woyww - new years eve

Happily getting my sketch kit ready for tomorrow when I realised I still had time to do a final woyww post for 2014.  Nothing terribly exciting.  On the left is my sketchbook which I am using for the sketchbook foundation class, open at my handbag sketch/watercolour.  The kit holds everything I need to take out for the day, paints in a tiny pallet, w/c pencils, brushes, micron pen, scissors and tissues. Only thing missing is a little bottle of water.  

Close up of the handbag sketch and as you can see  by the date I haven't painted anything since.  Hopefully 2015 will be a little more productive.  

Happy New Year to all woyww's celebrating tonight, thank you for visiting throughout 2014.

woyww - cala lilies

Cards from last week are all finished so i have happily started back with my online sketching class. This weeks topic was drawing volumes. So I chose purple/black cala lilies for their lovely cone shapes.

A close up sketch of the lilies.  

You can see I am a messy worker with all the little splatters in my workbook.

Have a lovely woyww.

woyww - Joy cards and sequins

My desk is showing a healthy stack of Xmas cards and I have to admit nothing fancy this year as I have gone for quick and simple.  A bit of gold embossing, watercolour and a touch of sequins and I am now almost finished.  I did actually start the job on Sunday and nothing has moved right up to taking this photo.  Hopefully I will finish the last few sequins and write a greeting and get them in the post by the end of the week.  Now that will be a card making record for me:) Enjoy your woyww and I will slowly get around the globe and peek at your desk.

woyww - jacaranda blooms

 

Jacaranda trees  are in flower all over Sydney and the streets and gardens are littered with the beautiful lavender blooms.  

I couldn't resist painting a few of the falling flowers 

and a quick sketch of a branch in bloom.

Have a lovely woyww.

Sketchbook Foundations

Lesson 1 on Sketchbook Foundations with Liz Steel starts with the basics.... getting to know your tools.  Which makes sense and this time I have kept my tools to a very basic setup.  10 watercolours, a pencil, brush and a fountain pen.  Plus an eraser.  Sometimes I cannot commit to the line and want to wipe it out.  Hopefully I will be able to learn how to draw an ellipse this time around with Liz.  Her teaching style is always fun and informative and doing a weekly class keeps me disciplined.  

Time will tell...   

woyww - touch ups

A birds eye view of my desk on this woyww.  I am adding some finishing touches to pages from my holiday sketchbook.  The sketchbook is almost complete and I am surprised that I was able to fill so many pages while out and about.  The next photo is the beginnings of a temple sketch with an enormous ficus growing through the walls and footpath.  Starting to work from photos as i finish the last couple of pages.

  Next project will have to be Xmas cards and I will be turning to woyww desks for inspiration.

Woyww -almost back to a routine

After a wonderfully relaxing holiday in Vietnam I am almost back in the woyww routine. This post is a little loaded with pics of my sketchbook journal pages from the holiday.  Promise to only show 4 pages of my sketchbook which hopefully will give you a glimpse of wonderful Vietnam.  Firstly, beautiful lotus flowers and leaves.  The country was so lush and green with beautiful gardens and trees everywhere.

Quick fun sketch of Ha Noi city streets in the old quarter.  I got the city sketch idea from a brochure but what I missed drawing is the electrical wires that would criss cross all over the page.

The landscape was full of paddy fields/terraces, lakes and mountains.

 Wherever you went there would be a variety of animals but I was quite taken with poultry.  Normally I am the tourist patting the cats but this time I was taken with the chickens who knew not to cross the  busy roads if they wanted to live another day.

Taking a  sketchbook on holidays was new and definitely something I will do again.  A lovely way to stop and really make you look at the country you are visiting.

Have a lovely woyww.

woyww - flying off

No crafting this Wednesday as I am flying off for a little break.  I leave you with a pic of the birds in our garden, the Australian Rose Breasted cockatoo aka pink and grey cockie. Kitty was very interested but as they made so much noise she decided to stay inside.  Have a lovely woyww.

woyww - collection of cards

My desk this Wednesday has the left over items from card making on the weekend.  Finally got to play with the Magnolias for Her stamp from "Altenew" (US) and Nouveau Flowers from Clearly Besotted Stamps from the UK.  When I saw both of these stamps a couple of months ago on a blog I had to track them down.  Here are a couple of photos of the cards I made.

Yes you can see my shadow on the card.  As per usual I am rushing around and don't take the time to take a really good photo.

Finally a lovely collection of cards from RosA (thank you for the cards and the catch up :)

Have a lovely woyww....

woyww - a teacup or two

This weeks SBS klass has been with Liz Steel and we covered teacups and architectural drawing.  Well to tell the truth I am still struggling to draw an ellipse and getting those teacups to sit on the saucer with some form of perspective and proportion.  My first pic shows the cup and some details that Liz suggests you sketch out quickly so that you understand the cup before you draw.  She manages to drink her tea hot while she is sketching and painting! Mine went cold and I went back to using a mug. The next pic has a wide border because I cannot even draw a straight line but in the end it really didn't matter.

