My heart beats in technicolors

With all the stress regarding the new house, I have been craving stamps to relax me a little.
Here is another one. A big heart. I had fun testing all my new colors. I really like the look of the 2nd one. It's more used and distress. I achieved that look by restamping without adding any ink.
Hope you like them!

Little cat

The other day as I was walking to work, I saw the most gorgeous cat ever. It was a Lynx point siamese as I found out later. It was gorgeous, like a small piece of art in the middle of the street. It had incredible blue eyes and it starred at me intensly. He remind me of a little sphinx, a little good luck sign for the day to come. I was so impressed by this cat that when I got back home I decided to draw him. Here's the result. Hope you like it!

Willy Wonka

I participate in this illustration challenge blog called "Notre club de dessin" (our drawing club)
This week the theme was Willy Wonka. I wanted to do something with a lot of colors. So I played around with colorful patterns and papers. I think it turned out pretty good. As for the background, I found this old physic book in the trash and I used pages from it as a background. I wanted to represent the factory, chemistry and little bit of mad scientist aspects of Willy Wonka's personality.
Hope you like it!

tutorial: DIY handmade stamps

What do you need:
- a carving block ( I bought this one at the art store for $2.95)
- a linoleum cutter ( the pink thing, $12.95)
- a ink pad (I used the brand color box, color red, $4.95)
- some paper

Now we are ready to get started

So first, I drew the design I wanted for my stamp. In this case, it's a little bird. I drew my design on tracing paper with a pencil. Then I place the tracing paper on the carving block the design face down on the block. Then apply some pressure with the back of a spoon or a bone folder and the design will transfer itself on the block. ( step 1)

Now we are ready to carve. I use the smallest point with the linoleum cutter and remove everything thing that I don't want printed. Basically, you retrace with the cutter the lines of your design. Then I cut the borders of the design with an x-acto knife. ( step 2)

Then I tested the stamp on a piece of paper. It still needed some tweaking. So I reworked the stamp and tested it again. Now it was perfect. (step 3)

I had so much fun doing the stamp that I went in crazy stamp mode and made lots of them.

And the create a more finish product, I stamped Manila tags with my little bird. Perfect for gift tags!

If you want more info on creating your handmade stamps, check out it Gennine's art blog

new header

I finally had some time to customize a little bit my blog. Check out my new header and tell me what you think. 

ps: I have been trying to learn more about css and blog design but I have been having trouble finding good  documentation. Any good tutorials or links to share?

new house. new blog

As you may know, I have recently bought a really old house.
It's my first house and I'm in renovation hell or heaven
And I want to share my experience with everyone
So I created a new blog. It's called 2 cats + house in honor of my 2 kitties!
Take a look and tell me what you think

I'm in DIY stamp heaven

Since the discovery of Geninne's Art blog, I have been wanting to do some handmade stamps.
Last week, I went to the art store and bought all the necessary tools and materials.
Back home, I started my art stamps experiments. This is the results
Hope you like it! It was so fun to do ! Now I'm a DIY stamps addict... I just need to go back to the art store to buy more supplies and do more stamps

ps: I took photo of my process , I'll soon post a tutorial on my handmade stamps

Art Shop Experiments: bienfang watercolor brush pen review

I have decided to create a new section in my blogs. Art Shop Experiments!!
These posts will share my experiments with products I have just bought at the art store.
Art materials are really expensive and I think it will be useful to everyone to know what works and what is totally a waste of money. I hope you will share with your opinions and your experience on each product.

So let's get started
This week, I tested the Bienfang watercolor brush pens.
I already own a water brush pen and I love it... so I taught putting colors into them will be great too.
So I bought 3 Bienfag watercolor brush pens ( at the price of 3.95$ each). I bought the 3 primary colors thinking that I could recreate all the colors with just these three like with usual watercolors.

Here is the results of my test



At first, I had the remove a small white plastic ring form the pen and pierce a whole in the watercolor reservoir. This was quite easy but them it took forever for my brush to fill with color.
Actually, nothing was happening so a pressed the reservoir and try to push the ink out. It finally came out with it started to drip a bit. I wiped the excess watercolor on a paper and then I was ready to draw something. The brush pen gives a great variety of line weight. You can achieve a very very fine line with them. It really has the flexibility of a good brush. The color are nice and vibrant but the watercolor dried very fast and I could mix the color as much as I wanted. As you can see on my test, I only achieved to created the basic secondary colors.

I'm still not convince buy the Bienfang watercolor brush pen. I think they can be practical but if I need to buy 20 pens to achieve all the colors I want and need... they will become very expensive and not very portable. I think I still prefer my watercolor travel kit for sketches outside of the house.
To me, the Bienfang watercolor brush pens feel more like color inks than watercolors. They don't make the paper wrinkle and I think they can become handy with illustrations on molyskine paper. No wrinkle, vibrant colors... could make great results

So based on these results I give the Bienfang watercolor brush pen a 3/5

moly x 69: in the mail

Here is my envelope for the moly x 69 exchange.
I really had a lot of fun. With the help of Gennine's Tutorial, I did my custom stamps.
I'll post photo soon of the complete process
Hope you like it and hope it survives the road to the UK!