Life Book 2016 Giveaway!

Another awesome teacher – Wyanne Thompson – for Life Book 2016 – The theme for next year is:  An honoring and celebration of you.

I’m trying to win a spot in this year long class.  Help me spread the word!

Thanks for coming to visit!

Carmen

Online Watercolor Class for Card Makers – Day 3 (continued)

Gelatos and Watercolor Crayons with Shari Carroll

Although this is the last day of class, we will probably have a bonus day, so you’ll have to put up with me and my cards one more day!

I made two cards with the techniques she showed us.

I made my first ever shaker card using the watercolor paper and Gelatos that was sprayed with water and a stencil.    I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of the before that shows all the nice texture.

I used a heart die and also cut out “love you” out of gold shimmer paper.

 

You can see a bit of the texture on the top:

The second technique, she only made the card base, bit I made a card using Gelatos because I didn’t have watercolor crayons.

I made it into a celebratory card.  I stamped a single stamp with stars and stripes, embossed it with silver embossing powder, cut out some starts with a Martha Stewart punch, and added silver stickles to the stars on the stamp.  The sentiment is from Unity Stamps.  I used a spellbinders die.

Well, friends, that is all the samples I have for this class.  I hope we do have a bonus and I can make more watercolor cards!

Thanks for stopping by,

Carmen

Online Watercolor Class for Card Makers – Day 3

Hello friends, I’m back with the last day of Watercolor Classes for Card Makers.

Day 3

Pencils and Crayons

Jennifer Rzasa gave us some great tips on using Watercolors and Inktense pencils

She reminded us that watercolor pencil marks can be erased before they are wet; that way you can erase any marks you don’t want.

Inktense pencils are permanent once dry which gives you the ability to layer.

The first piece of paper is the pencil wash after I added water.  This would be great for shading.

The fruit was sketched completely with pencils adding water in between the layers and the flower was sketched the same way, but spritzed with water to finish it off.

Here’s a better view of the flower fuzzy cut.

Jennifer sketched a flamingo, but I chose to sketch a peacock stamp I saw at Unity Stamps.  I used inktense pencils and gold shimmer spray to add the shine of the feathers.  I also took my brush with different colors and splattered it around the peacock.

Water Soluble Oil Pastels and Inktense Pencils with Kristina Werner was the next segment.

I used my Caran De’Ache water soluble pastels because that’s what I’ve been using for the Life Book 2015 class.  First, Kristina had us use the different colors of pastes on the stamp then apply water with a brush. The second trial was to use the pastels on a piece of watercolor paper and spray water on it.

I really like the vibrancy of the Caran De’Ache pastels, but no applying them on on a stamp first.  I sprayed mine with water and they ran all over.

For this next card I stamped the image with Versafine ink, dried it with my heatgun and colored it using inktense pencils.  I like that you can use the brush dipped in water then applied to the lead of the pencil.  Since I don’t have Wink of Stella shimmer, I used some perfect pearls and water applied with a brush also.

The penguin is a Unity Stamp from last year.

Every time I look at the sentiment it makes me laugh.

Tomorrow I’ll post the last part of day 3, for now, have a great Sunday!!

Hugs,

Carmen

Online Card Watercolor Classes Day Two – Continued

Distress Inks, Tube Watercolors, & Stamping

Jenifer Rzasa made this class look so easy.

We first practiced three different techniques – Using distress inks on the stamp then stamping it on paper and then using water to spread the color – like on the cat.

The second one was using the distress inks on the stamp, applying water, drying it and adding water on top of the image to give it some texture, and then using a pen for the details.

My favorite was inking the stamp, spraying it with water, then applying it to the paper.  I used different colors of inks on this flower stamp.

 I did the sample of the two  stamps with distress inks – easy!

The first image was stamped with water proof ink, and the second one with Versamark and white embossing color.  I like both ways, but coloring on the black image was my favorite.

Then, using watercolor tubes I did these two cards.  I didn’t have any skyline stamps so I used a stencil and pencil to draw the buildings.

These two cards  made me crazy, but I grew to like this one, especially after I added the splashes on top.

