Playing with Loose Watercolours – a day creating unique art

There will never be enough adjectives in the English language to describe the nice things in life for me and regular readers to this blog will know I tend to favour wonderful and lovely a little too frequently in my writing and not from sloppiness either I might add; these two words simply fluff up the good things in life quite appropriately for me. Writing about my recent Exploring Watercolours Creative Day held here at my home in rural Hampshire last Friday with my dear friend Sara Smith demonstrating the technique of loose watercolours, proved to be no exception. 

After such a successful and you’ve got it wonderful first Creative Day back in March, I could only hope this, my second craft workshop would be as enjoyable and lovely as the first for all. I have a propensity to pay attention to the tiniest detail. My faffing is well documented in these pages and I do so enjoy the planning process of any event, so the day had been well rehearsed. Indeed Mr M had become quite fed up with taste testing the lunchtime menu ahead of the day and when he returned at the end of our workshop to see a little left over summer salad, his dismay was evident as he quickly scurried off in search of a take-away menu declaring I deserved a treat after all my hard work.

After welcoming the ladies in the morning, with coffee and homemade biscuits, we made our way to The Little House, my sweet craft studio and our venue for the day.

Like a great deal of Europe, we are experiencing extreme heat at the moment and I don’t mind sharing with you my concerns at keeping everyone cool for the day. Two fans and a small air-conditioning unit did the trick though and once settled, Sara soon set about putting everyone at ease by willingly sharing her techniques and knowledge for painting simple and loose watercolours. It mattered not few had picked up a paintbrush since their school days. With a morning of practice and play and Sara’s own beautiful artwork displayed around the room for inspiration, it wasn’t long before a style was found and favoured by each up-coming artist and everyone was quietly on their way to creating a style of her own.

We enjoyed a delicious homemade lunch together in my kitchen at midday – too hot for the garden, that’s not something we get to say often in these parts – and later back at The Little House attention was drawn to creating a set of individual notelets and envelopes for each attendee as part of their take home craft. I spent some time in the afternoon demonstrating how I too have taken the loose watercolours technique taught to me by Sara and created from it my own style of watercolour painting. Carefully painting delicate pansy petals with six expectant pairs of eyes watching you whilst the camera is rolling is not at all stressful, no no it is not.

With each postcard style notelet, came an envelope, one of which had been beautifully lined with recycled tissue paper using this method and I hoped everyone might feel inspired to line their remaining envelopes at home in a similar way. It really does make all the difference to this personalised stationery set; I’ve found nothing quite like it anywhere else out there. 

The main crafty creation of the day was to be a flower painting of choice using loose watercolours as the guide. Imagine the gasp of surprise when I mentioned this at the start of our watercolour journey together. Of course by the time favourite paint brushes had been selected and palettes were full of brightly mixed colours, the only sound to be heard was one of quiet concentration as each lady skilfully painted her final piece. Once dry, each unique painting was added to a neat little brass frame and adorned with ribbons and dried flowers, snipped straight from Doris’ summer skirt of abundance.

The temperature gauge hit thirty-four degrees on Friday so frozen flannels sprinkled with peppermint essential oil – thank you to one of my lovely followers in New Zealand who might actually have sent her perfect idea to me at exactly the same moment as did my very own Little Miss here in the UK – and ice cubes complete with home-grown borage flowers, were a welcome distraction during the hot afternoon. And by the time our day together drew to an end, we flopped into the kitchen to enjoy a delicious home-baked raspberry cake from my wonderful friend Jane and to share a final look at one another’s beautiful creations. I think it may now be a tradition for it has happened at least twice, a group photo should be taken at Belle’s, creations on full display before everyone leaves for home, hopefully full to the brim with the happiest of feelings from our day together.

It is my sole intention that everyone who comes to my home for a Creative Day feels welcome, included and comfortable enough to try a craft they may never have attempted before. Long, long ago I had the misfortune to attend a workshop to learn about social media and not one of those three boxes was ticked for me. I had a testing time that day and back then it was only a dream of mine that I might one day run workshops of my own from my home. Later, on that unpleasant day, I returned home more than a little relieved and vowed to the M’s should I ever be lucky enough to open my doors to creative souls, no-one would ever end their day feeling like that. So please know that if you have never tried a craft you see advertised at one of my workshops, that never matters. Nor does it matter if you come alone. What matters is you come along to have fun and make crafty friends and enjoy exploring the chance at a craft you might just get to like.

There are limited places only available on my Creative Days this year now however there will be more to come in 2023 so do keep your eyes peeled here on this page and on both my Instagram and Facebook pages. And if you can’t make a workshop, many of the crafts will be show cased here in the pages of this blog so if you are not subscribed, make sure you sign up using the form beneath this post, so you never miss a new story when I publish. Thank you for being here and until next time…