Mindful Mixed Media: Watercolour, Embroidery & Doodling

Hello, I am Crafty Patty and I'm so excited that you're joining me today. This is a special year and a great time for looking after ourselves with this abundance of energy in 2026. If you believe in energy healing, now is the time. Now, I am not a professional watercolor teacher, but that takes the pressure off of you to just enjoy and watch what the watercolors can do. I give you lots of ideas in the video on how to paint your background. And this is something similar to what we will be working on. Now, each one of these processes, to me, I want you just to relax, slow down, and watch and enjoy. That's the idea of this. And each mixed media process adds to the next one. We'll start with a watercolor background and then we're going to add some beautiful embroidery highlights, which again is like slow stitching, which is very meditative and very good for you just to slow down and relax. And then our last part is we get to come in with some pens and just do a little bit of doodling because repetitive patterns are also very relaxing. So, to get the theme here, I just want you to relax and go with the flow. Don't worry about the end results because it all seems to come together and each one is unique and it's your intuitive process that brings out your beautiful piece of artwork. I talk about some of the supplies during the video, but as always, I leave a full supply list and all the links in the description box below this video. So, please come along with me, enjoy the process, slow down, and just relax with me. The first thing I do is decide how big you want your piece of art. So, I get my frames first. So, I'm going to take one of these frames out. I'm going to take out the matting and now I've got my matting for my measurements. Put that aside for now. 140 pound is the mean I do here. This is a 9 by 12. By holding it up to a light source, I can kind of see where my matting is on the other side. Once I know it's centered, it doesn't have to be perfect, then I can flip this over and make a few little marks so I know where I am painting within the mat. I'm just going to use what I have. I can't tell you the brand names because I really don't remember, but I can leave some links in the description on some options for you. I'm going to just use one watercolor brush today and I'm using a round number 8 Princeton Velvetech. It's nice to have a container that's got two different wells, one to keep water clean and then one to clean your brush. Paper towels and I like to have just a little, this is actually a little deodorant bottle that I use for spraying my paints down. So, for this particular piece, I'm going to work just with three colors, three primaries, yellow, red, and blue. And I've chosen Alizarin Crimson and it was the Winsor Yellow and now I'm using the, let's see, the Winsor Blue I will use. Mixing colors. You can see that by adding the pink on yellow, we actually got orange. And what else can we do? We can mix our blue and yellow primaries. I've got my blue here. Let's come in with my yellow and let that drip down. And where it's wet, it's going to come down. So, let's put some more water here and it will follow the path of the water. And if you've got too much water, take the water off on your paper towel and you can soak it up. You can see that if you keep going, you can see how it's going back to white because we're taking that pink color all the way out and that's a fun effect too. Now, parts of this circle here are still a little bit wet. I'm purposely going to go right over top of that and have another effect. So, this color is following its water and it's coming up into this one and forcing this green color into this one. And some of this is bleeding into this one here. And now, let's make some orange. We've got our Alizarin Crimson and I'm going to grab some of my Winsor Yellow and let's make orange. So, I like going over top of some other shapes because I find it just gives it more dimension. It's good to have different levels of color in your collage or mixed media art. So, I'm going to come in here with just my Winsor Blue. This time, I'm coming in just with a wet brush. I'll put my wet brush in clean water and I'm just going to dab it. Let it drop right into the middle and just let it do its thing. This is just a little bit wet on this side but I'm going to take advantage of that and I'm going to come over and make another shaping here and we're going to drag in to this right here. This is really an intuitive project for painting. It's because you can kind of look at it going, what am I feeling? What do I need? I'm looking at this yellow all by itself. So, I'm going, well, maybe I need some more yellow in here. And this one was a little bit wet here still, so I'm going to work with that and pull some of that color into the yellow because that's just what I feel like doing. So, I'm kind of looking around and what I like to do is have kind of three of the same color range. So, I've got three blues, three greens and this was kind of like that movie. I've got two of those but I need maybe another orange. There's orange and orange. So, I'm going to do another orange. So, I'm looking at these ones here. That was that really, really light purpley sort of color and I just thought we needed a little bit more of that. So, I've added a lot more blue into my lighter purple that made this color and I'm making it into a darker purple and let's do another shaping over here. And I've decided to need some more of this dark color. So, I'm just going to come in here and in some of the little white areas just make some little tiny circles. Remember the one where we just did one drop of water on the blue and I said I'm just going to let it dry. It's still drying but it looks like the shape of Australia. I thought that was kind of cool. And again, look at all the colors we've made just with three primaries yellow, red, and blue. Okay, well that was a real quick lesson on watercolor but I just wanted to give you just some ideas and you can play around with it. Let me show you some other ideas for you. Here's another one using mostly just circles using more pastel-y kind of colors. This one a little bit more on the abstract side using long shapes and some circles and some doodling. Here's another idea if you want to go more retro looking. I just started with making one shape, left a bit of white, followed the line with some more different colors. Now this is acrylic paint by the way. And then I filled in with a gold posca pen and I'm just starting some embroidery on this one. You could try doing all squares and then adding your accent. This just happens to be a little greeting card and I threw on a painted black and gold flower