Have really enjoyed SBS.  All the teachers are wonderful and had such different styles and I learnt lots of tips and techniques.  Now I just have to practice, practice and more practice.  Not enough time in the day or night.  Off to join in on woyww and I promise to slowly drop in and visit lots of desks.

Drawing with a biro

The class this week at SBS is with Andrea Joseph and drawing with a pen or biro.  Not something I would ever think of doing (apart from doodling on a scrap of paper) and it has been a great exercise.  Her illustrations are wonderful and her tips have been really helpful.  The top pic is a collection drawing and the one below is a quote using her hand lettering style.

All in all a very good class in SBS.

woyww- moleskin w/c notebook and a bird

Hardly an exciting woyww desk but it does show my new moleskin watercolour notebook which arrived on Tuesday after I placed the order online Sunday.  How good is that and I think I was in my pj's when I ordered and when it arrived.  I have been using cheap notebooks that I buy from the $2 dollar store. Sometimes the quality of the paper is ok other times it is terrible.  I have finally had enough of cheap paper and bought a moleskin.  

This weeks SBS class  was with Cathy Johnson and the focus has been on nature sketching and painting.  

My version of the Eastern Yellow Robin.  He was sitting beautifully in a tree and moved around for a couple of different poses ..... I know he looks like 3 different birds! I got good value out of his moving around.  

Have a lovely woyww and I will slowly visit lots of desks over the week.

woyww- napkins as a distraction

Thank you to everyone who left great comments and personal thoughts on the topic of selling craft last week.  I learnt that most people generally give their craft away and very occasionally sell through word of mouth or local shops.   It doesn't appear that many or us are selling online and it certainly looks like if you do then prepare to market yourself via every social media site available.  Quite exhausting! and when would I find the time to do what I love.  This week my distraction is napkin art which is really decoupage using napkins.  I have a beautiful collection (thanks to RosA) and have been storing them waiting for inspiration.  Inspiration arrived in the form of special "napkin glue".  I had tried modge podge which some love but I was disappointed as it can be quite tacky in our climate.  So I have bought my special glue and will give it a go.   But I did do the exercise in continuous line drawing in SBS.   Got myself in a muddle with the pencil ending in the wrong position which captures my awkward hand eye co-ordination beautifully.  If you didn't notice I will point out that the loop in the bottom corner is pointing the wrong direction.

Have a lovely woyww.

woyww - w/c sketch

This week my desk has a landscape watercolour sketch.  It was finished yesterday and left to dry on my desk.  I should be moving on to do my homework for  week 2 of "Sketchbook Skool" but, as it is self portraits not much is being done!!   Whenever I want to avoid something I just go off on a tangent/digress or procrastinate.  So today I am going to do all three and ask woyww a few questions.

 Do any woyww's sell craft online?  How easy is this to do? Would you recommend any sites such as etsy or do you just sell through your blog/ ebay.  I am just curious to see if anyone is actually selling the lovely stuff they make or giving it away.

Would love to hear what woyww's do with their craft and whether anyone has hit the big time.  By the time I get a few answers my class would of moved on to week 3 and I can get back to painting fruit rather than selfies.  Have a lovely woyww and promise to visit lots of desks over the week.

woyww - crafty goodies

Spent a lovely day wandering around the Sydney Craft & Quilt fair and what you see on my desk are some of the goodies.  Topped up on items that I have run out of such as the double sided tape.   Found a nice gold embossing powder and then had to buy the pretty pale gold for variety. Also came across two new types of glue used for napkin collage on both fabric and paper.  Worth giving it a try as the demo was interesting and I have so many gorgeous napkins (thanks to the lovely RosA).    Also bought a stack of papers and the TH lattice stencil.  I rarely buy stacks of paper as I like variety but  scrapbooking these days is quick with minimal agonising over embellishments.  If I want to do something fancy I go to a class.  The birthday card was from a class where I learnt to shape flowers.  All in all a great day. Finally on the left is my practice sheet of watercolour roses.  The yellow rose was demonstrated by a work colleague who is super artistic and now I am trying to give it a go.

Flowers have been a theme this week and here is a pic of my Phalaenopsis orchid which lives in the kitchen.  Far more co-operative then kitty who never sits still if I am sketching or painting.

Have a lovely woyww and I plan to visit over the weekend.

woyww - colour charts

Almost forgot to post for woyww and I can only say I got distracted by colour charts.  My new metal watercolour box arrived and I was playing with different pans of colour trying to work out which ones I like and how they fit into the box?  Of course I had to try out the free colour charts that came in the package and that lead to looking at pinterest and you tube to see what colours are popular and that became another distraction.  But I did learn that I manage better with a limited selection of colours.  If I have access to 50 colours I will use all 50.  The whole topic put kitty to sleep, so I better hurry up and post.

