watercolour diy: "love your city"

As you might remember from this watercolour diy, I am seriously in love with watercolours!

I've always loved all the "love your city" artwork that's all over etsy and pinterest, so I decided to put a watercolour spin on it and do one of good old Edmonton, Alberta. And yes, I'm well aware of how boringly shaped my province is, but hey what can ya do!

If you need any tips on how to use watercolour paint, make sure to check out my watercolour stencil art DIY for a list of helpful hints!

Supplies Needed:

watercolours, good paint brushes, watercolour paper, cup of water, tape, cut-out of your city, cut-out of a little heart, eraser, and a sharpie

Instructions

1. Print & cut out a map of your province / state / country.

2. Trace your map onto your watercolour paper.
3. Take your cut-out little heart and place it over the city where you live. 

4. Begin painting! I kept mine very simple and stuck with only yellow and a smidgen of orange to make an ombre effect. I picked yellow because Alberta's prairie fields turn golden =) 

5. Once your watercolours have dried, take an eraser and erase the lines from your tracing as much as you can.

6. Add a little note at the bottom with sharpie that says: "Home is where the heart is"

p.s. ♥ clara

diy : dried flower deco

Today's DIY comes in the form of one of my favourite ways of decorating - dried flowers. Seriously, when you live in a place like Edmonton, where we STILL have a foot of snow on the ground and no sign of spring flowers, you learn to improvise, and dried flowers are an awesome way to add a vintage, romantic touch without spending tons of money.

Drying flowers is the easiest thing to do - truly, take a bouquet or even just a single flower, flip it upside down, and hang it for a couple days until the flower is completely dried out. To make sure your dried flowers still look pretty though, make sure you begin drying out your flowers while they've still got a nice colour and aren't turning brown at the tips. You don't get to enjoy your fresh flowers for quite as long if you're planning on drying, but you'll have gorgeous dried flowers to decorate your place with!

*friendly tip: if you're drying a bouquet of flowers, wrap a piece of lace around the elastic that's holding your flowers together!

After your flowers are dried, don't feel like they have stay hanging! Add fun touches like putting them in vintage teacups, old milk glasses, mason jars, glass soda bottles, or in unique vases.  

Aren't these lovely?! And yes, I'm a little obsessed with drying flowers, pressing flower petals, etc. They are literally all over our apartment :) As much as I absolutely love (and prefer) having fresh, living flowers, dried flowers are just so romantic and have the added benefit of decorating your space for a very small cost, lasting forever, and keeping you sane through those long winter....and spring months ;) haha!

p.s. ♥ clara