Watercolor, hand lettering, and masking.

I wanted to try doing some hand lettering and water coloring and I thought the easiest way to do it would be to use my Molotow masking pen.  

I started by finding a quote I really liked from Aesop, and hand lettered it in pencil on a piece of Bristol paper. 

Beginning and some guide lines. 

Completed quote

Then I covered all of the lettering with the Molotow masking pen. 

All masked and ready to go. 

What I should have done here is erased my guidelines, but I didn't so they're slightly visible in the finished work, but if you are making this, now is a good time to erase them being careful not to disturb the masking fluid. 

Then I added my watercolor background and dried it with my heat tool.

Before the reveal... 

Finally I removed the mask with an adhesive eraser (they're very handy and won't cause your paper to pill). 

Finished product! 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results! The next time I do this though, I will erase my guidelines earlier and I will use a lighter sketch pencil when I do my hand lettering. Hope you enjoyed this, Happy Crafting! 

New cards with new stuff

Last time I talked about my amazing watercolors and yesterday I finally put them to work on a card. I cut out the hearts on my Cricut Explore and used a piece of Tim Holtz Ranger Watercolor paper for the background. I chose 3 colors I really liked and put them down first as a wash and then flicked some dark purple and dark blue on top. I dried it all with my heat gun and then adhered the hearts using some Sticky Dots. Then I finished it by adding some Doodlebugs sequins using Glossy Accents and my Pick Up stick. Finally I stamped the sentiment with an Avery Elle stamp and a Versacolor ink pad.

I hope you enjoy the video and Happy Crafting.

Gab about Watercolors

I love watercolors and I use them in various states, pencils, crayons, markers, and traditional cakes.  I have 2 travel sets, one is Cotman and the other is Koi.  They are both wonderful, but my only complaint is that you get 6-12 colors and you have to "make" the rest yourself.  This is common, but time consuming...and then I found the Kuretake GansaibTambib sets! They are everything!! I chose the largest set, 36 colors, and I could not be more satisfied. The colors are vibrant and smooth plus the box they come in is beautiful.

Before the unboxing. 

Then when you open them there is a color chart on the interior of the lid. 

A handy surprise. 

It took a few minutes to get all of the colors done, but the chart makes me even happier because of how the colors look, and this is on ordinary paper! 

Completed chart! 

The set includes 33 "traditional" colors including white, and 3 metallic colors.  Each cake has the corresponding chart number on the bottom, so that if you ever mix them up, you can reorganize them with ease. I have to say I am very impressed with the set and cannot wait to make some cards with these, happy crafting!

Gab about new stamps.

I was hoping to get some new stamps for Christmas...and I did! I got a bunch of new stamps from Hero Arts and Avery Elle. I had to make something right away, and here it is. 

Japanese dolls from Hero Arts and a distress ink background. 

I did the above by stamping the dolls, using a Molotow masking pen, I covered them and then inked the background and stamped the white flowers.  I then peeled off the masking and colored the dolls with Copics.   

Using Avery Elle stamps and a bunny stamp I already had, I made this. 

Way to go! 

Finally, I used my fuse tool to make holders for gift cards. 

Gift card idea!

I did some of the confetti on the inside using my confetti punch. Hopefully I'll have time to make even more stuff and use all of my new tools! Happy crafting!  

Gab about encouragement

This is a card I did to follow my other "Sound & Color" card from last week.  I used the same artwork, but changed the background to distress ink and acetate. 

Shoot across the sky. 

I wanted to do a mashup of encouragement with my unicorn drawing as well, so I revisited that with a distress ink background as well, but used a normal card stock base. 

Always have hope. 

I have some new ideas coming up soon for some of the doodles I put together. 

Dance with me! 

The feelings ninja. 

I'll be posting cards with these in the next few days and I will try to post some tutorial videos for these techniques as well. Happy crafting!