The second try is another stencil of a neighborhood and a heart, so I used Thinking of you card.

Hope you like – they are very different than I usually make.

Thanks for stopping by!

Carmen

Online Watercolor Class – Exploring Mediums – Day Two Continued

 One of my aunt’s friends at her Senior Residence is leaving and she asked me if I had anything in my craft room to give her.  Since I was in the process of making more cards for my class, I decided to make her a special card.

I used tube watercolors on this one and I really like the intense hue that came out.  I used a Japanese brand, not Koi, but it’s probably similar.

She’s known her ever since they moved in and has enjoyed spending time with her and being part of the council.  So it was a very special friendship.

This class was taught by Dawn Woleslagle.  She does a terrific job at coloring line stamps.  This was my rendition.

The greeting says “Thanks for your friendship”

This is a close up of the flower.

Kristina Warner used her beautiful talent for creating no line watercolor images.  I don’t have any good size line stamps, so I used one of Unity Stamps by Phyllis Harris.

Phyllis has a beautiful collection of stamps and sentiments.  This was hard to paint, but I took the challenge and came out with this creation.

More cards tomorrow and maybe a Life Book 2015 update.

Thanks for visiting,

Carmen

OnlIne Card ClassWatercolor for Card Makers – Exploring Mediums

I’m sharing a few cards I made yesterday for the online card class.  This is the second class I’ve taken and I’m loving every minute of it.

Here are the cards for day one – Using Markers

After heat embossing with gold, I used my markers directly on the watercolor paper.

 The leaves on the right are the ones I practiced embossing and colored with distress markers.  The image on the watercolor paper are markers on the stamp and stamping on the watercolor paper spritzed with a mist of perfect pearls. The die cut leaves were colored with distress markers on the sheet and gold mist.  I also used a bit of washi tape and an old book page.  The background is a background stamp.  I used a distress ink pad.

My take on Kristina’s masking and adding a blue glow on the paper.  I noticed after I cut the watercolor paper that it was a little off center.  I still like it!  The You’re so thoughtful is a Unity Stamp.

Day Two – Traditional Watercolor

Laura Bassen gave us an introduction on Peerless Watercolor.  I tried several washes on watercolor paper and this is the one I liked the most.  She used a beautiful layering stamp, but I didn’t have one.  Instead I used the distress inks and rock-and-rolled several colors to achieve the variations.  I fuzzy cut the flowers and the butterfly and used the free flowers stamp from Unity Stamps

That’s all I’ve had a chance to create.

Until next time, happy crafting!

Carmen

Life Book 2015 – Week 34

This week we continue with the Healing & the Feminine Archetype theme.  This lesson was taught by  

Alena Hennessy who showed us how to paint a muse!

Alena talked about the different goddesses and what they represent.

I chose again to go back to my roots and explore the Aztec goddesses.

I chose the goddess Chicomecoatl. (chico meh, co atl)

Her themes are fire, providence, energy, community, abundance, fertility and strength.

Her symbols are hot spices (especially chili peppers), corn and fire.  In Mexico the goddess presides over maize and all matters of plenty during the time of harvest.  She is also the earth goddess and provides warmth, energy and fertility to those in need.

I chose her because she represents abundance and strength and because I love corn tortillas and chili peppers.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art : “the headdress is known as amacalli(“paper house”); it is the most typical attribute of the corn goddess.”

One aspect of the Aztec gods and goddesses were their insatiable thirst for blood.  I will spare you the details of how she was commemorated every September.

She comes in various appearances: a girl with water flowers.  She is regarded as the female counterpart of the maize god Cinteotl, their symbol being an ear of corn.

I really enjoyed drawing and painting this girl. I used watercolor paper, Pitt markers, india ink, and acrylic paints, and color sprays.  I might have taken too long and not be too intuitive, but I wanted to include all the symbols she represents.

The title – Chicomecoatl goddess of Maize and Strength

Corn,

Chilies,

Strength and Abundance

Her sweet face 🙂

That is it for now, friends, posting this goddess made me hungry for tacos!  LOL

Keep having fun and thanks for coming to visit!

