I think I mentioned that I recently got hooked on watercolouring and I did a fair bit of it at the crop last weekend. I initially thought that the bird in the A Happy Thing set was a kingfisher but reading Brian King’s site I found that he’d done his research and found that it’s a bee eater. That makes a whole lot more sense since the beak was too short for a kingfisher. The bee eater is an almost unbelievably brightly coloured bird and comes in quite a few colour ways. I watercolored with google images at my side!

I cut a quarter sheet of the watercolour paper and stamped the adorable bird in stazon black. I have found that I’m more successful watercolouring (and I’m definitely a novice, but it’s so much fun, you have to try it) if there is not much water in the aquapainter or everything gets a bit too soggy and my colours run out of control. I started with pacific point, watering it down quite a bit and then moved onto the pumpkin pie. I then used old olive for the head and upper chest, blending the colour into some of the pacific point lower down in an attempt to mimic real life. I used some memento black to darken the beak, tail and stripe around the eye and on the neck. Once I’d finished this, it was crying out for the sentiment that comes with the set, so I inked that up in memento black as well. I confess that I’m not fond of the stazon black and only use it when strictly necessary due to needing to use a different cleaner. I mounted the watercolour paper on a skinny black mat using fast fuse since the paper is much more sturdy than our regular card stock. This then went on an old olive base. I lined the envelope using the now retiring backgrounds DSP. I can only hope that there will be new backgrounds DSP in different patterns because they are so wonderful for envelope lining.

See you tomorrow,

Liz