Adornit and Mountain Plains Crafters Hop - Coloring Books!

Welcome to another joint blog hop with Adornit and Mountain Plains Crafters!  

We're so happy to be introducing you to the brand new Adornit Art Play Coloring Books.

Coloring books are super hot right now.  You can find entire sections in your local book store, dedicated to this genre.  What you won't find?  Coloring books with thick, artist paper.  The good stuff.  Perfect for just about any paint medium or colored pencils, if that's what you like to use.  

You should have arrived from Paula's blog so if you did, you're in the right place.  I'm the last stop on the hop.  So let me share what I've created for you today.  I was given the new coloring book designed by Lindsay Ostrom, called Halloween as well as Folk Garden, designed by artist and owner of Adornit, Carolee McMullins.

For the Halloween coloring book, I chose to focus on some neutral themes that would also translate well into other Autumn, Fall or Thanksgiving events.  Why?  Well, today is Nov. 1st and Halloween is over, haha.  Unless of course you live for all the candy markdowns that start today!  (Count me in!)

Lindsay designed some super cool art for this book.  I'm here to show you that this is not a "one trick pony" coloring book.  It's Halloween and more!

For my first project, I've colored a pair of tags for these gorgeous pumpkin treat boxes.  Wouldn't these be nice to give to your family at Thanksgiving?  How about your favorite school teacher or Sunday School teacher?

The pumpkins were cut with my Cricut Explore using the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More 2 cartridge.  I used the Adornit Blender paper which, if you don't mind my saying, cuts like butter on the light cardstock setting of the Explore.  Oh my, I just love it!  

Below, is one of the pages in the Halloween coloring book.  You can see several fun images.  I zoomed right in on the tag shape.  My coloring medium of choice for this project is my Tombow dual brush pens.  Notice the cut guidelines for each piece?  The pages are perforated as well so you can easily tear them out when finished and make something amazing!

And, here's my finished tag.  You can see that I did a little watercoloring as well and added some additional embellishments... polka dots and a criss-cross pattern.  Do what you want, that's the beauty of coloring!

Here's my second pumpkin box and tag.  I have a confession to make.  See that chevron bow?  I made a matching orange chevron bow for my other tag above.  I had packed everything up for traveling to take photos elsewhere and in the process, my orange bow disappeared.  Insert sad face.... however, I did find a lovely button!  Whew...crisis averted.

By the way, all my ribbons are from May Arts Ribbon today and all my adhesives are from Tombow.  I've mentioned it in previous projects but I'll say it again today...my favorite watercoloring technique is to take your marker such as the Tombow, swipe it a few times across an acrylic block until you see some good color, then spritz your colored ink with water.  Take a wet paintbrush and dab and paint, dab and paint.  Add more water if you need to .  Sometimes I like to get varying shades of color by not adding as much water or adding a lot.   Color your background right up.  It's quick, easy and clean up is a breeze; a paper towel.

If you have pretty handwriting, you can fill in the empty space with something lovely for your recipient, stamp a sentiment or do as I've done and add some wordy stickers.  Isn't this wreath shape with pumpkins just darling?  

Next, I've colored a background page from the Halloween coloring book.  It's full of pumpkins, stars and little swirls.  This is how I began.......

Next, I filled in my background with the watercolor technique mentioned above, and my Tombow dual brush pens.

And the result?

A happy little family of Thanksgiving place cards.  It's going to be a small affair at my mom's this year.  Just five of us.  So each card has the name of the person using...... Adornit letter stickers.  I came into possession of these recently and have really enjoyed putting them to use.

I'm not going to lie... it was a real struggle cutting up that beautiful colored page.  But, once I started chopping, I couldn't stop, haha.  Again, I'm using the Adornit blender paper under the top layer of my place cards.  I've added some extras like, tiny liquid pearls, swirls with my colored pencils and more dots with a white gel pen and Tombows.  Each card has a little flag tag that I popped out with foam squares and added a fussy cut pumpkin from the colored page. 

Next, I'm featuring some of the pages from the Folk Garden Coloring book.  I picked another background page to color because I really love this design.  There's so much open space which means I get to really play!  I used my Zig Clean Color brushes for this project, just to switch it up a little and get some brighter colors.

I kept everything pretty uniform in color and filled in my background with more watercoloring.

Here's a close-up of some embellishing I did, filling in some open space with tiny dots.

When I finished this background, I couldn't decide how I wanted to use it.  A background for a card?  Cut it up for something else?  I really wanted to keep it intact if I could.  When in doubt, ask a friend.  So, I posed this question to the girls at Mountain Plains Crafters and Pam suggested to frame it for wall art.  Ooooh....I like it!  And so, I did.  She also suggested maybe adding some flowers.  I tried a couple different looks but I kept coming back to less is more on this one.  Would you agree?  

Lastly, I've chosen an image from Folk Garden that speaks to me, particularly because I spy sweet little tea cups.  My mother-in-law had a beautiful collection of Blue Willow china and I leaned in that direction just a wee bit.  I've done some watercoloring and direct coloring as well and filled in my background with blue watercolor and white gel pen swirls.

Since this this sweet image is enclosed in a glass dome, I've decided to add a little dimension and sparkle with my Mod Podge Dimensional Magic glue.  Love this stuff.  When it dries, it leaves a gorgeous, sparkly shine and dimension.

See what I mean?

To finish it off, I decided to bust out my sewing machine.  I am NOT the most gifted person when it comes to sewing, let me tell you.  So don't look too closely.  Even so, the fun is in the creating, right?  And I did have fun, for sure.  I created a little wall hanging that I thought would go nicely in the kitchen.  If you have a little coffee nook, this would be a perfect place for this.  The burlap ribbon and pearls are from May Arts Ribbon.  Any bubble embellishments you see today are from DoubleClick Skittles.  

Now, head on back to adornit.com/blog and follow the instructions for entering to win one of these lovely coloring books for yourself.  That reminds me........

Your word clue from me today is:

You can purchase any of the Adornit coloring books right now for yourself or to give as a gift.  Check out all of the Art Play products at adornit.com.

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Follow my Adornit Art Play Pinterest board as well for more inspiration!

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