QOR Water Color Cards

I made a couple of simple cards over the weekend. Stamped and water colored, with some nice matting. Normally, when I color images, I use twinkling H2O water colors or markers. For these, I used some new tube water colors I recently purchased - QOR from Golden. I love Golden acrylic paints and decided to use my Christmas Amazon gift cards to try their new water colors. 
I have never worked with tubes of water colors before, but I found them pretty easy to work with. I bought an inexpensive plastic palette with a locking lid. I squirted a bit out of each tube into the palette and used as much of the paint as I needed. I left the rest to harden a bit and then closed up my palette. There was no spillage and when I went to use the paint again a few days later, I was still able to use the paint simply by adding more water. Since I love the Golden palette, I really like these colors. Especially because they seem more saturated than my travel water color palette or water color pencils that I would otherwise use.
If you make cards that involve coloring images, I'm curious as to what you use. Paint? Markers? Colored pencils? 

Some Thoughts and Questions on Card Making

I took a stroll through my old posts with the "card" label and am featuring a few of them on my blog today to accompany some thoughts and questions on card making.

I enjoy making cards with ephemera and collage sheets. Julie Kirk of Notes on Paper also makes ephemera based cards.

I also enjoy making cards that feature my photographs (not on collage sheets).

I like to stamp and embellish. Karen of Random Reflections makes lots of wonderful cards using stamps (and recently lots of dies).

Sometimes I stamp and color. The second card is definitely inspired by the amazing Jacky of Scrappy Jacky (the Queen of paper layering).

I also like making Christmas cards.

When I look at these cards, they feel very much like me. I think I will play with these styles this month,and I'm wondering:

Do you have a favorite among these various styles?

 Also, I would like to try some new things. And, I'm looking for ideas.

Can you suggest any good blogs for cards (other than the three wonderful card makers I mentioned here)? Also, do you know of any good sketch sites or challenge sites for cards?

And  I have one more big question:

What do you do with the cards you make?

Sometimes I send out cards, but, to be honest, not as often as I could. And I tend to make cards in advance and have a big supply (I probably have about 50 in my stash right now), rather than make cards as I need them (although I do that occasionally).

Sometimes I make cards simply to learn or practice a technique. And I am happy to hold on to these as samples. 

I used to sell cards at craft fairs, but I haven't done that in quite a while. I occasionally think about opening an etsy shop or trying to sell things on EBay, but I think that might be more trouble than it is worth.

I have sent cards to Operation Write Home. 

Sometimes I bundle up cards and give them as gifts.

I'll be off line for a few days, as Clara and I take a trip to check out Eastern Kentucky University. So, I'll leave this post up for a few days in hopes of getting your answers to these questions before I jump into some serious card making.

Some final thoughts on art journaling

I spent the month of March exploring art journaling, and I have rediscovered my love of this artistic outlet. I have found that I really enjoy mixed media collage and simple sketching and water painting. I celebrated a little by buying some new water colors (Golden QOR). I made this page as an index sheet of sorts. It features flags and some Miro-inspired figures. I really like these creations and plan to incorporate them in future pages. 

The one thing I never got around to re-exploring this month was face-drawing. And, frankly, I'm not sure when I will. I will definitely continue to make art journal pages, but I will make pages that I find easy and fun and satisfying, rather than ones that feel like a lot of work. And right now, I think faces would be too much work. I see myself continuing to art journal a couple times a week. I'll add that to scrapbooking several times a month. And doing photography several times a week. That feels like a good mix so far.

I'm looking forward to focusing on card making this month, and I'll be back tomorrow with some initial thoughts and questions on that subject.

Photo Pairs: Surf and Turf

Last weekend, my daughter's track team competed at a meet in the California beach town of Santa Barbara. The venue is right across the street from the beach, and, after the completion of the meet, we all went down to the beach to play and have dinner. The students very quickly divided into two groups - those that dove right into the water and those that stood on the shore, watching. I'm calling these two photos "surf and turf" and linking up with Helena's photo pairs meme this week.
Of course there were some runners who wanted to help some of the reluctant ones into the water:

And why not? People were enjoying body surfing and cooling off.

 Although some remained unconvinced!

Setting an Intention for April: Card Making

This month, I am continuing my exploration of the various parts of my creative life by setting an intention to focus on card making. For many years, I taught card making classes and bought tons of stamps for cards. Now, the supplies sit lonely and unused. I purged a lot of them two years ago.  Am I ready to give the rest of them up? I don't know.  I really am not sure where card making fits in my creative life (or if it does at all), but I am looking forward to the journey.  

Take that Mr.Prufrock!

This may be my favorite art journal page from this month, and it comes from a very unlikely source. This semester in A.P. English, my daughter Clara studied the poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. I helped her analyze and understand the poem and one line stuck with me, the saddest line in the poem to me - "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me." 
As this page came together, I thought about the poem and the mermaids. And I changed the journaling to read: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. And I know they will sing to you." It is, not surprisingly, a message to my teenage daughter. 
As my month long revisit of art journaling comes to an end, I hope that I continue to hear the mermaids singing to me. And I hope that they sing to you. 

A Sunny Weekend of Racing

How was your weekend? Mine was spent in the lovely southern California town of Santa Barbara with Clara's track team. I watched my beautiful girl run through a great deal of pain in her hip.

 

To help her two relay teams - the 4x800 meters and the distance medley (girls run 1200m, 400m, 800m and 1600m) - win medals! 

It was a very fun weekend. And now on Monday, we're off to have that hip looked at. . . . because we're hoping for a lot more running this spring!