Paper-Paisleys Art Adventures: January 21st Weekly Post

Hello again!

That week whizzed by for me, how was yours?

It rained quite a bit here today finally. And mild temps for a few days then Saturday and Sunday it's ICEMAGEDDON! Everybody's hyping it. The forecast has it being 56F at 1am Saturday and a continuous drop in temp down to 29F at 5am Sunday. Then down to 21F early Monday morning, before a few days of 40's. Wow, IF that happens, that's a really deep front moving down. We usually get shallow/linear intense ones. It's gonna rain all day Saturday, which is why they are using the ICE prefix. That part's not fun and I'm not even going anywhere. High humidity cold is bone-chilling, so ugh! But seriously, nobody down here knows how to drive on ice and they don't even sell snow tires or chains, so everyone should just stay home IMNSHO!

And along those lines...

The theme this week at Sunday Postcard Art is Blue Monday and hosted by Mandy.

Hey, I've been retired for almost two decades now but I can still feel that feeling.

Mine was the Sunday night anxiety thing, so very little sleep sometimes.

With all this extra house-buying work, I definitely felt it lately.

I looked in my digital files, found that background from The Digital Design Dock Etsy, the not-listening woman from Elena Zinski Etsy and the Polkadoodles snarky sentiment, opening them all up in PSE. I created the Mondays in PSE. I printed out all the different elements after roughly resizing them all in PSE. Then I fussy cut them, arranged and adhered them to the blue base, adhered that to a black 4x6 base and added some orange Art by Marlene die cut border pieces from my stash to finish.

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And now, it just so happens that I've made 2 religious-themed birthday cards lately.

So I grouped them together to share:

First one is for a really good girlfriend. I've used Art Impressions stamps with watercolors and Tombows. The sentiment die cuts are by Amazon and Stamplorations. The verse (cut with a Spellbinders die and edged with a purple Promarker) came with the path stones. SU card base, watercolor paper and the focal image is edged in a tiny border german scrap from my stash. I bought white, black and gold, and am glad I did. Harder to find now.

And the sketch I used, but I flipped it horizontally.

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For this card to a niece, I used Art Impressions stamps and watercolors again to create the lighthouse scene. I really like how the rocks turned out and how luminous the lighthouse color is. I stamped using a very light Versafine Clair, one of the new ones. And heat-embossed in clear powder so the lines create dams against the watercolor and if you use a light color it will look luminous. Plus I'm digging that color of turquoise, though I've no memory of it, lol. I'd picked up a tip about birds in the sky. If you want white birds against a dark sky like I have here, after you finish your sky then stamp the birds with a light grey ink. Then go over the lines with a white gel pen or white acrylic and a liner brush. Or just draw the birds freehand. So I did the first suggestion here. The card base and mats are white and navy Recollections, the designer papers are KIMemories, MFT waves border dies and the vertical writing in white on dp is a Dark Room Door stamp in Versamark and white embossing powder.