Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Week Three of the 30 Day Coloring Challenge

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Day 16: Kathy's Colored Pencil Bear


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Day 17: Kathy's Sweet Birdie Background Card

 
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Day 18:  Kathy's Video

I did this all in watercolor using markers and a water pen.


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Day 19: Kathy's video on Coloring Melody (and showing a cute screen door die
which is no longer being made -- phooey!)
 
 Click on photos to enlarge to see details.

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Day 20: Kathy's Mermaid Card

I had a lot of background to cover, so used yellow watercolor today and a flat bristled
water brush to cover in the large areas, then used the smaller tipped water brush
to add in the color around the lettering. The other colors were marker ink that I scribbled
out on a white ceramic tile that I'm using as a palette and 1 drop of water.


I'm whittling down my stack of divider covers for my faith-book binder.
I'm following Stephanie Ackerman's Documented Faith.

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Day 21: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!


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Day 22: Kathy's Joyous Snowman!


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Day 23: Kathy's Razzle Dazzle Card

I added something different to this coloring sheet as I was looking
through some of Mary Engelbreit's illustrations for another project,
I found that it looked like she had stamped solid stamps
on some of her backgrounds, so I took a small heart stamp and
colored it in with a Marvy brush marker and stamped it several times on my green
background. I also added dots to the letters
and made the blue tablecloth a plaid one.


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Day 24: Kathy has a couple of fun cards on her site today!

 
 
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Day 25: Kathy's Easter Basket Card

 I think I forgot to mention that these coloring sheets are the size of standard
sheets of copy paper -- 8.5 x 11 inches and they are from
Mary Engelbreit's new coloring book that I received for my birthday
which is really close to Christmas.


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Day 26: Another video & fairy card by Kathy!

This was a tough sheet to water-color as the leaves and branches were intertwined
and small. I've got three more dividers to make for my Documented Faith-book
and then I will be done! Yippee!
 
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Day 27: Kathy's Healthy Eating Resolutions

Today was an off day for me.  I was just not feeling it.
The more I added to this page, the worse it got.
I'm sure Mary Engelbreit has had off days too, when nothing seemed to go right,
but I'm adding this to prove I worked on something.


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Day 28: "It's All About You" featured coloring

I decided that I needed lighter colored watercolors,
so we visited a new Hobby Lobby in the town south of us
and I looked high and low for a paint set with pastel colors
and finally found one by Sargent Art,
however, I'm not sure I like them. The cakes dry super fast,
so I had trouble keeping them moist. And I think of watercolor being
translucent and these were opaque,
with a gritty texture like chalk when they dried. We will see how they work
with colored pencils over the top.

 
 
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Day 29: Two Videos from Kathy

I struggled with coloring this. The chalky paint covered over some of the
lines, so I had to go back over the lines with a fine-line Sharpie.
The colored pencils did not want to layer very well, so I really
had to burnish it to get it to stick. I'm not at all pleased with
how the girl turned out. And the black lettering is covering over
some uglies underneath. sigh!

 

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Last Day of Kathy's 30 Day Coloring Challenge :
Kathy's gorgeous butterfly card + video

 
Have you ever been so mad you want to cry?
Well, I'm that mad.
The luck page has had a couple of days to dry
and I worked on coloring it in with my colored pencils like always,
but noticed when I took the eraser to a small mistake, oh, oh,
the paint disappeared and I wasn't erasing that hard. It crumbled into dust
and the white paper showed underneath. I continued anyway, got it all colored in,
and got it ready to attach it to my divider to mat it and the double-face tape
on one corner snagged the divider paper too early and you know,
you have to catch it quick before it gets bonded to the paper, so I went to roll it back
and put it down correctly, and wiped almost all the coloring off that corner.
If I had known that watercolor paint was going to crumble away like that I
would have used spray fixative before coloring it in with the pencils, however, I didn't
know and hadn't had that trouble before with my other cheapie watercolor paints
 and therefore had to fix the smudged letters.
So then, I wasn't sure how fixative would work on waxy colored pencils,
so I decided to laminate
the page after I carefully matted the rest of the divider.
It got stuck in the laminator.
Now, mind you, this is my last coloring project for the challenge
and my last divider for my Documented Faith notebook
and would you believe what it says? It's almost laughable, but not quite.
I'm uploading it anyway to prove all what I say is true.
 
