diy : watercolour stencil art

Today's DIY features my favourite art medium.... watercolours! I seriously LOVE watercolours and if I had to only go with one kind of paint, it would definitely be watercolours. Now, I know what you're thinking, aren't watercolours tricky and hard? NO, it definitely does not have to be. I'll give you some tips throughout this post to help you overcome any fears of this beautiful & dreamy art medium.

{ s u p p l i e s }

- watercolor paper 

(first tip of the day, don't use watercolors on regular computer paper, you definitely NEED the thicker material that watercolor paper provides!)

- good paintbrushes

- watercolour paints!

- cup of water
- a stencil : does this deer head look familiar? ;) for today's DIY I re-used a stencil I had printed off and cut out from my "Bleached Oh Deer Tank Top". Any stencil would work for this project though! I'm thinking elephants for my next one :)

{ i n s t r u c t i o n s } 

1. tape down your stencil to your watercolour paper

2. wet your brush with some water  

(tip #2, do NOT use too much water! make sure to scrape your brush against the sides of your cup or on a paper towel so you don't have an excess of water...too much water results in not only a really faded colour but it will also ruin even your strong watercolour paper)

3. dab your brush in the colour of your choice

(tip #3, choose a palette before hand and stick to a handful of colours for this project...ie. I made two pieces of art, one with warm colours: reds, oranges, yellows, and the other with cool colours: greens, blues, and purples.)

4. feel free to use a palette to mix your colours to get different shades. 

(tip #4, hardened watercolour paints will ALWAYS be darker than the colour you will see when you paint the colour on, so this is also a good way of seeing what the actual colour will be!)

Since I was too lazy to buy frames that would fit my watercolour pieces, I simply used an office clip and a tack to showcase these in our home. Cheap, easy, and lovely!

p.s. ♥ clara

tasty tuesday: tetris cookies

I have done a lot of cool things with sugar cookies over the years, but I have to say I think this project takes the cake... er, takes the cookie?

This cookie project was inspired by a post by Sweet Explorations.  I thought that it was so cute!
I showed it to my good friend Ashley, and she got really excited about it too.  Her boyfriend, Karson, loves Tetris.  His work even has an old Tetris arcade game!  Ashley thought this would be a creative way to express her love for Karson on Valentine's Day.
So we got together and made these funky treats, and she took them into his work on V Day!

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Butter

3/4 cup Sugar

2 tsp Vanilla

1 Egg

1 TBSP Milk (or cream)

2 cup Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

Directions:

1) Cream butter - add sugar, vanilla, egg and milk; beat hard.

2) Add flour and baking powder to cream mixture and beat again. 

3) Roll onto flour board and cut into shapes.

4) Bake at 350 degrees F for 5-6 minutes.

Royal Icing
Ingredients:
3 egg white
Icing Sugar (approximately 3 cups)

Directions:

1)  Mix in icing sugar with your egg white until the desired consistency has been reached. (you can see a photo below, I made mine pretty thick, so it wouldn't fall off the edges of the cookies!)

2)  Just add a (very small!) amount of water to adjust the thickness (if needed).

3)  Keep covered until you're using it or else it will start to harden!

We doubled the cookie recipe, and rolled out all the dough at once.  We then used card stock paper templates that Ashley made, and cut out the cookies with knives. (As you can see below.)

 

 I was surprised at how much fun it was to make these cookies.  Sugar cookies always seem like a good idea, and then take about 10 years longer to make than you had anticipated.  While these guys were a bit time consuming, we had such a good time making them, that time flew by!

Everything about them screamed Tetris!  Cutting them out we had to figure out which shapes would go where in order to be most efficient with our dough.  Organizing them on the pan was also like a crazy game of Tetris.  Even putting them in container or on serving plates was like a real like 3D game of Tetris.

Kelsey likes to outline her sugar cookies with royal icing, let them dry, and then fill in the center with royal icing that has been watered down a bit.

For this recipe I used thicker royal icing, and didn't bother outlining them.  There were so many colours, so I knew it wouldn't be realistic to transfer them from containers (bowl, squeezy bottle, bowl) to water them all down etc.  The squeezy bottle worked great for icing!  It took a couple cookies to get into a rhythm, but by the 3rd and 4th we were icing like pros!

To get the cute block lines we used food writers.  They are very cool, and very handy.  After the icing on the cookies hardened, (we let them sit overnight) we used a ruler draw on straight lines.

You should be able to purchase food writers at Michaels.

These cookies were so much fun!  If you plan on making them, I would suggest doing it with a friend!  They are time consuming, but I promise they are worth it.

I was talking about them today, and a random lady in an elevator overheard and thought they sounded like the coolest thing ever!  I promise your friends will be just as impressed!

p.s. ♥ jordyn

weekly wrap-up: family day

This past week was reading week & family day, and I have had an absolute ball of a time! Although, I must confess... as you'll see from my photos, I have literally done no reading. Despite my grand plans of catching up, getting ahead, and being disciplined in academia, my week for the most part was spent skating, hanging out with family & friends, playing games, and eating yummies :)  I figure most of my classmates are in Mexico, so they can't be that much ahead of me, right?....right.

We had an incredible family day with Caleb's parents, who came up from Claresholm to visit with us! We spent the day skating then had a scrumptious brunch of eggs benny and just had a splendid time catching up. Thanks again, mom & dad for coming all the way up here!

