Moving into Summer with House Mouse Fun

Hi crafters, Dina Kowal here! The House Mouse gang is back with some hot weather antics in the Summer Fun collection… I’m not even sure how it’s already time for summer cards, but here we are! There are 4 new sets in this House Mouse release, each with a card-sized image and several coordinating sentiments. I love the movement that is drawn into each of these images, so I used different methods and mediums to highlight those details.

You know I love to watercolor, so on all these cards I used my favorite paints to begin my coloring. I let the paint dry between layers and kept building up intensity, shading, and dimension with additional layers. Deeper shadows and textures were added to the fur with sharp colored pencils.

On this card using the Water Fun set, I used Glaze ‘n Glue on the splashes of water before painting the background. This is a new product to me – it has a nice flow and was very easy to work with, either applying it with the bottle tip or pouring out a little to apply with a brush or silicone tool (these are sometimes called Color Shapers, and they’re versatile tools that can be used with wet media, masking fluid, pastels, clay and more). The Glaze ‘n Glue dries clear with a shiny, raised gloss, which is a great effect for water or glass. To mimic the spray of water and add more movement to the image, I added lots of splattered paint to my background.

TIP: My card base is made from strips of cardstock that have been piling up next to my guillotine trimmer – sometimes those random combinations are my favorite! I line them up on the sticky side of a piece of label paper, then trim the ends down to size.

On this Stay Cool card, I wanted to accent the movement of the air around the mouse – I’ve got him cooling off in a glass of pink lemonade! I didn’t want a high gloss, so instead I added some watercolored lines following the waves of air and then traced a few of the lines with Bearly Art Glue. The glue dries with a flat, matte finish, but it’s ‘there’ enough to add a little visual texture. I had fun coloring the fan like an antique fan I have in one of my craft areas – it’s an industrial green with a little wear and rust. I got this effect with layers of watercolor, a little colored pencil, and some dots with an acrylic paint pen.

I used the Glaze ‘n Glue on the melting ice cube, and I love the gloss there. In this angled photo, you can see the effect of the Bearly Art Glue on the airwaves – it has just a slight matte sheen. I didn’t use any glaze or glue on the glass – instead, I added some vertical reflection lines to the image with a white acrylic paint pen, following the angles of the sides of the glass. To finish off my focal panel here, I die-cut the watercolor paper and left it in the die to brush a little ink around the edges.

For the Pop! set I had a lot of fun with color. Hot pink, turquoise, and yellow are a great color triad and a perfect summer palette. This card began like the others with layers of watercolor and colored pencil. I wasn’t getting the brightness I wanted on the bubble gum, so I pulled out a fluorescent-colored pencil to bump up the saturation. The dotted background panel was stenciled with the Puff Dotty stencil – I actually blended that ink so vigorously that I snapped my brush in half!

The movement in this image is the flight trail behind the bee – I used colored pencils to loosely trace the trail, matching colors I had used on the other areas of the image. TIP: Repeating colors on a panel is a great way to unify the color palette.

You can find more of my work at Dina Kowal Creative or on Instagram at @dinakowalcreative!

Spellbinders Supplies:

Other Supplies

Accent Opaque 100# cardstock, Fabriano Studio 140# hot press watercolor paper, kraft cardstock, QoR watercolor paints, Posca and Tooli-Art fine acrylic paint markers, various brushes, colored pencils, ball stylus, scoring board, paper scraps, pointed silicone color shaper tool, blender brush, ColorBox Raspberry Premium Dye Ink