Carmen

It has come to my attention that the image I used to create “Chicomecoatl goddess of Maize,”  was actually posted on a blog  without the original artist’s permission.  I publicly apologize for this omission, but just as I explained to the artist, Oesparza12, (sorry, she didn’t leave her full name on her comment on this post) I used Google’s search engine and it took me to the blog where this art was posted.

Life Book 2015 – Week 33

Bonus Lesson:  Inspiration Power Words with Joanne Sharpe!

Joanne, gave us a lesson on the  the healer archetype.  We explore all that the healer means and what words they evoke.   I count myself with those who have been healer archetypes.  Part of the Mexican culture is the joy of caring for your aging and sick family members.  There’s the attitude that “no one else can take care of my parents or my family members better than me!”

The words that come to mind when I think of the process of being a caregiver are many, but the most important one is humility.  When it comes time to care for our loved ones, we must have the humility to accept that we cannot do it all by ourselves – We need help and we need to take care of  ourselves first.  You must make peace with yourself and have the courage to forgive anything that might have caused friction between you two and surrender yourself to show love and kindness and comfort.

We must remember that one day, we too will be in the same boat; we just hope that the Captain will have enough love and kindness to offer the help we need, or have a qualified person or institution to care for us.

Joan showed us how to write the different words on watercolor paper using different watercolor mediums.

I made small cards and wrote each word.

Humility is #1!

#2 Courage to deal with the problem,

and #3 to letting go  of any feelings that might interfere with your care taking.

Powerful words indeed!

Have an awesome day, my friends!

Everyday Life , and Life Book 2015 – Lessons 29 – 32

Hello crafty friends!  I’ve been quite busy the last few days.  I went to a Faber-Castell Gelatos class at Michael’s on Monday with my crafty friend Maria.  It was a “free” class, but we had to purchase a $25 kit.  Good thing we had 50% off coupons!

Our instructor, Carol, showed us how to use Gelatos on different substrates.  It was fun taking the class, even though, I had already used Gelatos on other occasions, but I did try different materials included in the kit.

This was plain chipboard which we covered with gel medium to work as a resist.  Then we applied different colors of gelatos rubbing them with our finger.  I then added some paper, used my gellatos as ink and applied onto a foam stamp.  Then using a small stencil that came with the kit, I used the gelatos as watercolors. (There was no texture paste available.)

Next up was the raw canvas and the embossed paper.  I had never used the raw canvas and it was interesting to see the effect of the Gelatos on it – they feel so creamy and have lots of pigment.  On the embossed paper, I tried to create an ombre effect and used water to combine them, but I found the embossing disappeared.

 

I love the corrugated chipboard.  I took some of my Gelatos and found some metallic ones that I used on this piece and they really blended well and made the colors pop!

Lastly, I made a small desert scene using the gelatos like water color.  Good to remember the next time I run out of a watercolor.

These last two are embossed cardstock and velvet.

I’ve used Gelatos on Heidi Swapp’s papers before and I love the effect.  You can’t see the last piece, which is velvet, but I did not like the Gelatos on this at all.

Last night I gave a scrapbooking class to three of my friends and it was an opportunity to work on my photos as well, but didn’t get the chance to take some pictures.  I need permission from my friends to post their scrapbook pages.

This morning  I felt like having bagels and lox, but I didn’t have the smoked salmon 😦

Doesn’t this look scrumptious, just looking at it makes my mouth water!  (I used a google image, yumm!!)

I went to my Alberston’s store and in addition to finding the smoked salmon, I also found two terrific sales on Rib eye steaks and fresh salmon!  Both were $5.00 off per pound!  I saved $18.00!  yay, me!!

When I got home, my husband’s car wasn’t there, so I knew something was up.  I called him up and he said he was at my aunt’ apartment and that she needed to go to the emergency room because she wasn’t feeling well.  My aunt is 91 years old and is having trouble remembering things.  She forgot I had already taken her to see her doctor for the same thing, but I took her anyway.  We spent four hours waiting – which is really good for an emergency room wait, and her diagnosis was the same as before, so I took her home and when I returned I went straight to take a nap!  And that was the end of my day – and still no bagel and lox!

