Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues

It was my week to design a project as a Frosted Design team member. There is only one thing on my mind lately, so the project was going to reflect that. My new home in Florida!

In preparation for retirement, I closed on a house in Melbourne, FL and not soon enough, I will be going home.

Hard to believe one would wish to be older (except as a teen when our 18th birthday could not come soon enough.. ha), but I have to wait to get life in order and buying the house was the first step. Hence, my summertime blues.

But.... in less than a week, I will be seeing my new home for the first time as I vacation there with my sister and begin to get everything in order. Yay!

My project for Frosted Designs is a scrapbook page of my new pool.

This page is a mix of scrapbooking and mixed media. 

As always, I love that you stopped by and would love to hear if you have your own summertime blues , so I know I am not alone :)

Under the Sea

I've been thinking 'blue' lately and I recently participated in a watercolor challenge with some other artists.  I have never created anything with watercolor other than a background, so that challenge was way out of my comfort zone. However, I truly enjoyed the medium and kinda got hooked. 

This experience led me to watch a few YouTube videos of some very talented WC artists willing to share some techniques.

I began with a sketch of what comes to mind when I think summer (ocean ) and blue (again, ocean)... a blue crab. I also sketched a shrimp and thought I could incorporate these into my vision of a simplistic painting featuring the color "Blue."

I had a mat that I picked up a Michael's for $1.99 and thought it was perfect for this project. I drew the crustaceans to fit within the opening of this mat.

Once I was happy with the size, I painted them with water colors in shades of blue.

I was happy with the painting and wanted to see how it looked in a frame; keeping in mind that what I liked about it  was the simpicity.

Too plain.....

It needed something, but I wasn't sure what that was. After a few days of staring at it (very common when I paint), I decided to add sea grass in shades of turquiose and royal blues. I cut the grass and then spent hours moving the pieces around until I  felt it was as it needed to be.

Perfect! My first watercolor painting and I am proud of my acceptance that it is good.

I enjoyed this one... A LOT!

I want to thank Anna Ely for inspiring us to create in watercolor for the original challenge. If she hadn't presented us with such an awesome example, I might not have tried to dabble in this medium for any thing more than background color.