&& Our friend, Joseph, is an international student all the way from Tanzania, Africa. We took him skating for his first time and he just loved it!! It was hilarious seeing his reactions to "skating on knives" and Canadian life :)

I also did something I don't think I have ever actually done....which is to play a full, legit game of Monopoly. Seriously. This game is long...and incredibly painful when you're losing (which I was!) But my Caleb is extremely dedicated to finishing things, so there ya go. One full almost 3 hour long game of Canadian Monopoly, which included a hockey player as a game piece!

This last photo here cracked me up so much. Caleb & I went on a date night out and this was my "fortune"... probably the worst and most pathetic fortune cookie slip I've ever gotten! Good thing I don't place any weight on these things, hehe.

p.s. ♥ clara

outfit post: introducing ashley!

Today we'd like to introduce you to Ashley!  Jordyn and Ashley have been friends since middle school, and are still as thick as thieves today.  

Ashley has super cute and quirky style, and you'll surely see more of her popping up here in the future!

She's also the super talented lady who made us our galaxy shoes (seen here and here), and we're planning to have her help us with a diy for painting shoes this Spring!

dress: charlotte russe  //belt: foreverXX1  //tights: her closet //shoes: charlotte russe

p.s. ♥ kelsey

diy: peter pan collar necklace

I've been obsessed with peter pan collars for a looong time, and am SO HAPPY that stores finally carry an abundance of shirts and dresses with them.  They're so sweet and feminine, and I love the extra detail they add to an outfit.

Peter Pan collar necklaces have also been popping up everywhere, however they tend to cost a bit more than I'd like to shell out at the moment....sooo, I decided to do it myself!

[This diy video from missglamorazzi  was super helpful, so check it out for a more thorough explanation!]

Although I absolutely LOVED the way the pearl collar turned out, I have to say that it ended up being quite heavy and very delicate.  Even with a good glue, the beads will still end up getting knocked off...so just be warned!

Materials:

-felt (I just picked up a pack at the dollar store)

-scissors

-Aleene's tacky glue AND modpodge

-wax paper

-ribbon

[optional]: 

-chalk (for drawing an outline on the felt before you cut)

-an assortment of beads, pearls, glitter, etc.

Instructions:

I chose to draw and cut out a few different templates to try out with various shirts and dresses in my closet.  Once I found one that I loved, I placed the template over the felt, traced around it with chalk, and cut it out.

Plain collar:

I realized that I loved the simplicity of a plain black collar, so I didn't add any further embellishments!  Once you have your collar cut out, glue a piece of ribbon to each side (see photo below).   Make sure that your ribbon pieces will easily tie into a bow/knot when attached to the collar!

Pearl collar:

For the pearl collar I chose to use an assortment of pearls that I found at Michaels!  They had strands on for 99 cents, so I chose a few different off-whites, greys and light pinks.

First, I glued larger pearls around the outside edge of the collar to create a border.  Then, I used an old paintbrush to brush glue on the rest of the collar, poured smaller pearls onto it, and pressed them down into the glue.  I love the random arrangement of colour that happened, and it saved a lot of time compared to laying each one down separately.  Let your collar dry overnight before attaching ribbon!

Glitter collar:

I had some gold glitter lying around, and just couldn't help myself.  Again, I used an old paintbrush to brush the glue over the entire collar, and then went crazy sprinkling it with glitter.  I gently shook off the excess, and retouched any areas that didn't quite get covered.  Let this dry overnight on wax paper, and brush a coat of modpodge over top to keep the glitter from getting everywhere!  Let this dry before attaching the ribbon.

And voila!  You're done!

Now these collars don't stay in place as well as one that's sewn to your shirt (duh..), so we ended up using a teeny bit of double-sided tape under the front of the collar to help it stay put!

"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it."

-J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

p.s. ♥ kelsey

{ the liebster award }

ps.heart is just tickled pink that we have been nominated not just once, but twice for the Liebster Award! Thank you to the lovely ladies who nominated us, we appreciate it so much!

The Liebster award is given to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers.  What is a Liebster?  The meaning: Liebster is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. 

Here are the details on receiving this award**

1. List 11 things about yourself.
2. Answer the questions that the nominator set for you plus create 11 questions for the people you’ve nominated to answer.
3. Choose 11 people and link them in your post
4. Go to their page and tell them.
5. No tag backs!

Here at ps.heart we feel so honoured that several bloggers have given us this award! So here goes.

11 Things About ps.heart: 

1. We're a trio of ladies - Clara, Jordyn, Kelsey.

2. Kelsey & Jordyn are clearly much better at Tasty Tuesday posts than Clara is.

3. Kelsey & Jordyn are sisters and as much as Clara wishes she was family....she's not :( although she pretends that she is sometimes.

4. Kelsey & Jordyn live on an apple farm. Awesome, right?

5 .Clara lives in the cold cold north called Edmonton with her handsome prince, Caleb.

6. The idea of ps.heart was started by Clara, who then convinced Kelsey to join. Together, they then forced Jordyn to join :) by democratic vote, of course!

7. We all share a mutual crush on Sherlock Holmes…/Benedict Cumberbatch. They’re one in the same, really. We could listen to his voice for hours.

8. We are all a little bit obsessed with lace!

9. If Kelsey were an animal, she’d be a cat. Clara would be a dog. Jordyn would be a dinosaur. 

10. Our dream is to make ps.heart into a whole business line with a cute little shop for all your wedding/home/style type items, a bake shop/café, and a photography/videography biz. Who knows if this will ever happen, considering we all live in different cities right now, but hey, girls can dream, right?

11. We really, really, really love our blog and all our lovely readers! And we all get a little ridiculously giddy when we get new followers :)