Capture the Details

my creative process

I am working on a new product and I thought I'd share a bit of the behind-the-scenes process that is involved. I want to make a set of watercolor leaves (similar to my watercolor flowers) so I started off with pencil sketches that I inked in using a Micron pen...

 
 
Once the leaves are inked in, I move to my light box, laying a piece of white printer paper over my original illustrations (I have two seperate layers that I scan in ~ my ink illustrations and my watercolors). I use my watercolor brush and watercolor crayons to color in the leaves...

 

 
Once the watercolors are dry I scan them in (and the ink illustrations) and work some magic in Photoshop and Illustrator, combining the layers to make this.....

 
And then I can play around making fun things, like this cute branch full of 'leaves'....

 

On the agenda tonight: printing out my new leaves and getting them cut out and packaged for sale in my shop! :-)

Ben + water = one wet and happy kid

It's officially summer so the water balloons and squirt guns are being used hard. By Ben in particular - he is such a boy. He loves to get soaking wet.

Ben and Sarah filled regular balloons with water and then let the water shoot out the open end, like Ben will show you here - 
 
 
And squirt guns - he set his on the ground and pressed the barrel down onto the plunger so he could squirt himself in the face....

 
 
 
Yup. Ben + water = one wet and happy kid! :-)

the creative gene

I am all set for Ben's baseball playoff game. I take along a plastic cup filled with watercolor pencils and a watercolor brush, ink pens, pencils and my sketchbook and idea notebook....

 
He has to get there about an hour early for warm-ups. So, I use the time for some creative play time.

I find it neat that both Sarah and Ben have inherited my creative gene. Benjamin loves to do oragami. He has a book with instructions (looks like Latin to me!) and he is able to follow along and make some neat stuff, like this penguin....

 
He recently made a sculpture for Sarah - a bigfoot (we all know Sarah loves bigfoot)....

 
Sarah and Ben both love to draw. They made Father's Day cards for Todd....

the fronts...

 
the insides....

 
...and, of course, the backs.....

 
I keep their art in albums, chronologically. So when you open each album you are greeted with colorful squiggles and blobs. As time passes, forms start to take shape and then things become recognizable. I will have to take some pictures of each album for a future post - I think you'll enjoy it as much as I do! :-)

moving up

Well, another year under their belts. Yesterday was the last day of school for Sarah and Ben.

I had to take the traditional last-day-of-school-getting-off-the-bus photos. I warned Sarah that I would be taking pictures when they came home and she told me she'd pose. Benny got off first...

 
And then my little girlfriend came along....

 
 She was ready. Strike a pose, Sarah.

 
Goofy girl. :-)

Last Friday was the 6th grade moving up ceremony and I am very proud of Sarah ~ she got two awards. I had her pose in front of the banner I made.....

 
And then when we came home I had her pose for a few more pictures ("Oh, mooooooooom."). We got out the sidewalk chalk and made a backdrop. And, Sarah wrote "HI" in front of the garage to greet us when we come home....

 
 

 
Sophie had to get in on the picture-taking action....

 
I leave you with an outtake picture and a question: Can you touch your nose with your tongue? Sophie can.

 
:-)

fabric flowers

I am working on a project that requires fabric flowers and they are so pretty I thought I'd share....

 
 
 
 
 
Even the scraps on the floor are pretty...

 

I'll be posting an 'end of the school year' update soon! :-)

elementary school graduation banner

Sarah will be graduating from elementary school this year - in a mere few days, actually. Her class's moving-up and awards ceremony is on Friday and I volunteered to help with decorations. I made a banner to hang on the wall that can be used as a backdrop for picture-taking.

 
I started with a roll of white kraft paper and an idea. I love the quote from Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the places you'll go!", and that was the springboard for my banner. I rolled out the paper on my kitchen floor and started sketching and painting.

 
I thought it would be neat for a photo-op after the ceremony - the child can stand in front of the banner and have his or her picture taken. I wanted a large frame - big enough to frame the child's face - and a banner over the frame that would announce that this very special child is a *graduate* and will be moving on to bigger things! :-)

(I used a fan to speed the drying process. Worked like a charm.)

 
I sketched everything out in pencil first and then used acrylic paints to color in my letters and shapes. I decided after I had the word 'graduate' painted for the banner above the frame that I didn't like the color and the fact that all the letters were the same color. So, I didn't worry about it - I made it work. I painted the turquoise rectangle over the letters because I decided I would make a 3-D 'graduate' banner to cover my mistake.

I had to move up to the kitchen table for awhile so my puppy wouldn't step on the banner when Todd came home from work. She tends to get a bit excited. :-)

 
You can see I started to get the paper ready for the banner above the frame (and to hide my boo-boo!)... I cut irregular rectangles from cardstock and then painted each one a different color. I did use the orange, lime green and dark turquoise from the right side to pull the design together and keep it cohesive.

 
 
I used a black Sharpie marker to outline everything and give the banner a fun, cartoon-like feel.

 
I put the school name (edited on here for privacy), class and school year in a box below the quote.

 
The 'graduate' banner has foam pop-dots under each flag. I used the black marker to draw curly ribbons hanging from the nails (also 3-D) and an actual ribbon across the banner and draping down the sides. I used glue dots to hold the curls in the real ribbon. The white letters in 'graduate' are my design sketched on plain white printer paper, cut out and outlined with the black marker.

Now, I just hope that the parents and kids will want to use this as a photo-op on Friday. I know Sarah will be standing in front of it! :-)