Merry Monday #279 {Season's Greetings}

I have been wanting to have time to play over at the Merry Monday Challenge.  That is a challenge designed to let you create a stash of Christmas Cards so you'll be ahead of the game come December.  They always have such fun themes and inspiration and I wanted to be able to join in this time.  My friend and fellow design team member from the Keeping Christmas Monthly Blog Hop, Kelly Lunceford, is on the Design Team there and I really enjoy her work as well as all of the other ladies.  This week the theme is to use a poinsettia on your Christmas Card.

My real love for card making came when I fell in love with some of the watercolor cards I found on Pinterest. That led me to bloggers who shared their love of card making and also shared their techniques. Jennifer McGuire was and still is one of my favorites that I found this way and is now also a friend. Through her blog, I found others and I have a number of folks that I follow on their blogs and YouTube Channels. This also led me to attempting to do a bit of simple watercoloring in my card making. There are several methods and mediums I can choose from including markers, re-inkers, and even just smooshing a bit of ink onto an acrylic block and picking it up with a water brush or paintbrush and actually using paint intended for this purpose.

Last year, when I was at CHA (now called Creativation), my Sister-In-Law went to several of the booths for me to get information.  I mean, that show is just huge and there is no way you can get to every booth.  I depended on her to make it to some of them.  One of those was the Daniel Smith Fine Watercolors booth.  They were giving out Dot Sample cards and she got a few of them for me to try.  I keep hearing rave reviews about them.  So I finally relented and got a few tubes to try out.  I am not a "Full Set Syndrome" kind of girl so I tried to get very basic colors to get a feel for how they worked and I must say, I am a complete novice at using, mixing and understanding most of  how these work.  I have a basic elementary school understanding of how color works and in fact, that understanding was the basis for my color choices.  I selected my colors by Non-Granulating, Non Staining and whatever the basic color was that I wanted. Because Quinacridone colors are supposed to be the "High Performance" colors, I got Quinacridone in several colors; Red, Rose, Pink, Coral, Turquoise, and Purple.  I love richly pigmented color so those were obvious choices for me. Since I love to paint floral stamps, I decided to go with colors and tones that I would often see there.  I chose 18 colors to start and I still haven't put them in a palette, preferring at this time to use my little porcelain flower.  If you want a quick read about Quinacrindone, check out the "Derivatives" section at this link over on Wikipedia.  It's very interesting and not a long winded technical explanation.  Well, not too much anyway. You can read the whole thing if you like but this was enough information for me.

I've been watching some Anna Mason Tutorials and once we get moved and settled into our new home this summer, I really want to paint using a square porcelain dish for my palette the way she does.  In an attempt not to have to move anything more, I am not getting a porcelain plate until that time.  Most of them come in sets of at least 4, so that would be 4 more things to move.  If you're interested in knowing all of the Daniel Smith colors I chose, let me know and I'll be happy to write a bit more about it. I found them at a great price over at MerrieArtist.com.  I also know that Ellen Hutson carries them.  As I've taken a few classes over the last few years, I already had a variety of brushes including the popular Silver Black Velvet Series and also the Silver White Series.  In the Silver Black Series I have sizes 2, 4, 6, 8 and in the Silver White series I have Treble 0, 2, 4 6, and 8.  The Silver White brushes are easily stained but as my friend Emily said, they are very nice brushes.  You can find the Silver White brushes on Amazon.com and Simon Says Stamp is where I got my Silver Black Velvet brushes.

Now that I've explained all that, I wanted to use a few of the Daniel Smith Watercolors to paint this poinsettia.  This stamp, Stampendous Create-A-Poinsettia, was one of the first ones I got when I started getting serious about card making.  I like it because it is a large area and an outline image.  I confess, I am not crazy about painting something so small that you can't see the detail I've put in it with layers of watercolor.  By the same token, if you don't know when to quit adding layers of watercolor, that is just as bad and I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of that today. Ha ha! Add to that my thing about adding shimmer and shine to everything and I'm not to sure you can see the depth in my layers for all the Twinkling going on.  It's important to note that when you add a water based solution to watercolors, they may reactivate slightly although I heat set mine a bit from the backside to make sure they were dry.  I had let my panel air dry, but I wanted that extra bit of insurance.  I tried to use a light hand with the Tonic Aqua Shimmer Pen so I wouldn't mess up all my hard work but I need more practice at that.  I hadn't used that kind before so I didn't know how much shimmer would come out.  It could stand to be a lot less.

