Fingerpainting Friday

Sometimes I wonder what people in public think about the way my hands look when I go shopping or to Starbucks.

I don't think about it, because to me, it's normal to have my fingertips a deep blue, or black, or yellow. It's normal to have paint or alcohol ink under my fingernails that doesn't come off for weeks.

But I'm pretty sure that people who don't paint or stamp probably don't think it's normal. They might just think I'm dirty.

I wonder if I should just play into their fears by growling and making clawing motions at them with my blue/red/yellow claws. I bet I'd get my coffee faster, anyway.

Grrr!

Today is Mix-Ability Friday, and I have to say, this is one of my favorite cards I've ever made for this challenge.

The challenge is to use two different kinds of paint. That's it. Simple!

I knew I'd do watercolor and acrylic, but I didn't know what I'd do until I picked up what I didn't know was an open ink pad and had to clean my fingers on my paper mat. Then I knew - it was going to be fingerpainting Friday!

Jeanne taught me her simple, fingerpainted cloud technique, so I thought I would use that.

First, I watercolored the background with Tempting Turquoise and Pacific Point reinkers and an aquapainter. In a random moment of experimenty-ness, I closed up my aquapainter while the painted paper was still wet and I scratched the wet pigment with the lid of the aquapainter - and I LIKED IT!! Those are the scratches you see in the sky. To me it gives sort of an old world look.

But then again, I'm the sort of crazy person you see at Starbucks growling and clawing you with blue hands.

The clouds were the most fun. I put white and black acrylic paint on my little silicone mat. My friend Lisa bought me a giant set of these teeny tubes of acrylics at Dick Blick in California - we don't have Dick Blick here, so it was awesome to get tiny tubes of tons of colors for really cheap. I mixed a little dark grey up, and finger painted the bottom part of the clouds by just swooshing in a circular motion. Then I came back and swooshed with white for the top of the clouds. I love how real they look. I took a Bob Ross class where we learned to paint realistic clouds and I loved that technique, but this is faster! Also, I don't remember how to do the Bob Ross technique.

The ground was made with Golden Fluid Acrylic - Green Gold. I fingerpainted it on under the tree, and then mixed a bit of it with black, and went back over it.

I stamped the fir in black, but since I was using watercolor paper, I had to fill it in with a marker. Then I added white paint for snow. I'm not sure if I was too impatient and didn't wait until everything was dry to add the white paint, but I ended up liking how it soaked into the tree and wasn't so stark white.

The greeting is from Pursuit of Happiness.

Which we are all entitled to.

Dirty paws and all.

(growl)

Loveyameanitbye.