Crafting Celebration Blog Hop

Hello my peeps! We’re doing things a little differently today. Instead of our Inspire Me Monday column, I’m helping celebrate the crafting anniversary of a kind, generous, and creative lady, Rubeena of A Rare Ruby with a big blog hop and giveaways from a bunch of neat companies. You should have landed here from the fun and fanciful Flora & Fauna Blog.

Firstly, I’d like to say Congratulations to Rubeena on four years of passionate papercrafting. Rubeena’s work is vibrant and adventurous, you can tell she puts her heart into each piece. (Plus, her anniversary is just a few months after Power Poppy started up in 2014 — so I feel more than a kinship here with the 4-year celebration!)

To go along with the passionate theme, I’m sharing an illustration I made that pairs a few of my passions, drawing, painting, and looking for wild mushrooms.

I used the Chanterelle image from my clear stamp set, Wild Mushrooms for this little watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil creation.

The seed of inspiration began last weekend, when I was out hiking with Tibbs the Corgi and came across a flush of Chanterelle mushrooms in the woods. They lit up the forest floor like little golden nuggets! I picked a whole bunch, but left lots of them in the woods for the next lucky forager.

The fun finds in my gathering basket, including crown-tipped coral mushrooms, puffballs, honeys, a cinnamon polypore, and even a small lobster mushroom. This on top of a pile of edible chanterelles, which I’ve been enjoying sautéed in butter and garlic with just about every meal since. It was a good day!

For my creation, I stamped the Chanterelle image from Wild Mushrooms in brown pigment onto watercolor paper using my Mini MISTI, a tool I love, adore, and highly recommend. I arranged a few of the mushrooms around me to get a good feel for the color and texture to try to carry it through to my piece. While I know everyone can’t take this particular step, you can find a plethora of images online to spark your fancy. (That's usually what I do when I can’t paint or draw from life.)

I colored directly on top of the MISTI, it served as a nice little easel. Laying down a few washes of watered down, yellow gouache, I then went back and added a more tawny brown with strokes of orange. But the little mushrooms asked me to put a background behind them, because they felt lonely on the white paper.

That’s when this piece started really coming to life! I painted an oval with a gold-infused green watercolor paint from Daniel Smith. See the shimmer? But once I started with the background, it just kept calling to me, asking for more. “More is more, and less is a bore,” in the words of Iris Apfel. 

And here we are with the finished drawing, after I went in with Prismacolor Premier colored pencils and accentuated fine detail and added texture. Behind the mushrooms, I attempted to simulate the feeling of being beneath the canopy of trees as the golden light shimmers through, with the earthy, leafy forest floor and her wonderful gifts glistening below. I want to draw a few more of these, and since my Wild Mushroom stamp set has 9 varieties of mushrooms, I can create a mini gallery of framed artwork. 

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And that wraps up my contribution to Rubeena’s Crafting Anniversary blog hop! There are soooo many other fun stops on this hop, and be sure to leave a few comments as you travel around, because Rubeena is giving away a WHOLE BUNCH of gift certificates — over $1000 in sponsored prizes!

Winners will have up to 2 weeks to contact Rubeena at ararerubycrafts@gmail.com to claim their prize before another winner is selected. Winners will be announced on September 5, 2018 right HERE.

List of Prizes.... WOO HOO!

Studio Katia - $50 gift card

Hello Bluebird - $50 gift card

Altenew - $50 Gift card

Pinkfresh Studio - $30 gift card

Gina K. Designs - $50 gift card

Clearly Besotted - £25 gift card

Simon Says Stamp - $25 gift card

Spellbinders Card Kit ($55 value).

Jennifer McGuire - $50 Simon Says Stamp gift card

Winnie & Walter, LLC - $40 gift card

Mama Elephant - $25 gift card

Hero Arts - $25 gift card

Nichol Spohr LLC - Custom-sewn rainbow pencil case filled with brand new Spellbinders dies

Danielle Flynn - $25 Simon Says Stamp gift card

Picket Fence Studios - four $25 gift cards

Ellen Hutson - two $25 gift cards  

Pretty Pink Posh - two $30 gift cards

The Stamp Market - July 2018 Release (estimated $100 value)

Indigojade Art Shop - $50 gift card to Art Prints & Gifts Shop

Flora & Fauna - a 4x6 stamp set

Waffle Flower - $25 gift card

Power Poppy - $50 gift card

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And now... to continue on your blog hop journey....

Rubeena Ianigro

Altenew Blog

Pinkfresh Studio Blog

Flora & Fauna Blog

>> Power Poppy Blog << YOU ARE HERE

Winnie & Walter Blog

Clearly Besotted Blog

Jennifer McGuire

Debby Hughes

Cynde Whitlow

Lydia Fiedler

Mayra Duran-Hernandez

Keeway Tsao

Yana Smakula

Kymona Tracey

Butterfly Reflections Ink Blog

Darnell Knauss

Wanda Guess

Tiffany Au

Libby Hickson

Leigh Houston

Laura Bassen

Alex Syberia

Danielle Flynn

Zsoka Marko

Lea Lawson

Kelly Latevola

Natalia Valkovskaya

Svitlana Shayevich

Rosali Bartz

Dana Gong

Amy Kolling

Lisa Tilson

Michelle Short

Erum Tasneem

Tracie Pond

Isha Gupta

Maria Peters (Instagram)

Thank you so much, and have an awesome day! Hope you’ll come back on Tuesday for Julie Koerber’s inspiring Creative Confetti Challenge — a new idea every week to get your mojo workin’!

Next, move along to the adorable Winnie & Walter Blog, where you’ll find your next sweet post celebrating Rubeena, and another chance to comment and win.