but this could also be embroidered. This one that I have finished, I did a combination of arches, circles, triangles, and different shapes. And as you can see I've added some of my embroidery and then I did some doodling. Easiest way to get your masking tape off your watercolor paper so it does not rip is apply a little bit of heat again to the masking tape and it will come right off. This happens to be an old embossing gun. You can use a heat gun, you can use a blow dryer. For my setup I'm just using an old cereal box to protect my table and I've got a piece of corrugated cardboard that I put down to punch my holes on and on goes my watercolor paper. So the next thing we need to do is we need to decide what design we want and where we're going to do our embroidery. Now traditionally you'd be using material in a embroidery hoop to do your embroidery but being that we are punching through watercolor paper we need to preset some holes to do our embroidery on our artwork. The first embroidery technique I'm going to show you is called the couching stitch and this is so fun because you just lay your thread in any direction you want it to go and you can really freestyle what you want to do with it in one color and choose to have a different color on top or you can have it on the same color. So let's go ahead and show you that. So to make it easier I draw my pathway in pencil so I know where I'm going to go. So this is such a fun stitch that just have fun with it. So I'm going to come up here I'm going to go around the shape here and how about we just do a little twirl in here come back up you could even do another twirl in here and then finally come up to here and that's where I'll end. Next you're going to need a punching tool. You can use any type of awl preferably not an awl that's got too big of a shaft on it but you want a sharp point on it. You could also just use a push pin and I'm actually finding this is actually working the best. So taking my push pin I'm just going to come into my first one right here and I'm just going to punch a hole and I'm going to go all the way up trying to do even spacing and approximately a quarter inch apart and being that our embroidery cotton is going to hide our pencil line we don't have to worry about erasing the pencil. I always use DMC for my embroidery needles. I'm using loops and threads and I am using size five. I've decided to use these two shades of green three six seven and four seven one in case you like the same colors. I'm going to use the darker green for my base just find the end of your embroidery cotton holding on to the little sleeves and I just pull out I don't know about a yard or a meter and just get a rough estimate of how much I need. It doesn't have to be exact we're just getting a rough idea just in making sure that you cut enough. Leave a little bit extra for your knots and that's where we'll cut it off. In doing the tacking down with the couching stitch will take a bit more thread but sometimes you don't want to work with too long of a thread because they tend to tangle so we can always add on more later if we run out. I'm always going to be working with the full six strands of the because I want it to be nice and noticeable on the artwork. The way I always thread my needles is by placing it over the eye of the needle pulling down quite hard to make a nice sharp edge on the thread then I slip it off and then positioning the eye of the needle right over all those tops of the threads and pushing it through using kind of your thumb and your forefinger to guide it through the hole like so and you can grab those threads and pull it through. If that's too hard for you you can always pick up a needle threader. I'm going to tie a knot in my base thread and I just wrap it around my finger like so do a little twist off the end of the finger pull it down and you've made your knot. Now if you don't want a knot on the back of your work that is fine too you can leave a longer end and you can just tape it or glue it to the back. So I'm going to come up through the back on that first hole and I'll tie a knot in the other color as well and for the other color we're going to come up into that second hole right there. Now if you find it easier to look on the back side to find where the hole is that's fine it's not cheating to do that just to get you started. Sometimes if you hold it through a light source you can actually see it. Okay so now we've got our base cord it's a thread I'll call it find that all the way through and now what we're going to do is we're going to come back the same hole but it's coming around our base cord so just come back down into that same hole. Okay so there's our first one you can see how that thread's holding down our base cord. Now it doesn't matter if you come up a left or the right it really doesn't matter. Finding your next hole there's our base cord following our design we're coming over top and we're coming back down the same hole to lock it in. This is the couching stitch through the back and through that next hole coming over and we're going back into the same hole. Okay you get the idea? So I'm gonna go up until we get to here and then I'll show you the little turnaround. This is one of my favorite all-time embroidering stitches this is so fun and remember that this is supposed to be slow stitching which means you're meditating you're relaxing it's not meant to be fast this is meant to be really relaxing. So for me it's a little different because I'm demonstrating and I'm teaching but in between I can just go as fast as I want or as slow as I want. I'm gonna follow my pattern my pencil line and I'm coming around this way and going around. So there's my next stitch I'm coming in right here and you can just push your thread over depending on now I'm left-handed but you can it doesn't matter if you're left-handed or and here we are where we're going to be crossing over that bottom loop catching underneath so the loop goes around our base cord you can use your thumb to pull down the base cord if that's easier for you and we've now completed our little circle. Another trick you can do if you find that your thread is tangling up and causing knots then just hold it up and then let it go and let it spin around and that will help you. So here I am I've just done this last stitch right here so I'm going to come back with my base color and pop it into that last hole and bring it through to the back. We've already got our top color on the back so let's flip it to the back side and then I just do a square knot left over right and right over left. Off your longer ends. I love this stitch it's so fun. So just for a close-up and now for our next stitch we're going to do a straight stitch or also known as a single satin