Have a lovely woyww and hope to visit lots of desks over the coming weekend.

woyww - mail

 I have just been opening mail rather than crafting this week and that is always fun.  The atc from Lottie arrived and it is beautiful.  Love how she has got the two tones of shimmer on the daisy.

Followed by a gorgeous folding box card from Annette and she has a tutorial on her blog.

My next post came from RosA and she has used shiva paintsticks on her ATC to get the beautiful shimmer.

Finally the lovely Carole has sent me an envelope of goodies along with her rocking atc.

Now you can see why very little crafting has happened on my desk.  Too many goodies to admire and then I even forgot to link up on woyww.  Hopefully Julia will let me creep in at the end.

woyww - tidy up

A clean desk and new storage containers all because of a spilled cup of tea.  Much happier now that I can see what I have in the containers at the back of my desk. Originally I used recycled cardboard boxes but the cup of tea sent them all into the recycle bin for good. No project today as the mail arrived.

3 lovely ATC's a "quilted hug" from Annie, a delish cake from Twiglet and 5 Candles from LLJ.  Thank you ladies they are very special.  They were all made by fabric loving woyww's who can do just about anything with needle and thread.

Final pic is of the lovely orchid that flowers for me without fail every year.

Hope to slowly visit lots of desks this week if all goes well with the link.

woyww 5 years

Happy 5th Woyww anniversary to all the crafters who join in this week. 

My desk continues to get messy no matter what project I am working on. This week it is covered in splatters of paint, dirty water, paper towels and the odd note of  random information I get off the internet.  For some reason I need to make a note because it seemed so important at the time and then it gets lost or filed away.

But I did a quick clean up to take a pic of the lovely ATC's received from Eliza and Yoda, Voodoo Vixen and Krisha.

Thank you ladies they are stunning and now hold pride of place on my desk.

Happy Woyww.

View from my woyww desk

The view from my desk has Kitty looking intently at me while I get organised to post for woyww. She has now replaced my desk photo which doesn't change very much from week to week.

Sketchbook Skool has finished and the last teacher was Tommy Kane, sketching and crosshatching was tried with mixed results.  Tommy Kane was great and I had to rush off and buy his book as I got all caught up in the moment.   No pics of sketches but I have been making tags.  

Have a lovely woyww.

woyww -towering teacups

My tower of teacups is ready to topple over this woyww.  I got around to trying out the little box of Koi watercolours I purchased a couple of weeks age.   They are definitely much brighter/saturated colours then what I generally use and it will take a little time to adjust to the colour/ water mix.    As I have been doing lots of sketching this week (which was quite bland) a burst of colour was a nice change.

 My fascination with the can pen is over. It is a very scratchy writing tool with an uneven ink flow and didn't cope with my heavy handed writing. Glad I tried it out as it might of been a great discovery.  But now I know .... just drink the coke and put the can in the recycling bin.   Hope there have been lots of discoveries on other woyww desks this week.

woyww - tea and tools

Tea and tools this wednesday.  What I am trying to make is a type of calligraphy pen using a drink can and it worked but not the smoothest of writing tools.  My week has been taken up with the online class with Roz Stendhal and drawing animals, tools and anything that sits still.

Absolutely loving Sketchbook Skool.  I realise now that the cafe cup was actually much rounder but what the heck.  Also added a bit of ephemera to mark the moment.  How hard is it to draw a circle?  The saucer looks even more lopsided now that it's in blog land.

A number of the online students also did pics of their "tools".  So I couldn't resist and here you have a small selection of pencils, pen, mini watercolour pallet and the round thing is actually a sponge that I use to wipe my brush. Should give it a wash occasionally and in case you are wondering, nothing is drawn to scale. I was so pleased they actually look like the items on my desk that I didn't bother with measurements.  Of course I have hundreds of pens and pencils and I am becoming a little addicted to creating mini watercolour pallets. A quick look at Pinterest and you get a feel that creating the perfect pallet is a never ending story.  Have a lovely woyww and plans to visit lots of desk over the week.

woyww - leaves and pods

This is my desk very late on Tuesday night and as it won't change by Wednesday it is becoming my woyww pic.  The page was a composition assignment for Jane LaFazio's online class and I am happy with how it all came together.  "Keep it simple" definitely works for me.

A close up of the page which was originally ruled into thirds, objects drawn in the boxes or across a couple of boxes.  Then all the drawings are outlined in waterproof black ink, pencil lines rubbed out and watercolour added. Finally you draw lines around the boxes you want to keep and add some text and the date.  Nice and simple.

 I wonder what others have on their desk this week?