Fruits & Veggies + Giveaway

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Eat your fruits and veggies! We've all heard that all our lives, right? One time I heard something from a doctor I've never forgotten, especially since my first job was in a health food store during a time when juicing was the supposed cure for everything, from politics to cancer. Seriously. It was an insane craze. But then in the last twenty years or so, I heard a doctor say something that made so much sense - he said "don't drink your fruit" - meaning, don't drink juice. At first it sounds shocking, right? Juice is good for you. But he went on to explain it by saying - would you ever sit down and eat five oranges at once? No? Then don't drink them in a glass. It's too many calories, and just doesn't make sense. I had never thought about it that way, but now that I have a dairy allergy - if you think about it, almond milk seems similar, so I actually asked an almond milk manufacturer. Almond milk is much more normal - it's only five to six almonds in a glass of almond milk - that's a completely normal serving size. I actually would never use a full cup of almond milk because I just use a bit of it for coffee - not 8 oz. - so I feel good about that. But I wouldn't eat five oranges, so I don't drink commercial orange juice. I do juice my own fruit for recipes etc. but I avoid drinking large quantities of the juice. Funny how sometimes info like that just clicks.

I try to eat mostly whole foods - meaning food in as close to its original form as possible. So instead of canned pineapple, I look for a whole pineapple, etc. I enjoy breaking it all down myself into "ingredients" and in my opinion, fruits, veggies and all plants are beautiful, so they are most often the subject of my watercolor sketches. 

I was THRILLED to see the Hero kit this month with it's beautiful produce! They are large images, so fun to watercolor, which is exactly what I did with the main kit and the NEW NEON WATERCOLOR - I love it so much. It's so bright and happy. I used the orange, yellow and chartreuse, along with Coffee to create this still life. The sentiment is from the set.

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Here's what the kits look like - classic and premium. I love that the premium kit has some of the neon watercolor!

But Y'all. THE GROCERY BAG DIE. It's so cute!!! It looks just like a grocery bag - adorable. It has little tabs you attach to the card OR cut two of them and put them together for a stand-alone bag for a tag, gift, etc. I stamped it with this sweet, food-themed cling in kraft on kraft, and then used these stamps and dies to add food - I colored the white outlines kraft to match.

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Here's what all the add-ons look like - I LOVE the strawberry basket.

If you've seen my artistic scene class here, you'll recognize this technique with the new window die from the premium kit. It really makes the produce pop. I used the fun little clay dragon fruits from the classic kit to glue onto the matching fruits in the scene.

The opening showcases some of the neon watercolor on this stone paper. I have an online class for techniques with this paper here. Look for the butterfly class.

This was my sneak peek from yesterday - using this fun cling from the classic kit in white on kraft, with the berries from the kit.

Ready to be inspired? See a full blog hop with more samples starting HERE. Leave me a comment and leave comments on the way to be entered to win a $50 gift card!

Loveyameanitbye.