A Hobby Art Harbour Village Watercolour Collage

Good morning all! The daffodils are showing themselves and it appears we may be starting to see the start of Spring... Time for Spring colours and a little touch of brightness, which all started with Lisa's classes last Friday. I came away inspired to be braver with my colour choices over the coming months...

My cards this month feature the Harbour Village set from Hobby Art. I have never really used this theme of stamps before, so I had a play with them and I think they really lend themselves to men's cards and 'thinking' style cards (thoughtful messages etc.) As with all the Hobby Art Scene-It style sets, the stamps allow you to make lots of configurations and build your own little landscapes; a perfect time to get lost in your own little world.

For my first card, I wanted to make a collage of little pictures/scenes. I decided on a 7x7 card base and then had a little play with the sizes of panels I wanted. As the Hobby Art stamps come with the images printed on a clear overlay, this is perfect to put on the panels and work out what sizes you can play with.

 

 

Once I had worked it out, I cut the final panel sizes from Watercolour Card and then stamped by images onto them using Jet Black Staz-On ink.

 

Taking each panel in turn, I then used Watercolour Pencils (grab them at 33% off on the website quick! Only £5!!) to colour the images, trying (!) to add some depth to the images. As Jenny Mayes and her team at Hobby Art are so talented with the images, there is no need to go too mad here, the detail is drawn in for you and if you  are using watercolour, there is a little 'licence' for colouring in terms of perfection!

 

For the large sea areas, I did not use pencils, instead I found that if you moisten the large area you need to cover right to the edges of the images, you can then apply Distress Ink with your paintbrush (I used Tumbled Glass and Faded Jeans, but lots of the blues would work well). If you go too dark, pull the colour out, or blot with a tissue. If you need more depth add more of the same, go a shade darker, or use a pencil to add a hint of colour where needed. I am still learning to watercolour, so bear with me here please; any hints are much appreciated!

 

If there are images that you need to 'join' slightly, or you want to add more detail, no problem, use a fine black pen to do this and you will never know! (I have done this in the panel below...)

 

Final result... Once you have a configuration of panels you like, you can always measure them for the future to make a template.

 

 I hope you like it, it was fun to play with and the colouring is therapeutic; it seems the rest of the world caught on to this last year with 'adult colouring books' - took 'em all long enough, but personally I think making something with your colouring efforts is a lot more worthwhile!

 

See you next week with some more detail on scene building,

Lots of love,

Martina

xx