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Monday 20 July 2020

Should I continue??

Hi there!

I'm really in doubt if anybody is watching my posts in here or it's Instagram/Facebook now, that's why it's been a while since I last posted, I don't know, if it's worth my time.

I would love to hear from you if you'd like me to continue posting. If you do, please send me a message through here by the end of July 2020 at the latest.

If I don't hear from anybody I'll close my blog this time.

Best regards,
Kirsten

Sunday 3 May 2020

Tropic Paradise

Hi there,

Tropic Paradise - doesn't it sound lovely. To me that means sun all year round, stars in the sky at night, great beaches and clear water to bathe in and then all the colourful birds. However, not all birds are red, green, blue and yellow. Some are white as the below cockatoo and it also has a little touch of yellow beneath the eye and on the feathers on top of it's head, and a tiny touch of blue in the shadow of the body feathers. 

The fan palm was a piece of work. All those long, very thin green leaves, each one in no less than 6 green shades, wow, I never thought it was going to end LOL. I'm so glad that I started with the background, as - and I was right - I thought it was a massive job doing it.  


The bird was so much fun to do. Seeing it come to life and almost hearing it saying "nice job, nice job" in my ears, was great. My sisters and I used to have parakeets in blue, yellow and green, when we were very young, and I could easily see them in my mind, while colouring this cockatoo. 

It's always fun learning to colour new flowers, and the orchids was a new experience for me. I don't think we've done them in class before. I can see myself colouring more of them in the future. 

This was all for now. Stay home and stay safe!

Please feel free to leave me a comment if you like my projects and if you'd like to see my cards/projects etc. on a regular basis, please join my blog or my instagram.

Be happy crafting!
Stay home and stay safe!

Saturday 25 April 2020

Relax with Art

Hi there!

A couple of years ago my big sister bought me a 1 year subscription to the monthly magazine "Relax with Art" for my birthday. I had seen the magazine advertised and wrote it on my wish list never in my wildest dreams expecting to get it, so it was a big surprize, when the first issue arrived in my mailbox.

These 13 (an extra for Christmas) magazines has and will still give me plenty of work, as the images are all A4 size and I have lots of stuff to colour besides them.

I just finished the below monster image, chosen among the many for one reason; the scale reminds me of a red scale, I once bought my mother for Christmas. When my mother died many years ago, my big sister got the scale, so I still see it. It was quite fun to colour this memory.


I really loved colouring the tiles on the wall, but WOW, that was a lot of work. I used techniques I've learned in my Kit and Clowder pencil classes among other things on the rust on the two cans, and on the cake, well pretty much all over the image.

I believe it's taken me about two weeks (an hour here, a half hour there etc.) to finish this image, and then I put it into my album of the big images, I've coloured.

If you love the image and maybe want to colour something similar, Relax with Art has a facebook page with lots and lots of free downloads (they put up some each month). Click on the title to see it.

Please feel free to leave me a comment if you like my projects and if you'd like to see my cards/projects etc. on a regular basis, please join my blog or my instagram.

Be happy crafting!

Friday 3 April 2020

My latest creation

Hi there!

A couple of days ago I finished the below image from Aurora Wings, a very well known digi stamp company to me. Aurora Wings also do all the gorgeous Sprites, which I'm sure you've seen coloured when you've surfed around on Facebook. I have a lot of them and one spring I used them to decorate the board in the hall at school.

The image is called "Whisper of the Sea" and can be found on Etsy here.


I've coloured her on Kraft paper with my Marco Raffine pencils (my FC Polychromous are dedicated to my colouring classes and nothing else). Luckily the MR pencils blend beautifully.

I decided to make the skin in blue tones, her hair in red/light orange, so it would stand out, and her sleeves - which I see as waves were coloured in aqua/teal nuances. Having started on the skin in blue, I had some doubt if I should erase it, as the waves would have been better in blue, but having finished, I'm pretty contend with the result after all.

I added some artistic freedom to the image by letting her rest on a beach and added som stones to the beach as well. I didn't stop here, but wanted to make a night sky with a moon, clouds and stars/shooting stars.

My moon is a bit chubby I think. I'm really happy with the clouds as they have exactly the shading I wanted. The sky itself was not easy to make on Kraft paper. It was impossible to make a smooth black surface even after having used a blender pencil. This became very obvious when I took photos afterwards. The background was uneven and the kraftpaper shone though the back colour in places. I took a few photos at various angles and the one here was the best of them, where the uneven background doesn't show too much.

Having finished my image, I put it on a black background (not shown here) and into my album with my big projects (A4 size).

Please feel free to leave me a comment if you like my projects and if you'd like to see my cards/projects etc. on a regular basis, please join my blog or my instagram.

Be happy crafting!

Wednesday 25 March 2020

Kit and Clowder March pencil class 2020

Hi there!

During this Corona crisis I think I've lost my cardmaking and colouring mojo a bit, I have all the time in the world - also now that I'm retired, but I find that I've not been in the mood to neither making cards or colouring as much as I usually do, I don't know why, but I hope that it comes back soon.  Maybe it's the depressing news on TV, press conferences practically all day long (yeah, yeah, I know, I can turn the telly off) and I have, so I could finish my March pencil class that I've been working on for 10 days now. Or maybe it's the fact that I can no longer sit for hours and colour due to my back. If I sit too long, it goes wrong and I face a couple of weeks of physiotherapy and no sitting down at the table at all - no doubt that this has something to do with it too.

Well, no more whining. I'm thrilled to show you my latest creation. Isn't she gorgeous? She was worth all the time I spent on her.


I particularly loved colouring the toadstools and the wings. Isn't it beautiful? I'm not sure that the colours on the photo are good as on the real project. The wings e.g. are purple, blue, teal, green, yellow and yellow orange. The green is from mixing the teal strokes into the yellow, and I don't think that's very visible on the photo.

I messed up the eyes a bit, as they are so small (the whole image is 17,8cm x 12,7 cm.).

The background was very interesting to do, as I had to draw in the trees myself. I think they're looking pretty good, if I may say so myself.

I can strongly recommend Alyce Keegan of Kit&Clowder if you're looking for a place to learn colouring (and sometimes drawing, but not that often). She offers classes in Pencils as well as Markers.

Various colour brands are mentioned in the class booklets with step by step photos, video tutorials and if you need it personal tutoring by Alyce herself - all that at the very, very reasonable price of AUD 35, if you subscribe to both classes, and as the AUD is very low at the moment, you can be extra sure you get something for your money.
If you chose only to subscribe to one class the price AUD 20.

On the Kit&Clowder website www.kitandclowder.com there are even a few free classes, you can try out first and there're tips and tricks and colour charts and much much more.

Please feel free to leave me a comment if you like my projects and if you'd like to see my cards/projects etc. on a regular basis, please join my blog or my instagram.

Be happy crafting!