was on its way and flowers such as snowdrops have been blooming. Some day ago ice cold winds and snow appeared.

I maybe have mentioned this before, but i have a Watercolor sketchbook where I do smaller drawings and illustrations. The cold weather made me think that it could be nice to see some signs of spring and summer, which I have created in my Watercolor book. I like to have small projects or do a little drawing a day. I love to depict Nature and especially flowers, so that is What I mostly paint.

We had some very beautiful red tulips at home some week ago and so I couldn’t resist to paint one of them as a fast drawing.

I wish you all a good day, evening, night, morning or afternoon wherever you may be on this planet.

CraftGirlsWorld

Crafts for when Christmas is around the corner

Hello there!

It’s still not December yet and Christmas decorations can be seen everywhere you go here. I am also preparing for Christmas and more especially for a Christmas market I’m going to participate in. So, a am in full preparation for this witch means that I’m spending a lot of time doing clay crafts. I will sell both Christmas ornaments and things for all the year around. I will of course show you the crafts later, but until then I can show you one type of ornament I will bring with me to the market.

In this post I thought that I could show a crochet project that I finished up some week ago.I crocheted a hat in grey yarn, without a pattern. I just choose two different stitches that I had seen on the internet and put them together. The stich I’ve used for the whole hat is called coat stitch and for the bottom part it’s some type of ribbing. It took me quite some time from start to finish because the coat stitch, according to me is tricky. Since I didn’t have a pattern I had to see and feel when it felt right to decrease the stitches and finish up the hat. I am pleased with the results of this project. When I’ve made hats in the past they’ve usually become to small but I intentionally made this one a lot bigger and it worked this time. I think it’s more fun to assemble your own pattern than to use a ready one, but of course it’s more of a challenge.

I wih you had a nice time and I hope you all have a good afternoon, evening, night, morning or day wherever you may be on this planet.

CraftGirlsWorld

Christmas & New Year cards on their way

Hello again!
Last year I was so behind on making the annual Christmas and New Year cards that we usually send out to all our family and friends. This year I’m before schedule on the greeting cards I just have a few things left to paint in and then I can start printing them. It just kind of happened by chance that I created more than one motif for the Christmas cards and I think that it’s quite fun and unique that not everyone will get the same type of card. All the motifs are painted with watercolor and ink, I will precise the brand and products I used under each painting, down below.

The pine tree christmas lights
For this drawing I didn’t want to use my most expensive watercolor paper so I used an acceptable watercolor paper from Panduro hobby. When I sketched the outlines for it I had my HB DERWENT GRAPHIC and it’s the pen that I prefer to use when I sketch and to just to be safe I have a STAEDTLER Mars plakstic combi eraser. The ink outlines were created by 0,2 UNI PIN FINE LINE pen. The colors were achieved with DERWENT INKTENSE PURE. VIBRANT WATERSOLUBLE INK PENCILS.

Leaves and Berries
I used a more reliable and professional watercolor paper for these two paintings. What I mean with reliable is that it works as it should and the colors does not dry to fast witch can happen with cheaper paper. So, the paper that I had was SAUNDERS WATEFORD CLASSIC WATERCOLOUR PAPER, 300g/m2, white rough. I never heard of this brand of paper until a year ago when I attended a watercolor course and the teacher said that this was a must have and I must agree. There is a big difference between watercolor paper and watercolor paper and it’s not until you tried the real thing that you will notice the difference. I used the same tools to sketch as I mentioned on the previous painting. The watercolors are also an important part when you want to paint. Before the course I always used Winsor & Newton colors and I still do but he recommended Schmincke. Van gogh and Schmincke were the colors of choice for these two cards. The last but not the least important thing in watercolor painting is the paintbrush and mine were and usually are a Lukas nr 8 or nr 6 defending on the motif. To get the snowy effect of the card with berries I choose to use white acrylic paint and a fan brush.

 

Christmas Creatures
This drawing was only supposed to be an exercise in my watercolor sketch book but then I liked how it turned out so I wanted to have it as one of this year’s Christmas cards. The sketchbook I have is a Moleskine watercolor traveling sketch book. The papers in that book are quite rough. The ink outlines are once again made by an 005 SAKURA PIGMA MICRON, ARCHIVAL INK, pen and the colors are created with DERWENT INKTENSE PURE. VIBRANT WATERSOLUBLE INK PENCILS.

Here are the finished versions of the greeting cards. I used gimp to create the white frame around the paintings and the christmas greeting in my mother language.
Well this post was a very long one and turned out way different than I had planned. But now you all know what supplies I use, in general when I create with watercolors. So, this is pretty much my base for working with watercolors and the supplies I use the most. If any of you are interested in knowing some more about the materials I used and my experience of them then please do tell me.

 

All the different cards have now been printed, written and sent off to friends and family
I really hope you all had a nice in my probably longest blog post and maybe even an educational read.
I wish you all a good night, morning, day or evening wherever you may be on this earth.

CraftGirlsWorld