Watercolor and Doodles in a tiny book.

Today I just wanted to do something simple, splash some water color on a paper and doodle.  

When trying to decide what paper to use, I remembered that I just saw some tiny books I made a couple of years ago.  And they are made with water color paper. 

In the summer of 2018, while visiting the Bay Area in California, my daughter and I attended a workshop by Andrea Chebeleu at her craftstore/Atelier: "A work of Heart". It wasn't the first time we attended a workshop at this lovely place and I certainly hope it wasn't the last. 

Where we made a lot of different types of books. in this picture you see the ones I made on the left and the one my then 11year old daughter made. 

So I decided to use this booklet first. 

I added some Schmincke Akademie and Hordam Aquarell watercolor spashes. I used the colors (524, 551, 553 and 509)

I then decided I would draw an "organic: 'tangle on each page. 

The tangles I used are called: 

Algae, Featherfall, Coroline, Cartoosh, Toonzeez, Dooledo, Blooming Butter (variant because I messed up :), Flooka, Zander, Laria, Sochi, Fennell, Festune Too, Kuki, Finery, Pflandi, Stinger, Mimi-meemer, Henna-Drum, Angle Fish, Bunzo, Zinger, Phicops, Deflour, Asclep, 'dillo, Pepper, Verdigogh, Dragonair, Quib, Cat-kin

Some of the names might be incorrect, this is how I marked them in my collection book of Tangles. And not all of them are Official Zentangle tangles. 

It was super fun to work in a little book, and since I have all the supplies maybe I should make a bunch more and draw in all the tangles I like.  Check back later for a post about it ;)

66th Birthday Card

About half May I saw a card on Uzi.Didz Instagram.

It was an older post from March 24th 2021 but the design reminded me of some flowers I have in my front garden, white and purple Allium. Immediately I decided it would be perfect for my mothers 66th Birthday Card. Her Birthday is only now, on August 27th, so I had some time to figure out how exactly I wanted to make it. I googled some flower clip arts and settled on one that would make the card look like another of my front garden flowers: Hydrangea.

Unlike Uzi I wasn't going to fussy cut that many flowers, so I used my Silhouette studio to print and cut the flowers. And in between I colored all the flowers with my copics in pink and lila and added some fine lines with a micron 0.1 fineliner.

Once I cut out all the flowers I die-cut some foam and cardstock circles as the bases. I think Uzi glued all the flowers down, but I decided to sew them on with a sequin and a sea bead in the centre. I have a stash of beads and sequins, so I'm happy to be able to use them on a card for once :)

I managed to get 61 flowers on the stacked circles, I decided to add 5 more on the card itself. 

To get 66 in the flower itself, I should have planned better how many flowers I needed on each layer.

Once the main flower was done I took some watercolored paper I made while testing out color Burst pigment powders. I think I used Indigo, Fushia and Orchid, but I'm not sure. 

I stamped a round stamp that says "Jarig" (means Birthday in Dutch) from the set La Provence nr 110 by Studiolight with Versafine Onyx black and set it with clear embossing powder. I then cut it out with my circle cutter. The number 66 was die cut from the set "Numbered balloons" by Avery Elle, I just cut off the balloon tip. 

The numbers and the sentiment were mounted on foam before adding it to the card. 

As the finishing touches I added the 5 missing little flowers to the card and also drew in a stem. 

The card was made in at the beginning of July, mostly so I could give the card to my dad when they visited and I did not have to ship it across Europe and risk it getting damaged. It also took a couple of days to get all the flowers stitched. So I was happy I started early enough. 

Thanks for making the time to read the post. Until next time MH.

Bonus: this is the card I made for my dad, who's birthday is 2 days later than my mums :)

Stamps: "Beam me up" and "Monster Mash" by Lawn Fawn and "Monsters" by Avery Elle, colored with copics.