Watercolor Painting with Coffee

My friend, Mary, told me about some portraits she'd seen that were painted with espresso!  She said they were striking and looked like sepia photos!!  She knows me and knew that I'd be challenged to give it a try!  Thanks, Mary!!  The most difficult part was brewing the coffee so I could get lots of different shades of brown to use.  I drink very weak coffee so the palest shade was easy.  The darker shades were much harder to achieve.  I felt like a mad scientist brewing espresso double strength multiple times, but that gave me the medium color, then I took some of that and added a few spoonfuls of instant coffee to get the darkest color.  Once I had the medium and dark color, I added some water to each to get shades in between.  Altogether I had 5 colors to paint with ranging from dark to light!

When I started painting, I was hooked!  The coffee behaved exactly like other watercolors and smelled delicious!!  I enjoyed it so much that I didn't want to stop so I have 3 cards to share with you.  On the first one, I used a flower from Tim Holtz Flower Garden stamp set.

After I finished painting with the coffee, I masked the flowers and added some interest to the background with stencils from My Favorite Things and Tim Holtz.  I used Distress ink and a blending tool for this.  The swirl at the top is from a Stampin' Up set called Baroque Motifs and the sentiment and "beautiful" die are from Concord & 9th.

I wanted to see how coffee painting would look on a more whimsical image, so I painted one of the cute little boy stamps from Lilli of the Valley.  I was very pleased with how it came out!  The browns fit perfectly with the old-timey look of the image!

For the extras on this card I used MFT's double stitched rectangle STAX and Picket Fence dies

On the last card I have to show you, I embossed Altenew's Persian Motif stamps with white embossing powder.  I was worried that the coffee might stain the white embossing, but it didn't.  I liked the simplicity of this card and thought it would make a good sympathy card.

The frame around the sentiment on this card is from MFT.  It is called Stitched Rectangle Scallop Frames and the sentiment is part of Hero Arts Prayers stamps and die set.

This was a really fun experiment.  I hope you enjoyed looking and that maybe you might give painting with coffee/espresso a try!  Thanks so much for visiting!

Janet 

Build-able Bouquet

I finally had some time to play with my new MFT Build-able Bouquet stamp set.  I just love how whimsical they are.  They are beautiful flowers but don't look like any real flower so you can color them any way you want!  I did have one bit of trouble when I went to cut the flowers out with the dies.  When I tried to line up the flowers with stems inside the dies, they didn't line up and didn't cut right.  If I lined up the flowers, the stems weren't right and if I lined up the stems the flowers didn't line up right.  I'll have to give some thought to this the next time so it will work.  I stamped 2 of each stamp in the set and then colored them all in coordinating colors and cut them out.  I used most of the flowers and leaves on my first card.  It was fun arranging them and rearranging them until I got a flowery corner that I liked!  

For my second card, I used the left over flowers and my Blueprints 13 dies.  I used Peerless Watercolors to make both backgrounds.  I got some good news about Peerless Watercolors today.  I've had mine for a long time and I am just about out of my favorite colors.  I contacted the company and found out that they will be selling individual dry sheets of color very soon!!!  I was thrilled!

Thanks for looking and for visiting!

Janet

Supplies Used:

Stamps: MFT Buildable Blooms

Dies: MFT Build-able Bouquet, MFT Blueprints 13, Lawn Fawn Hugs, Impression Obsession 

                 Get Well Soon

Cardstock: Black Linen, SU Garden Green, Canson Aquarelle Watercolor paper, White  

                 Cougar Opaque

Miscellaneous:  Peerless Watercolors

  

Another Watercolor Background

Here's another card with a watercolor background.  I used reinkers for this one, too.  I do love them so when they come out good!  The frame is from Lea-bilities and is called Flower Frame.  Isn't it pretty?  It was a gift from a friend and I just love it.  I used white fun foam to pop it up and it worked great.  The Thanks is from Hero Arts.

Inside the frame I made a little scene with one of the cute little elephants from MFT's Adorable Elephants set and flowers from MFT's  Blissful Blooms set.  I've had both sets for a little while, but this is the first time I've used them. Here's a close-up 

Here's a an angled view so you can see the fun foam.  It works so well to pop up anything.  I'm addicted!

Thanks for visiting. If you have any thoughts or questions, please leave a comment.  Have a good weekend :)

Janet