Washing With Color: CreativeBug's Watercolor Classes

Happy summer people! I just wrapped up CreativeBug's Beginner and Intermediate Watercolor classes taught by artist Yao Cheng. I loved her rapid-fire, just-go-with-it and move on style. The pieces came together quickly, so that even if something didn't turn out great... it was easy to move on to the next thing. Here's a quick run down and a few samples of some of the work I did during the class.

In the beginning class, Yao starts with color theory, basic brush strokes and a few abstracts. In the second half she turns her focus to leaves, trees and wreaths. The abstracts were fun, but I was really impressed how she conveyed the ease of the natural subjects. I had no idea I could paint things like this! Room for improvement but I love them!

I took many art classes as a kid from an amazing artist in Jacksonville, Jennie Szaltis. She taught me to love a number of mediums including batik, but I have to say I really hated watercolor (which is so sad because really, she is a wonderful teacher/artist). I just felt like I sucked at it. It wasn't my thing. This class really challenged that assumption.

The intermediate class moved into florals, layering and landscapes. One thing that is cool about watercolor is that sometimes things look really different when they dry. The peony on the left looked miserable when I finished, but I actually kind of love how it dried. Magic!

Here's a bouquet. Again, I liked it much more once it dried. I was using some older brushes and paints so sometimes things got a little fuzzy.

This was my attempt at the all-over floral pattern. Need to work on my spacing and layout but I felt like there was a lot of potential.

Here was a layering piece. My colors got a little weird (again, old paints maybe?) but it was a cool technique.

Ok, last of all, my landscape... which brings me to the one criticism of the class. To no fault of Yao's, sometimes they've edited the video so that it sort of fast forwards through more detailed sections. I know they don't want the videos to be too long, but with Yao's quick style I found myself having to pause and back up A LOT in order to keep up as I was painting along. Food for thought.

Overall, highly recommend these two classes. I really gained a new appreciation for watercolor and I'm looking forward to playing more and practicing. (See more class reviews here and here).

Ready, Set, Sew: Race Day Tank Top

I have to admit that I'm not always the most enthusiastic runner. My motivation has a lot more to do with the clothes than the many other benefits of running. So I decided, after my first tank top turned out pretty well, I needed to try out Spoonflower's Performance Pique fabric to make a running tank for the Pikes Peek 10K race this past weekend.

I again used an existing tank top (with a racer back) as the pattern, which worked out pretty well, but I tried another method for the binding and ended up with straps that were slightly different sizes (oops!). I also wish I had made it a little bit longer, but overall it fit pretty well.

I really loved the fabric. It was light and surprisingly great quality. I think it will hold up really well over time. I picked my Block Print Blossom pattern in Hydrangea for the task. 

Here's a pic at the finish line! I'm always the happiest when its all over. Photobombed by the Geico Gecko of course. 

It was really cold at the start so I wore my jacket through the first few miles, but was delighted when the sun came out! Good thing I remembered my sunscreen ;o)

Anyways, after all my crazy fabric design projects of late, I decided to try something a little different. Here's a sneak peek... more to come!

Anniversary is hard to spell, and sloths are hard to draw

Our anniversary was way back in August but I have obviously not been blogging and I refuse to feel guilty... So there! Early on Kevin decided that he really wanted us to stick to the traditional wedding gift themes... here's a Wikipedia on that few you if you aren't familiar... so Year 1 is Paper. 

I like how in that Wikipedia list, you get to Year 15 and apparently just give up. Like, its just too hard to come up with new things. Apathy has set in... Like this sloth which will make more sense later:

We did two things for the anniversary that were paper-themed. One, we booked some plane tickets (paper!) to go to beautiful Vermont. More on that later maybe.

Two, we each created a personalized piece of artwork (more paper!) for our new hallway gallery wall. Kevin created this adorable watercolor of our family. I like how Bailey is kicking him in the face.

It's reminiscent of this much larger piece he created for the wedding that we had folks sign before framing and hanging in our bedroom.

For my part, I used my hand lettering skillz to write down a bunch of fun memories from our first year including our trips to Lake Tahoe and Costa Rica.

I am particularly proud of the sloth in the bottom right hand corner because I practiced getting him just right a whole bunch of times. Kevin's favorite is the sunflower because he misses the giant 10-foot tall sunflower he grew over the summer next to our front stoop. 

Here's the whole wall featuring the cow print we got from York a few years back, some tomato pictures from the garden, and a new cow print we picked up in Burlington of cow's playing Scrabble because we obviously NEEDED it. If you can't tell the top says "Your Mooooove." Geddit?!

The wall still needs some work as you may notice a few pieces that don't quite fit and a few holes but we're pretty happy with it.