water colour pencils | The Contented Crafter

Hello friends! If you have been following my posts you know that I have been busy taking a few courses and learning lots……. Yesterday was the day when I decided it was time to return to my journal and create a page just for me, by me and without following anybody else’s guide lines.

Happily, I discovered I had a few more tricks in my bag!

It was time to create a page using one of my favourite quotes; Gandhi’s ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. It’s an exhortation to stop blaming, stop whining, stop waiting for someone else to fix things and get on and do what you can do yourself ……

I started the double page spread with three colour washes – yellow, green and red. The colours were watered down 1:3 sploshed over and left to dry.

Next I die-cut a double run of lace from my couture creations die in white card stock and lay a length to the left and right side of the double page spread, inked it up with some ‘Aged Mahogany’ Distress Ink, glued it down and left that to dry.

An hour later I lay a piece of old lace curtain over the pages and spritzed a good coat of Dylusions white over everything. Peeling back the the lace revealed a rather gorgeous, soft dappled effect.

Then I got out the water colour pencils and started drawing – I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I knew what I was going to do – I had my quote and that was about it – oh and I had just found an old Fiskars template with big butterfly wings that had appealed to me – I knew I wanted to do something with that if I could …. I drew the left side first and after that the right side just kind of drew itself.

This is the water colour pencil drawing on the left side:

Image: Contented Crafter

On the right hand page, the template made the outline of her wings and I drew and doodled inside the shape. I edged the wings with a golden yellow Sakura gel pen – gotta have a little bling somewhere right? I liked that so much that when I had the quote all written out and mounted I edged that with the same pen……… if a little bling is good, a little more is even better!

This is the water colour pencil drawing on the right side:

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Finally the edges were treated to a light coat of gold paint, around the lace to define it a bit and top and bottom of the pages with a doodle or two, date stamped and voila, finito!

Please do note that the girl is wearing a rather fabulous pair of red gumboots [galoshes, wellingtons, rain boots – depending on where in the world you are] with a big red bow with polka dots on them, because I saw a pair in a store recently and really, really wanted to buy them despite the fact that my garden is the size of a postage stamp….. As I couldn’t justify the expense the gardening gal gets to wear them instead!

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So, this is my latest page – what do you think?

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Thanks for dropping by today, do leave as note to say you’ve been – it’s always nice to hear from you 🙂 Have a great day!

Hello friends!!

Here I am again, continuing with posts of my adventures in learning how to journal in just 10 minutes a day.

This is the third spread and marks twelve days completed of the thirty.

This page began no differently to the others – me muttering darkly at the video – ‘Really?’ ‘You want me to do this?’ ‘Just this?’

But off I went obediently – the penny is beginning to drop. I might be challenged by these new processes, but in the end something quite interesting does appear, and if nothing else, I learn new ways of looking at old things.

I have to admit I do not like the dark hue of the painted page. I didn’t gesso this page so am guessing it is the quality of the paper in this journal that is leeching the brightness from my sprays, inks and paints.

This layout includes some practise pieces. I was already doodling away at the flower, practising my free-form doodles and decided to include it in this page. It is drawn in black pen and coloured with water colour pencils.

The following day I rifled through the pile of scrap paper and found the face. it was one of those 5 minute exercises where I was trying to get the eyes to come alive and I ended up taking 10 minutes on it. So she got bunged in for the Sunday entry.

The final 10 minutes was spent scribbling in a couple of thoughts,doodling in arrows and dividing lines between days and the heading, which actually took much less than 10 minutes – go figure!