Rainbow Wheels

Hello all!  I know, I know... I'm a shockingly poor blogger at the moment.  We're arriving at the sharp end of the production, the last few rehearsals before we head into technical rehearsals at the beginning of October, and then dress rehearsals, and then opening, so it's pretty full on.

It's still good for my soul to play craftily in my hours off, though, so here's just a quick peek at one of the main ingredients in my travelling stash, and how I've been entertaining myself in my hotel room in between times.






When I was staying with Cestina in the Czech Republic earlier this summer, we found some brilliant little watercolour sets made by Koh-i-Noor (a Czech company) for the equivalent of only a few pounds... so no need even to try to resist temptation!











There are four wheels with six colours each and they stack in a very neat and tidy little bundle, less than three inches across and 1.5 in height - so they were an easy pick for the travelling craft stash, along with some water brushes.












Obviously, the USA is a place where it's all too easy to augment my limited supplies.  I bought a large watercolour pad at Michaels in the first week, and then succumbed to some stamps designed by the very fabulous Andrea Ockey Parr of Snapping Monsters.

It was mainly the colour wheel which caught my eye, but I'm having great fun playing with the whole set - a delightful step sideways from my usual style of stamp (more of those games another time).










These colour mixing pages were just the results of me taking the colour wheel out for its first spin (sorry, couldn't resist that one!).  It's also a good way of testing out the Koh-i-Noors, and great practice for me in handling watercolour as a medium.

Each sheet uses just the colours from one layer of the watercolour set, mixing an intermediate colour at each stage to double my colour tones at a stroke.












The joys of having the colour wheel as a stamp are a) that I can stamp it straight onto watercolour paper to play with and b) I can stamp it as often as I like.











That means I can carry on mixing to my heart's content.

Obviously the next stage will be a page with some of the reds and oranges from different layers combined.











And then one with the blues and greens from different layers, and so on and so forth...  The variations will end up being almost endless.

The white has a pearlescent effect in it, and is also slightly opaque, so that will alter every colour it comes in contact with.













The rest of each page is just me cleaning the water brush between colours, while enjoying creating different strokes and pigment intensity.







So, nothing mind-bending for you today - just a touch of playtime and a little travelling stash reveal.  I'll share more some time of what I chose to bring along if you're interested, and we're heading for a Tag Friday over at A Vintage Journey at the end of this week, so I'll be back then with another tag created with my hotel supplies.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you again soon.

I'll dip my brush into the sunrise, and the sunset, and the rainbow.
From The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a 1930s play by Rudolf Besier