Mary Murphy's watercolor class on Craftsy

This summer it was my goal to learn and develop my watercolor skills, I believe I have achieved that goal in the fact that I *did* it, I am not a professional water-colorist, but when I paint I love it, I am in that zone where all my doubts, and time just goes away, I am in the moment and that I love!

With the help from Craftsy and Mary Murphy, I now have a ton of little skills to help me paint better, or at lest not have the fear of a blank canvas to get me started. I love that watercolor is a very unpredictable medium, and that it's fun to just play around with.

Mary did an excellent job of working through her Simple watercolor technique class. Her content was really remarkable, her responses to my work that I posted in our class projects were a huge help, including ADDING MORE COLOR, and watching my values in my painting, she met me where I was as a artist and built onto that, which I respected a lot. Mary Your awesome, I do feel like I got to know Mary as an instructor while working on her class at my pace.

Here is the link to the Stunning Tecn
Here are some of my projects

Heartland Landscape (expressionist style)

Sky study on canvas paper

Value study from a black and white photograph, with a lose style

miniature inspired  painting of a tulip

Here is a video of what the class entails, it's a good one! If you are thinking about starting watercolor, or even if you are more advanced, and want to boast your skills this class is worth it! 

Let me know in the comments if you take this class so I can follow you on Craftsy!

And to keep it real here is a picture of my work space, Mary I took your advice and had my water colors out all summer so I could paint when I needed too, even at 5 am!

Hy-Vee Sale item of the week to make Chocolate Muffins

Hy-Vee has Cake mix on sale this week, and I thought this was a great recipe to post.

 I do this all the time and cake mix is on sale this week at Hy-vee, it's a favorite at my house my Price point is usually $1.00 for cake mix .So this got me thinking about Chocolate muffins, I love when pumpkin goes on sale in about 6 weeks from now, makes for a cheap and yummy breakfast!
Please note:  My favorite recipes are ones where I don't have to measure anything. Btw to get kids really excited for this, add chocolate chips to the top of the muffin.  The batter is thick, make sure you blend / mix the batter up really well I sue a kitchenaid mixer for the job. You can also do this recipe  with spice cake mix and apple sauce or pumpkin, it works the same way! 

Happy Saving and Baking!

Water Cards Made Simple class review

Hello, I wanted to take a moment to review a class that I took as a fun spur of the moment judgement call. I am glad that I did! I have enjoyed the techniques, the advice and the skills that Deepti has to pass along to her students. She was very down to earth, made the content easy to follow, and made it intriguing to watch her do techniques. Each one of her class segment was filled with other ideas on how to use a technique in different ways to get different effects for different card types. I thoroughly have enjoyed her class and have some really nice cards to use for all occasions. It was defiantly worth the time and money I spent on this class.

Not only that My 7 year old Daughter was also mesmerized by the class, we watched it together, and my daughter also hopes to make some cards with what she learned as well! So thank you Craftsy for providing content that my daughter and I can watch together and bond too!

Thanks Deepti for your Class it was well worth it, and I have had compliments from the cards that I have made from your class from the person(s) I sent the card too.

I have posted my cards here, And she is on Pintrest here is her board

Happy Creating!

Watercolor cards made simple from Deepti at Craftsy

I really love the watercolor card class, I bought it as a splurge, and I am glad that I did, it really took my cards to the next level. all these cards are inspired from this class, I really like the techniques used, and the good advice Deepti gave as we were developing the class.

First easy card, with brush stokes and then I stamped

I made this with masking fluid, and my Japanese paint that I love

I sketched this flower from my silhouette, and then added watercolor to it. 

impressionist style roses in watercolor with a mop brush 

a gradient of green for the background, then I water colored die cut roses, with gem in the middle

Mixed media background with stencils, and hand painted die cut flowers

Mixed Media background with stencils, then hand painted die cut flowers. 

wet into wet watercolor stamped image, with embossed background

impressionist roses used a size 4 mop brush with crimson red, medium yellow, and veridian green. 

impressionist roses used a size 4 mop brush with crimson red, medium yellow, and veridian green. 

I sketched this dog on my silhouette, then added some brown watercolor to the dog, My hand writing for the sentiment.

impressionist roses used a size 4 mop brush with crimson red, medium yellow, and veridian green.

a Textured background, with a silhouette file as the top. 

watercolored stamped the tulip, with a gradient wash, and stamped sentiment. 

a gradient wash, with black embossed stamping

an impressionist flower painted with a flat brush

stamped sentiment

water colored pencils an stamped image

my impressionist painting of wild flowers, used Quin yellow, and Quin red with turquoise paint. I used a exacto knife to cut into the paper for the texture of the stems

Silhouette sketch pen did most of the work, then I added watercolor to it.

Craftsy

I was talking to a friend, Sarah Day, and she recommended that I should just take a class on Craftsy and see if you like watercolor, because they have watercolor classes. So I did, and then I took more, and realized that I LOVE WATERCOLOR! Mary Murphy is a fantastic teacher, and so is the Frugal Crafter.

Craftsy has many free classes too, that I am in love with, want to learn how to make really yummy pizza, or cake pops, you can and it's a free class.


I will be posting more about individual classes soon, so look for those reviews.