Make Mine Black, No Sugar...and Tea, Make Mine Tea

I love joining in the seasonal Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop whenever I can, and I just squeaked under the wire for this round...it ends at midnight tonight! You can make any caffeine-drink project and I made two coffee cards this time, though I am a die-hard tea fan.

I won this little stamp in one of the coffee hops in the past, from the Unity Stamp Company. It's adorable. I added the "soon?" for the sentiment. I masked off the image with a rectangle and then dabbed on watercolor from Viviva Watercolor Sheets...I had to dilute them a lot because they are sooo rich and pigmented.

For this one, I spritzed water on my glass mat, then dabbed a wet brush on the Viviva color sheet and added that to the water. Then I placed my cardstock face down and did the smushing technique. It worked perfectly. Again, I added the rest of the sentiment with a marker.

For this last project, I made a tag from tie-dye patterned paper my sister gave me and then stamped, colored, cut out and adhered the kitty cup from Unity Stamp Company. I used Spectrum Noir Alcohol markers on the cup. 

I've been joining in on the Coffee Lovers' Hops for a few years now and here are a couple past projects that I enjoyed making. 

Now I'm off to drink some tea! 

Happy Friday!

Chark

Viviva Colorsheets In Action

I was invited to try out a free set of Viviva Colorsheets and I accepted because I've never tried watercolor sheets before. Let me just say, these are so much fun! I only used a tiny bit of the provided sheets to do a ton of watercolor projects and they were so easy to use. I thought the paint cards would buckle from applying water but they didn't.

 

These were just swatches of some of the colors with little water and more water used on the right side. See what I'm saying about the vividness? As you can see, this is watercolor paper. These sheets would be fabulous for taking outside to paint, taking on vacation (when we get to do that again) or for keeping handy when you watch TV and want to paint. They won't spill and the amount of water you need to activate the paint is minimal.

I have some Suzy's preprinted watercolor cards (I think this is the Mother's Day set) from Simon Says Stamp. They aren't printed on watercolor paper, but instead just really thick cardstock. It takes water well and since you don't need to use a lot of water to activate the dry paint, they work well together.

On another Suzy's card, I painted the entire background along with the image.

Again, the card did well with the water and the paint stayed bright and pigmented. I added a smidge of black marker and white uniball pen highlights to the image. The colors mixed well as you can see on the flower and leaves but they also didn't move too much, so I only got a little bleeding outside the lines.

I used an Adornit mini coloring book for this project and then trimmed out the jar to pop on a card. I went a little looser with this, using a little more water and you can see I didn't stay in the lines as cleanly. These are printed on watercolor paper with a lot of texture but you can see the paint remains bright.

So my review of these Viviva Colorsheets is this: Love 'em for their compact design, concentrated colors and ease of use! I'd recommend trying them out if you're in the mood for a new art supply. And these would make great gifts to send in the mail too...you'd need more postage, but you could use an envelope to send and not need a box. 

Happy Tuesday!

Chark