A very busy July for Create-A-Thon 2017! I have several creative challenges that I'm working on this month, one of them being that July is World Watercolor Month. I thought I would take the challenge of painting in watercolor everyday this month to get back into using my watercolors on a regular basis. Though I haven't been blogging that much so far this month, I have been very busy working everyday on my artwork.

I took a week of vacation in the beginning of July and while not trying to plan every minute to be filled with one thing or another, I did have a few projects in mind for my vacation. Because I'm working on several other creative challenges this month, I thought I would try to keep the watercolor challenge manageable by limiting myself to 6" x 4" paintings everyday. Last summer, one of the YouTube channels that I subscribe to, thefrugalcrafter Lindsay Weirich had a very useful tip for making your own watercolor blocks. I had purchased two 9" x 12" Arches Watercolor Pads at Plaza Art when they had a half price sale last year with the intention of making my own pocket watercolor blocks. I wanted to use them with the same Sakural Koi Watercolor Field Kit as mentioned in Lindsay's video to carry around for watercolor sketching when inspiration strikes. I was able to get the watercolors for about $5.00 with an A. C. Moore half off coupon and a reward club certificate.

I took one of the Arches Watercolor pads and cut it down to 6" x 4" sheets, totaling enough sheets to make four 10 sheet blocks. I then clamped the sheets together evenly on top of a heavy cardboard backing with clothespins and glued the edges with a hot glue gun as shown in the video. I cut down scrapbook paper that I had in my stash to cover each of them to make 4 cute little watercolor blocks.

Here are some of the paintings I've made so far this month (some are on Fluid Paper as well as Arches).