Camp Createability- Bookmarks

 Along with making cards, bracelets, and paintings, I have been very busy making bookmarks at Camp Createabillty!

I made a few for fall, but a lot of them are very colorful with plants and flowers!

One of my favorite things to draw after painting is some simple plants and flowers onto bookmarks. I don't even need to start in pencil for most of them. They're so easy!

This bookmark was one of the first ones I painted a gradient on. I got the paper a little wet before I added colors so that the paints blended and bled into each other

Another thing I've started adding to my bookmarks is twine or ribbon to make tassels or bows as an extra touch. This was a great way to use scraps of twine and ribbon laying around the art studio.

The fun part about watercolor is that nothing has to look perfect! Since it's water activated it'll bleed and flow wherever. There are ways to control the paint, but I think its more fun to let them work a little on their own.

These are not all the bookmarks I've made at Camp Createability, but I couldn't add them all in one post! These are just a few of my favorites I've made so far.

New Artwork- Home and Camp Createability

The past few weeks have been pretty busy! I've been doing lots of painting with watercolors and acrylics both at home and at Camp Createability!

This card was made with watercolors and ink. I spent a lot of time on the lettering to make sure it looked as straight as possible. I love the pastel colors. 

One of my favorite things to watercolor is gnomes. I think the colors turned out great and vibrant. I even used some of my shimmery watercolors for the details.

This snowman was done in acrylics on a canvas. The nose turned out bigger than I expected, but it still looks cute!

This might be one of my favorite cards I have done. For the stars and details I used a gold gel pen, but the leaf shapes are all done in watercolor.

This would be a fun card to give to someone in the spring or summer. The colors are vibrant, yet still in the pastel scheme. I did the outline in black ink and the colors in watercolors.

This technique was a lot of fun. I used tape to cover the spots I wanted to leave white and then used my watercolors to paint in between the tape.

I love how bright and vibrant this card turned out and if you look closer you can see I used some splattering to add some extra color.

I love how cute this bumble bee card turned out! For the stripes, head, and stinger I send a black brush pen, but the rest was done in watercolor.

I found this idea on Pinterest and used my brightest colors to paint round blobs and then used a pen to do the faces and the outlines.

Christmas is just around the corner, so we've been doing a lot of holiday projects including these adorable snowman ornaments made with beads and silver pipe cleaners. I made one for our big tree and one is hanging on my small tree.

This ornament is extra special because it will be one of the many ornaments hanging on the huge Christmas tree in the capitol building! I used my watercolors to paint some trees because the ornament theme this year is Wisconsin Parks, so it had to be nature themed.

As much as I love Christmas, I couldn't say no to making a cute beaded corn cob for Thanksgiving. 

This watercolor piece will be turned into a card. I used a new technique I have been practicing. Instead of painting inside each shape, each layer you paint around the shapes one layer after another, so it gets darker as you go.

When I haven't been busy creating at Camp Create ability, I've been broadening my horizons with liquid watercolors. I'm really proud of how the mountains turned out. I'm thinking about turning the 4 smaller nature ones into cards.

I have lots more projects I've been working on, so stay tuned for more art posts soon!

3 Gaits- Berry

 This session at 3 Gaits I have been riding a new horse named Berry.

Berry is taller than some of the other horses I've been riding and she's newer, so it's taken a couple weeks for us to get used to each other.

Berry is a very fast walker. She walks so fast that in order to keep space between us and the other horse and rider, we've had to get creative in order to cross the arena, using circles, halts, and cutting across the arena.

Berry really enjoys trotting and going through obstacle courses. We've even been practicing two point going through the obstacle courses and even trotting in two point. Berry definitely gives me a work out during lessons!

Some horses I've ridden during past sessions haven't been able to trot the entire arena, but with Berry, she could trot all day if I let her. This was the first time in a long time that I successfully trotted the whole arena without a leader. It was a big accomplishment!