I know tomorrow will be a better day!

Now on to Life Book 2015!

Week 28 with

This week’s lesson was Tiny – Story Telling with Danielle Donaldson who creates beautiful lithe fairy worlds in her artwork.  This was indeed a fun bonus lesson.  We created a little person and then attached her to a clothes pin and on to a bowl filled with strips of words, and sentences.  The object is to pick random strips and put them together to form a story.

I just happened to have this bowl that had a heart on the bottom – perfect!!

This is the tiny person on a large clothes pin and the strips of words and sentences.

And this is the story I came up with after picking up strips randomly!

“Here’s the thing about her.  Every once in a while, the girl craves happy rainbows of periwinkle unicorns floating above her hair.”  (Really random!)

Week 30

Letting Go and Letting In with Flora Bowley was about intuitive painting.  I’m beginning to like these lessons, but I still have the tendency to apply too much paint.  The process was to start off by practicing on paper and black acrylic color.  She had us do “marks” and “patterns” on the paper first then use them on our watercolor paper or canvas.

The idea of letting go was interesting to me because when I paint something I like, I want to highlight it, but not this time.  We had to let go of that image and just do marks and patterns all over the canvas.  I did two at the same time trying not to use the same colors.  Although I did cover up a lot of the marks, you can still see they appear as texture – I liked it!!

I kind of used what I learned in other lessons – like color blocking and doodling.

Be bold –  I used some bold colors here!

Can you see the texture?  I really like that!!

For the second painting I chose bright colors against a silver background.

Here again is the texture.

Week 31

Traced Hand Hamsa Protection with  Rachael Rice.  This was a short bonus lesson.  She shared with us her ‘protection’ methods as a highly sensitive person.  As Rachael says: as artists, many of us often seem to be more sensitive than the ‘average’ person out there, so I think it’s a good idea to consider how one can make sure not to take on too much energy or suffering from others.

First of all, I am not a superstitious person, so this lesson made me a bit uncomfortable.  I don’t rely on symbols or fetishes to protect myself for other’s energy, but I did follow her lesson while leaving out all the superstitious stuff out.

Instead, I was thinking about the beautiful Henna tattoos I’ve seen on other people.

I used watercolors for the background…

I added some gold acrylics and a stencil to make the frame and the swirls on the background also,

and doodles and zentangles for the patterns on the hand.

Week 32

You Are Wise With Tamara Laporte

This lesson, given by Tamara, was focusing on transforming limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs, which was August’s theme.

The limiting beliefs that Tam talked about was about our progress and growth in life.  The “I’m not good enough,”  Tam writes:  “We look at how we can ‘be present’ to these thoughts, really become more aware of them and possibly change them somewhat. I think even just becoming aware of them and sitting with them, seeing them for what they are is a great start in this area.”

Here are some examples of limiting beliefs:

I’m not worthy • I’m not good enough • I don’t deserve to be happy • It’s hard to making a living off a creative career • My paintings are not good enough • I can’t paint • I should not shine/ be seen/ be noticed • Dreams are silly • Working must be a chore • Life is hard • I will never be able to … •

I’ve had those limiting beliefs myself.  When I was younger I had a low self-esteem, but as I grew older I learned to honor and love myself through self examination and through my art.

This is the image I have of someone who “can do it.”  I used a stencil on the right and bottom of the girl using sparkle texture effect and blue acrylic paint.  I love the texture!

I really like her sweet face 🙂

I wrote down some things that make me feel powerful.  I gave her a butterfly wing and stat bracelet…

and lift me up!

A closeup of the earth all shiny and blue.

Well, there you have it, folks.  I hope you’ve enjoy looking through my art and laughing with me about the everyday things that happen in my life.

Until next time, keep on crafting!!

Carmen

Prepare Yourself for Life Book 2016

Hello crafty friends, I just wanted to share all the excitement of the Life Book 2016 Blog Hop.  Each of the participants is giving away a spot!

Ivy Newport from Gracy & Ivy is one of the artist who will be involved in Life Book 2016.  Go and find out more!

http://willowinglove.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/life-book-2016.html

Happy crafting, y’all

Carmen Lucero