Cards and Coffee

There was a challenge a while back to use coffee in your projects.  I really liked the idea as I really like coffee!  I thought it would be fun to paint with coffee and I was reminded of a painting that hangs in the hallway of my children's school of a women painted with coffee.  I mentioned this art my art class and my instructor told me that it was probably painted by a women who used to live in Elmhurst named Eleanor King Hookham.  I looked her up and she used coffee quite often with her printmaking.  So, I decided that over the weekend we, the kids and I, would paint with coffee.  It was super cold (this was two weekends ago, this weekend was sunny! Yea! ) and so painting was a good thing to do over the weekend. 

I made this card to go with the challenge on splitcoaststampers.  
 This stamp is from Helping me grow, a favorite from the Occasions catalog.
A few things to know about painting with coffee.  I wanted different tones of coffee, and really found that it just doesn't happen if you just pour a little bit of you coffee onto a saucer and paint away.  My first attempt left all the tones exactly the same and I would have to wait for it to dry and then add another layer to darken it, and then let it dry and do it again.  I decided to let the coffee sit out all day in a shallow paint holder thingy I have and that way a lot of the water evaporated and I added a couple drops to one, a little more water to one, and so on.

Instant coffee would have been better because then you could mix up little batches in various strengths. I didn't have any instand coffee though, so I had to work with what I had.  I am going to pick some up next shopping trip though, for art not drinking :)
I started by using a stamp very lightly in crumb cake ink, just to get my image on the watercolor paper.








I then painted the image just as usual, only using my coffee!  The card actually smells like coffee too, which is fun.





When I mentioned the coffee idea at art class a couple others were keen to try it out and one of the ladies said she had an actual print of Eleanor Hookam at her home.  I said I would play around with coffee over the weekend to see what worked and bring in something to next class, and she said she would bring in her piece of art too. 
Here is what I brought, thinking I should actually draw something since it is a drawing class after all and not a stamping class :)

I wasn't sure what I wanted to draw and I was trying to get the kids involved and let them decide what we would work on.  They decided on super heroes or monsters!  I should not have been surprised.  Jillian wanted a comic book style and got out a book on how to draw comics, so  went with that, althought I would much prefer flowers or birds :)
Jillian would NOT use coffee though.  She said it was the color of mud and yucky so why would she want her drawing to be yucky?  Zachary loved the idea of painting with coffee but would not do a comic.  David didn't want to paint at all.  Why did I think this would be an easy fun thing for us to do on a cold February day?
Here is Jillian's work, love her super hero women.  She used my idea but wanted her woman to be powered by orange juice instead of coffee.

Zachary made a Monsters' Inc. inspired drawing.

I used a waterproof micron pen for the drawing and then painted over it with the coffee.


















I hope you like my projects today!  and I hope that  you will give it a try.  Here is a link to the challenge on splitcoaststampers.