watercolour diy: "love your city"

As you might remember from this watercolour diy, I am seriously in love with watercolours!

I've always loved all the "love your city" artwork that's all over etsy and pinterest, so I decided to put a watercolour spin on it and do one of good old Edmonton, Alberta. And yes, I'm well aware of how boringly shaped my province is, but hey what can ya do!

If you need any tips on how to use watercolour paint, make sure to check out my watercolour stencil art DIY for a list of helpful hints!

Supplies Needed:

watercolours, good paint brushes, watercolour paper, cup of water, tape, cut-out of your city, cut-out of a little heart, eraser, and a sharpie

Instructions

1. Print & cut out a map of your province / state / country.

2. Trace your map onto your watercolour paper.
3. Take your cut-out little heart and place it over the city where you live. 

4. Begin painting! I kept mine very simple and stuck with only yellow and a smidgen of orange to make an ombre effect. I picked yellow because Alberta's prairie fields turn golden =) 

5. Once your watercolours have dried, take an eraser and erase the lines from your tracing as much as you can.

6. Add a little note at the bottom with sharpie that says: "Home is where the heart is"

p.s. ♥ clara

diy : watercolour stencil art

Today's DIY features my favourite art medium.... watercolours! I seriously LOVE watercolours and if I had to only go with one kind of paint, it would definitely be watercolours. Now, I know what you're thinking, aren't watercolours tricky and hard? NO, it definitely does not have to be. I'll give you some tips throughout this post to help you overcome any fears of this beautiful & dreamy art medium.

{ s u p p l i e s }

- watercolor paper 

(first tip of the day, don't use watercolors on regular computer paper, you definitely NEED the thicker material that watercolor paper provides!)

- good paintbrushes

- watercolour paints!

- cup of water
- a stencil : does this deer head look familiar? ;) for today's DIY I re-used a stencil I had printed off and cut out from my "Bleached Oh Deer Tank Top". Any stencil would work for this project though! I'm thinking elephants for my next one :)

{ i n s t r u c t i o n s } 

1. tape down your stencil to your watercolour paper

2. wet your brush with some water  

(tip #2, do NOT use too much water! make sure to scrape your brush against the sides of your cup or on a paper towel so you don't have an excess of water...too much water results in not only a really faded colour but it will also ruin even your strong watercolour paper)

3. dab your brush in the colour of your choice

(tip #3, choose a palette before hand and stick to a handful of colours for this project...ie. I made two pieces of art, one with warm colours: reds, oranges, yellows, and the other with cool colours: greens, blues, and purples.)

4. feel free to use a palette to mix your colours to get different shades. 

(tip #4, hardened watercolour paints will ALWAYS be darker than the colour you will see when you paint the colour on, so this is also a good way of seeing what the actual colour will be!)

Since I was too lazy to buy frames that would fit my watercolour pieces, I simply used an office clip and a tack to showcase these in our home. Cheap, easy, and lovely!

p.s. ♥ clara