A New Camera & Watercolor Wash 3 Ways!

Howdy folks! I thought you might be tired of the non zooming out of focus videos I have been sharing since I dropped my good video camera so yesterday I bit the bullet and bought a new one. I agonized over the choices, decided on one, but was still hesitant to buy thinking maybe shooting video on my daughters point & shoot cyber-shot was OK, and it was OK but not really what I wanted (plus, hello, I certainly did not want to drop HER camera!) So I decided to go with a Samsung H90, it had everything I wanted (and stuff I didn’t know I wanted until I read about it LOL!) and it was what I wanted to spend (about $150) and I am pleased as punch with it. Here is a still picture I took with it:

Examples of Open Drip, Wet in wet and controlled wash.

And here is the video, testing out the camera and showing how to do watercolor washes, 2 birds, one stone;)

I didn’t edit the video, I uploaded it straight to you tube using the intelli-studio software that came with it. You can edit with the software too but I wanted to see what the raw video looked like, good enough for me! BTW I took it to my sons Little League game last night (he pitched the entire game-a shutout!!!) and I could zoom right in and get a great shot of him pitching, the camera has 52x optical zoom! Not bad for $136 including sales tax! The camera also happens to be on sale until tomorrow at Best Buy and my store had a promotion that let me save $20 more so I am one happy videographer! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Learn to Paint Lilacs: Free Video!

I picked a bunch of lilacs from the big tree at my parent house this weekend. I couldn’t believe they were in bloom already! I love their fragrance and seeing them all around my house in cheerful mason jars just makes me happy!

Lilacs are so easy to paint too! Here is a quick video showing you how to paint them in watercolor. You can even your children’s watercolor paints (The Prang brand is really good but any will work) if that is all you have. You will also need some watercolor paper, a #6 round (or the brush that comes with the kids’ set) and a 1/2″ flat (for the leaves) as well as a little salt (table salt will work just fine) and you will be painting lilacs in 10 minutes!

Wasn’t that easy? Hmmm, it’s like the staples “easy button” for painting!  I like to mount these small paintings on greeting cards. It takes the pressure off knowing that every painting doesn’t need to go in a frame. Woulden’t it be special to receive a hand painted card? Oops, I just realized that I forgot to sign it!

 

If you enjoyed this free video tutorial please check out the beginner watercolor painting packets I have for sale at Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff. You get easy to follow step by step instruction with lots of photos all for $3 each! The birch trees kit is on sale for $1 so you can try with little risk.

 

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Let’s Paint Fireworks!

Howdy folks, I hope you had a safe and fun 4th of July. We took the kids to see the fireworks for the first time and it was amazing, I even took 70 pictures of fireworks and most of them came out well! The challenge at oriental stamp art this week was fireworks so I thought I would do a tutorial video on painting some (I say painting but it is super easy, you need not be an artist!) here is a card with one of the papers I made. I will show you a scrapbook page later this week using the big firework paper. The dragonfly and sentiment rubber stamp is from About Art Accents and the little swatch of paper in the lower RH corner is from the Grunge Flowers CS from Nicecrane Designs (it covers up a stamping boo-boo 😉

Stamps: About Art Accents, Paper: Gold pattern 9DCWV), Inked Background (see video) Swatch on right (Nicecrane), Markers: Copic, Ink: Memento

So, wanna see how I made the “fireworks” paper I used on this card as well as two other fun techniques? Well have a gander at my new video:

Do try these easy techniques, they are fun! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!