Color.......

Apparently in these winter days i need some COLOR in my life... I have never played with watercolor before.... I have to tell you i had a BLAST! My camera is not handling the shine well. But let me tell you about them... 

They are 6 1/2'' square and 1 1/2'' deep wood panels. They are from a Hobby Lobby end of season 90% off sale... I think i paid less than a dollar for each of them... Yeah it was one of my jackpot sales. I thought maybe i could find a way to paint on top of them and tadaaaa! I did! 

In this case i glued water color paper to the wood panel... then just had a blast with mixing colors and just letting watercolor do its thing... Then i outlined each section with a Sharpie marker making some lines thick and leaving some thin and putting a black circle in the middle too like the middle of a flower... Then the nerve wracking part..... 

I wanted them to shine like jewels.... Sooo i covered the watercolor with Gel Gloss Medium.... No doubt about it ... it was tricky... I did make a few PostCards as experiments to see if it would work.. It will work. The trick is not to make more than one pass with your brush. If you do you run a high chance of smearing the watercolor or even pulling it up... So i added a little water to the medium to make it flow better and used a generous amount with each swipe... 

So for the most part i got away with it... Any little smears... well... just say .. 'I meant to do that' lol ..  *Mental note... if you put the gloss medium over the gold it will dull it down so save the gold for last!

Then i outlined everything with a goldleaf pen making sure to leave some black showing. I think the black added dimension and interest... I think more time spent adding thick and thin lines would have been nice too.. but i was ready to move on the next artsy/crafty adventure.. 

 These will look like little jewels on my wall.... I know the perfect place... over the garage door...Color only lives in small little niches in my home... the craft room ofcourse... and the little foyer off the kitchen where you have the option to go into the garage or laundry room or pantry... I feel the need to keep color contained.. as the rest of the house is pretty much neutral colors... But bright colors makes my creative heart sing... You?  Hope your having a great week!  Blogger is misbehaving for me this morning... Hope it all works out when i push Publish...Hugs! deb