Happy Holidays

 I hope you all have had wonderful Christmas.

Like many around the world the Holidays have been a little more quiet.

We are in lockdown here in my province as of today.

Luckily I was able to celebrate Christmas with my immediate family. 

We were only to have 10 people in our house during Christmas, but as of today, we can now only have  those that live in our household. 

I am sure going to miss my daughter, son in law and my grandbabies....but so far it is only for 14 days.

Now onto some fun things.

Christmas cards!!!

I wanted to do something new this year for my cards.

I wanted to play with some water colours!

I drew my images and then coloured and shaded them with my Inktense water-colour coloured pencils.

I have been trying to play more with my supplies....got em, use em...right?!?

Funny as I am looking at the card fronts, I am thinking I should have added some shadows to the babbles and maybe some more colour to the background.

Always a critic to my own work, lol.

I hope you are all safe and have a creative day. 

Tracy 

❤️❤️❤️

Dance in the Rain..Art Journal and a video

It is a photo heavy post, but I wanted to share my process to making my art journal page.

And for an extra bonus, I made a video as well :)

What I won't do for you guys, teehee.

The prompt that Caroline and I had for this month was to use a girl image on our page.

I used this adorable stamp designed my Angie Blom called Lizzy Girl from the Angiegirl collection from Unity stamps.

I have to say, I am loving my page.

Each page I do, I like a bit more than the last :)

Ok…lets get started:
I wanted to have a border to this page and I wanted it to be a vine border, as I was going for an "April showers bring May flowers" theme.
I used Archival ink as I was planning on using my new water colour pencils.
Using Archival ink, I didn't have to worry about my stamping smearing or bleeding when the water is added.
I wanted to use mists for the background, so I made a mask of this image so the mists didn't go on my main image….I then used embossing powder and heat embossed my main image it to make sure the mists didn't bleed under my main image.

But before misting I wanted to add some texture with some background stamps.
I was trying to achieve some texture or dimension without adding bulk from papers.
By using the mask I made, I didn't have to worry about my background stamps going on my main image :)

Now to pick out my mist colours.

Time for some colour :)
Because I have heat embossed my image and made a mask for it, I don't have to worry about my mists seeping on my image.
I used this technique on my "Faceless Beauty" card.

See how crisp and clean my image stayed by using that mask and heat embossing it :)

Now to add some Rain drops.
I used a stencil and some embossing paste to make my rain drops.
I put the mask back on my image when I did the rain drops.
I know they look more like snow drops right now as the embossing paste is white….which would have worked perfectly for last week as we had snow ;)

I also coloured in the leaf border and my image with my new Inktense water colour pencils….which I have to say…I love!!!!
They blend so nicely and the part that sold me on these pencils, is that they are permanent when dry..I am going to have lots of fun with these in the future, and the colours are so Intense ;)

Now to make my snow drops into rain drops.
I need to add some colour.
I used some distress inks….what I should have done was put the stencil back on the raindrops and then inked them, as the ink also went on the background.
Which just added some more colour (which I like) but at the same time the rain drops weren't as prominent (which I didn't like).

In order to rectify that, I used my Pitt pen/marker and added a darker colour to the right side of the rain drop to add some depth.
I then used my white sharpie marker to add some highlights to the left side of the rain drops.
I have to say, I love how they turned out :)

I decided to not go with the "April Showers" them and go with this quote "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but Learning to Dance in the Rain"
When I showed my daughter Heather my finished page, she said it was nice…but why isn't my girl dancing, lol.
I told her, she hasn't learned the lesson yet, lol.

How adorable is this image!
I love all images that have umbrellas.

Look at how vibrant these colours are.
I love the umbrella colour….I think it is my favourite one in the set…but then again, this is the first time using these pencils, teehee.

And the finished page!!!
I am so happy with how this one turned out :)

As I had mentioned, I made a video on my process.

I think it took longer to upload the video and this blog post then it did to make this page, lol.

If you would like to watch the video on a full screen, just click on my name "Tracy's Treasures24"

If you want to check out "Caroline's art page" just click on her name :)
Her page is so soft and pretty, like a warm summers day.

After sharing my sneak peek yesterday, Caroline suggested I enter it in "The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge".  She knows what is going on with challenges :)

I hope you all had a very Creative Day :)

Tracy :)