splish, splash

this week's challenge at shopping our stash (#216 for those of you scoring at home) is called "splish, splash" and i bet you've already guessed that we'd like to see projects which incorporate wet media: watercolor, gouache, acrylic paint, twinkling h2o's, spray ink... you name it; if it's wet (and messy and awesome!) it qualifies! i used a little bit of everything, lol, because that's the way i roll! :)

wet media: artist loft watercolor paints, reeves gouache, ranger distress inks; pens: frixion colors by pilot, tombow markers and faber-castell pitt permanent black outliners in a few different widths; watercolor paper: strathmore; yellow patterned paper mat: k and co; cerise pink velvet paper mat: doodlebug; gems of various sizes and colors: recollections; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, sewing machine

this is one of those cards that took a while to make, but since it involved doing all the things i enjoy, it didn't actually seem like work, if you know what i mean? generally when i draw mandalas i just give myself a few very faint compass-drawn circles in pencil, then jump in with a pen and wing it. but since this one's pretty big (about 8" square) and it may turn out to be my lovely MIL's birthday card, i did a pretty extensive pencil sketch, and tried to keep it a bit symmetrical:

i wish i would've subsequently thought to photo again, in between the various stages, but alas, by then i was too far "in the zone" to think of it. so i'll just tell you that after the sketch i added color via watercolor paints, gouache and distress inks, some of which i applied dry with a sponge, some i used wet with a water brush. then i outlined almost all of the larger segments with machine stitching that's verrrrrrry hard to see in the main photo, but is somewhat more apparent in the detail shot below. then i outlined the small sements with the smallest nib of faber-castell pitt pen, which is called "extra super fine" and totally lives up to its name! then i added some shading to the colors with the utterly yummy frixion color pens gina got me (which i loooooooove--thanks, g!) and a few tombow markers. last of all i added the gems. a lot of gems. enough gems, in fact, that i can imagine there being people in the world who might think, "that's too many gems"; of course these would not be people i could ever become friends with, so i'm not really very worried about that part. :)

meanwhile, as always, there are some absolutely drool-worthy projects over at SOS... why not drop by for a heapin' helpin' of inspiration? you can thank me later, darlings! ♥