Keep on trying

I mentioned a while back that I'd been dabbling in other mediums. Mediums other than fiber that is. Believe me, that is really really branching out. My daughter introduced me to this thing called "masking fluid". The point of it is that you use it as a resist. You paint it on an area that you want left unpainted. Then you paint around it and when all is dry, you peel off the now dry (and almost rubbery) masking fluid. It is such a satisfying thing to do!!! I've been really enjoying playing around with it. 

So far, I've done these little leaves on water colour greeting card paper.  I'm smitten!  I plan on doing a lot more!

 

You can sort of see the masking fluid being peeled off in this picture above. 

 This is the leaf after the masking fluid is peeled off. They are so satisfying to paint. They are done on watercolour cards so they will be used as greeting cards for some occasion at some point.   Here is the most recent leaf. I love how the colours bleed into each other. This is what you call wet on wet technique in watercolour. I will be exploring more of this technique in the future  

Is There Room?

If you look back over the history of this blog you will notice that it started out as a general crafts type of blog - that is there are all different sorts of crafts documented there. Sewing, painting, stencilling - you name it. 

As the years progressed I've kind of fine tuned my crafting as I've been drawn to the fibre arts. I no longer consider myself a beginning spinner. I'm quite good at it, even. (That's really hard for me to say for some reason). My knitting is quite good as well. There isn't a technique out there that I'd be hesitant to try. (... There was a time when I thought cables were hard ... I know ... crazy!). Actually with respect to knitting there aren't too many techniques that I haven't tried. I've mastered most of them too. My brioche stitches have some tension issues but I know that's something that could be worked out with practice. I still crochet. I still weave. I've even tried processing fleece and dying yarn. I've done needle felting and wet felting. 

I adore the fibre arts and I've felt my crafting heart was full. That I didn't have room for another love. But then, something started happening. My grandsons love to draw.  And they love to colour. And they love the fact that Nanny can draw pictures of them on skidoo and pictures of them on a dragon and pictures of the dragon pooping and breathing fire and pictures of the dragon with magnetic feet that only works on trash and ... Well ... You get the idea. 

Spending time with these kiddos and sketching with them and talking to the older ones about light and perspective and colour theory - well, it's kind of ignited this little desire to draw and paint again. I used to paint a lot (acrylics) back when my daughter was a baby. 

My daughter isn't a baby anymore and through some separate process - (perhaps Pinterest or maybe even the gorgeous adult colouring books that are everywhere) she has been finding herself equally interested in exploring watercolours and sketching. 

So we are doing this together!!  We are taking craftsy courses and looking at YouTube videos and we are excited! Every couple of days we text each other photos of things we've tried. Painting with watercolours is so much fun!!!  

It feels like the old days where she would find a tutorial for something new and fun and cool online and we would get excited and try it out and it would be awesome and in the end we were not only closer as mother and daughter but we'd have a pair of pants made out of a t-shirt! 

Except this time she is in Ottawa and I'm in Labrador. But this time we have more experience (and money lol). And it's still bringing us closer together as mother and daughter. And this time - she's better at it than I am. But I am a little biased.