I started with a panel of Arches Hot Press Watercolor Paper and stamped my image with Versamark then heat set it using Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder which is my favorite - still.  I keep trying some other brands that are out there but Simon remains my favorite.  I like WOW! Gold Rich Pale, but it's more money for less product and as much heat embossing as I do, I want my choice to be as economical as possible.  The simple fact is that I just haven't found another Gold that I like as much. I also use a larger container for my Gold Embossing Powder and it takes far fewer of the Simon Says Stamp brand to fill my container.  I always have a few extras on hand in case I knock something over or whatever.  I have MS so my coordination isn't great and that's not as far fetched as you might think. *Ö*  In fact, I know this from personal experience. *Ü*

For this card, I kept the colors pretty simple by using Deep Sap Green, Phthalo Green, Quinacridone Pink, Alizarin Crimson, and a tiny touch of Moonglow to deepen the pink.  The thing about watercolor is that it will be different each and every time depending on your mix of pigment to water and how much of each color you put in.  For the way I use watercolor, I doubt I will ever need any additional colors ever, but I want to keep all my options open. I am hoping that as I get more comfortable with the medium and as I practice that I might someday be able to do simple "painterly" style watercolor.  It's a little dream I have but I know I'll never get there without practice.

In the interest of showing you that everything I make is far from perfect, I thought I would show you both of these images.  As I was about to finish up this post, I noticed that my Mistletoe Berries were lacking in dimension.  I had colored them in with a Uniball Signo Broad White Pen and put Tonic Aqua Shimmer on them but as you can see in the first image, they were just flat.  So I added some Nuvo Crystal Drops in Ivory Seashell.  There were actually three batches of Mistletoe Berries but two of them are under the label now so I didn't bother with them.  Sometimes though, I am my own worst enemy and mess something up by going back to add something to it. So far, this one has survived my efforts to improve it.

My card base is Vintage Cream Cardstock from Papertrey, the Green Shimmer Cardstock is some left from a many years ago scrapbooking project and I die cut it with my favorite A2 Stitched Rectangle Die from WPLUS9.  The watercolor panel was die cut with the largest Simon Say Stamp Stitched Rectangle Die.

I haven't blogged in a week, so I feel like this post might be a bit scattered.  If you hung in with me all this time, thank you so much!  Have a great day everyone and thank you so much for stopping by.  The supplies I've used are linked below for your convenience (Affiliate Links may be used at no additional cost to you).  Simon Says Stamp also has a nice selection of Daniel Smith Watercolors which you can find here.

Arches Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper 9 x 12 #140 Shop at: SSS	Cuttlebug Shop at: SSS	Kokuyo Long Dot Runner Adhesive Shop at: SSS	Nuvo Crystal Drops Ivory Seashell Shop at: SSS
PTI Vintage Cream Cardstock Shop at: PTI	Silver Black Velvet Size 2 Shop at: SSS	Silver Black Velvet Size 4 Shop at: SSS	Silver Black Velvet Size 6 Shop at: SSS
Silver Black Velvet Size 8 Shop at: SSS	SSS Antique Gold Embossing Powder Shop at: SSS	SSS Stitched Rectangles Dies Shop at: SSS	Stampendous Create-A-Poinsettia Stamp Shop at: SSS
Teflon Bone Folder Shop at: SSS	Tonic Aqua Shimmer Pen Shop at: SSS	Versamark Ink Shop at: PTI | SSS	Wagner Heat Tool Shop at: SSS
WPLUS9 Gift Card Layers Designer Dies Shop at: SSS