Saturday In My Studio

Saturday afternoon, my {awesome} husband took the kids to the library and on other errands, while I stayed home and played in the basement studio.

First I painted.

The smaller pieces are ATCs for a project I'll talk about more another time. The larger pieces are papers for collage, with the postcard swap in mind. I started with watercolor for all of these, but I added acrylic onto the patterned papers. Here's a closer look at them.

This green one is my favorite, I think. It's green watercolor topped with dark green acrylic polka dots made by stamping a wine cork. Then I added those yellow highlights around the dots with a paintbrush.

This is one of two papers I stamped with a rectangular piece of what I think is compressed cardboard. It was used as packaging for something and I held onto it for the ridges on the long sides. I'm going to have to find more because it didn't rinse well and I'm not sure it's reusable. I used it on two of the papers.

I was curious if I could paint vellum. It curled up almost immediately! But the watercolors dried almost immediately, too, so the curling was okay. I think I'll be able to use these for collage in small pieces. The glue will hold it down.

I painted a few papers with sand and water in mind. Since I'm sending these postcards from Rhode Island, I want to include something that evokes the area, and my Rhode Island is very ocean-centered. (There is more to the state, of course, but it's the coastline that holds my heart.) All of these began with watercolor. The stripy one was painted over with acrylics, and the other three were sponge-painted with more watercolors.

When I was done painting, my husband and the kids were still out, so I carved a stamp. I already have several hand-carved stamps I may use in the postcards, but I looked at my sketches of ocean life from the summer and chose one with a clear outline to turn into a stamp. (As much as I really want a stamp of this hermit crab, I thought it would take far more time than I'm likely to have.) I decided upon Irish moss.

I need to clean up a couple of more spots. And even with the solid outline, all those branchy bits meant this took a bit of time, anyway. Still, not as much time as that hermit crab will. (I may just have to attempt it as a stamp at some point in the future.) If you're curious about carving stamps, I have a tutorial posted. It's really not that hard, it just takes patience and a steady hand.

What a wonderful gift, some uninterrupted time to play in the studio! How is your weekend going?