Inspiration Notebook-Galvanized Garden Containers

Oh you guys!! You have touched my heart once again! Thank you so much for your wonderful comments. It's ones like this that makes me feel so good:

Anonymous said...
Hands down Mish, you have THE best blog. You are not about telling the world how wonderful you are,as some blogs are!! You are all about helping others and inspiring people with your talent and ideas. I blog hop to loads of spots but you seem to always be about the reader learning something - a gift of yourself. Thank you for being so generous and uplifting - I enjoy having coffee with you each morning!!

I just celebrated my 2 year blog anniversary and I have to say, it's you guys that keep me going. I love to share with you and it's fun to have our little *discussions* via comments back and forth. I'm so glad that I've motivated a lot of you to get your ideas organized. I can usually find a page from my Inspiration Notebook to match each and every project I want to do. It's so much fun to flip through organized pages....now for the rest of my house...that's another story!

Okay, let's move on to a project!! I've been in the gardening/flower mode since we had a few nice days a couple weeks ago and we got to work outside. I pulled out a Whipper Snapper stamp drawn by my friend Anna Wight because she does the best flowers, all with a little touch of country. Well her stamp image (Bucket of Posies) has a bucket on it and I really wanted to color my image to look like an old galvanized bucket.

So into my Inspiration File I dug, knowing I had several sample pages. I found this one that shows vintage watering cans, just the look I wanted to find:

And these pages that show a few more samples, I especially love that old bucket filled with flowers:

And then I snapped this photo right from my back deck, it's my Grandma's old wash tub that I'm going to fill with flowers this summer:

And here's my interpretation from my inspiring photos. For the base card, I used Papertrey Kraft cardstock inked with Fresh Snow ink, Crate Paper patterned paper, ribbon from my stash and Foofala buttons tied with thin twine (Stampin' Up!). I used staples to help adhere the ribbon and to reflect the metal look of the galvanized bucket.

Here's a close up of my galvanized bucket. I'd like to share with you how to get this look using Copic Sketch markers. When I color images like this one, I like to imagine that my Sketch markers are more like watercolor brushes. I use a very *loose* brush stroke and kind of *scribble* on my colors in a very blotchy effect. Yes, I colored outside the lines, zoom in to look at the flowers. But that's okay, there are no rules here. I did the same for the grass and sky(Color: B00 with a Colorless Blender (0)), just using looks scribbly strokes of my Sketch markers. Notice that I used complimentary colors for the flowers with the orange and blues. Amazing tools for coloring, I tell ya!

Now, let's get serious on this galvanzied bucket look. I used these marker colors of blues, greens and grays to get the look: W1, W3, W5, B52, YG93, 0. I did not apply the markers in brush strokes. Instead, I dabbed the color on using the tip of my Sketch markers...think of making polka dots all over the bucket. It looks funny at first but just keep dabbing on the colors, they blend as you add more colors. Zoom in to get a good look...and then go back up to my inspiration phots and zoom in....I really studied those photos for texture and color inspiration. Old galvanized buckets look kind of blue and green and blotchy. Keep adding color until you get the right look. You can go in with a marker and add some final shading strokes. I had so much fun coloring Anna's image!

Now, are you already saying *I could never color like that!*? Don't say that because you CAN do it! Here's proof below. Isn't this another wonderfully colored image with a galvanized flower pot(another Anna image)? My daughter Jordan sat right with me and colored this image, using my guidance. She's TEN YEARS OLD, peeps. I must add that she is super talented and crafty, like her ol' mom so she's ahead of the game a bit...I love that about her, a little *Mini Mish*!! :)

Sooo, get to coloring some buckets now, you can do it!!