 
 And by the way, I'm not recommending that "paint" to anyone,
especially not to kids or adults with allergies to dust or asthma, like me. 
I bought that 24 cake count tray of watercolor chalk
in the fine art paint department of Hobby Lobby --
all I got to say is, if Hobby Lobby wants to continue selling it,
it should be sold in the kid's section with a warning label --
"Persons with allergies take note: This paint turns to dust when dry.
It is not a permanent coloring agent."
 
The end! 

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Second Week of the 30-Day Coloring Challenge

 
Here's a second page of Mary Engelbreit's coloring book.
I don't know if you can see it, but I love the texture of the marker this time
as I swirled it  around in circles to color in the background.
Click on pic to enlarge for comparison between today's photo
and tomorrow's when you come back to see it.
Tomorrow I will add in shading with a colored pencil.
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Day 9: Kathy's Baby Card

I colored this blind, that is,
although I own about 65 books + by Mary Engelbreit,
I didn't find this illustration in any of my collection
to study and color by, so I added in the shading by the seat of my pants!
Oh, and that's washi tape around the edges.
I attached it to my February divider in my Documented Faith binder.
I will laminate it at the end of the month as I want to use the
other side as a bulletin board to tape quotes, notes, and stuff to it.

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Day 10:  Another Baby Card of Kathy's

 
Some of these Mary Engelbreit illustrations for her coloring book
must have been created for a later calendar which I don't have.
So again I'm coloring blind, because I don't know what colors
this illustration was originally, so I'm coloring it my own.
I got to the very last thing -- coloring the sky --
and I had to give my baby blue marker the last rites
'cause it dead -- no more ink.
So then it became a mad scrabble to find something
I could use -- and my baby blue ink pad also got the last rites --
and the next shade darker was used like a watercolor.
My water pen came out to play and I got the job done.
I don't know if you can tell, near the tail, I had a little disaster of too much water,
then I remembered the little trick that Stephanie Ackerman recommends
and that is to pounce a folded paper towel on the bubble of paint to
soak up some of the excess. It didn't quite get it all, which I tried to fix
with the white galaxy marker. Come back tomorrow to see the transformation
with the dry coloring pencil shading.
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Day 11: Kathy's Celebrate Card

It's all in the layering!

 
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Day 12: Kathy's Out of this World Card

Today I decided, since I didn't have anything but an inkpad to color sky,
I'd experiment using inkpads to "watercolor" today's new coloring sheet.
You need flexible inkpad lids to squeeze the inkpad and lid together.
I added 3 drops of water to the ink in the lid and stirred it up
to make my watercolor "paint" until. . .
I ran out of inkpad colors. sigh!
I had to break out the big Marvy brush markers for the rest of the colors,
but the ink in them also became watercolor paint.
You only need to add 1 or 2 drops of water to make it paint
on your palette.
Remember, your "paint" will lighten up some as it dries.

 
The paper is lightweight printer paper, so you can't scrub it like watercolor paper.
You can only go over it once or twice before it starts pilling.
It also wrinkled a bit. I should tape it to my table with painter's tape
before I watercolor it like my mother does -- she's a watercolor artist.
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Day 13:  Kathy's Accents on Roses

 
I don't think this counts as coloring since I water-colored the
heart paper used inside this Valentine on Day 7,
however I was crafting as I had an ATC club meeting to attend the
next day. Our theme was "dreams" and I also wanted to give the gals in our
group a Valentine, so I combine the two ideas.
The white punched heart insert is an idea I believe I got from Jennifer McGuire.
And the flip-flops represent feet -- you can talk the talk and never reach your dreams
or you can put feet on your dreams and walk the walk.

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Day 14:  Congrats to all that made Kathy's Coloring List today!

I think I need to take lessons in coloring from some of those people who made Kathy's list. Wow! However, I know I am improving!
I didn't really color today in ATC club, however, we made the usual jam,
which means, everybody donates three cards in the colors pre-selected,
in this case, lavender and pink. Then three people add stuff to those
three cards. After the third person works on one card, it is put into a pile
and when all cards are finished, there is are three drawings for the cards and we each
get to select one three times. The top two I worked on and the bottom one was
just plain pretty!

 
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Day 15: Kathy's coloring tutorial (orchids)

 
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 Update: Continue with the third week of the 30-Day Coloring Challenge here.