stitch and this is just calling out like it's a flower or something. Now you don't always have to have the center of the flower right in the center so I'm going to offset it a little bit. So let's just say this is our top of our flower so let's place a hole right there. We're going to be attaching the thread to the center here and let's come straight across and do another one on the other side of that middle circle and down to the bottom. I've got a bit of a gap in here so I'm going to put another one here and it doesn't mean that we have to go all the way through so I'm just going to put one more hole right in the middle so I've got something to attach to and this time I'm just going to use black. I'm still going to tie a knot and we will come up from the back start our next design and this is pretty easy. I've just come up through one of my holes in the back and then I'm going to come up into my center and go down and all we're doing is making these great big long strands like so and then let's come up to the next hole back down back down. I think you got the idea. Here's my last stitch take that to the back and we'll tie it off and for this one you can just go through one of your last stitches grab your loop and go through the loop to tie it off one more time and you're done. And I've got my little pencil marks here and what I like to use is I've got this really tiny Ovo Model Zero eraser and this works so good because you can get into little tiny spots and erase your lines if needed. Love this little thing so easy to use and get into small spaces. So what are we going to do for the next one? We are going to do French knots in the middle. So let's just come in the center here and just a little particular area of where I'm poking holes. We just want some random holes here because we're not going to put a knot in the end. So I'm going to come through my first hole here and I'll bring that through and I'm just going to look on the back side now and I'm just going to place a piece of tape this time on the back just until we can knot it later because chances are if you try to put a knot here you're going to try to get the French knot to go through that knot and it's not going to work. I'll do this left-handed first. I'll attempt to do it right-handed and see how I do with that. Hopefully you can get it from me doing it left-handed. So we're just going to wrap the cotton thread around the shaft of our needle twice, kind of pulling it down a little bit. I'm going to come back, guide it into the hole there. I'm using my finger here to hold on to the thread that's wrapped around the needle. I'm using my right thumb to hold on to this cord so it doesn't go anywhere. So let's now guide that needle through the hole and I've just cut up here a little bit. There we go and then I'll let that slide through. You've made that wonderful French knot and I went off camera. Okay, it's okay. I'll do that again. Cut through another hole, taking the shaft of our needle, wrapping the cotton thread around twice, holding on with my finger here so we don't lose that, aiming it for the hole again, using my thumb to hold on the back cord and then let the needle come through the center of the French knot to the back side and then let it come all the way up and complete the French knot. All right, so I'll try it right-handed and let's see how I do. So pulling the thread through, got my needle in my right hand, going to wrap the thread around twice, holding on with my right index finger, guiding it back down to the hole, using my thumb to hold on to this portion here, guide it through. Wish me luck. I feel very awkward. Okay, so we just need to tighten that up a little bit because it loosened up a little tiny bit on me but that's okay. We're getting it. There we go. Not bad for being left-handed. Okay, I'm going to do the rest of them with my left hand. I think you got the idea on that and there we have our French knots. So let's turn it to the back side and tie it off and release that piece of tape and then we can tie it and I've already drawn a line of where I'm going to form my chain up to this orange circle and again I'm going to place my holes approximately a quarter inch apart and I'll go all the way up and I've placed the knot on the end of my thread this time pulling it all the way through and we're going to go back down the same hole but we're going to leave a loop and just hold it on with my thumb so I don't close in the whole loop and I'm going to bring my needle up into the next hole in the middle of that loop then I'm going to let that loop close up around that cording again I'm going to go down through that same hole we just came up holding on to my loop bring my needle up in the middle of that loop and then bringing it up until it's to the top of my cord or thread okay again do one more for you and then I'll finish the rest back down through that same hole holding on with my thumb so I don't lose the whole loop and here we are at my last stitch and as always back down through that same hole coming back up slide our loop and then come down into that same hole again tack it down and you are done turn it over tie it off and then we'll do another one together let's do a lazy daisy up in here now the circle is going off the page so the matting is going to come over it which is fine because that makes it more arty when you've got some things going off the page all of our daisy petals are going to come back into the middle point so I'll start at the top here and there's going to be a couple holes in here so I'm just going to actually make four of them and it will probably break through but that's okay because we're coming through so many times in the middle here straight through and this time I'm going to try to do a little bit more even so I'm going to come on this side and now for the lazy daisy up from the back and I'm going to come down the same hole or one very close to it and it's very similar to the chain stitch to one of the holes that we made on the outside and we're going to let that loop come so the needle is inside the loop then you're going to bring it up so it's not too tight but tight enough and then we're going to go back down through that same hole on the top and you've made your first petal of your daisy and as you can see what I was saying there's going to be quite a few holes in the middle here so all the way through back down back down the same hole if you want it doesn't really matter too much because we're going to be going through so many times up through your next hole grabbing your loop and fastening it off by coming back down that same hole and you just keep going around and there's your lazy daisy and here I've already pierced my holes and now I'm going to show you the stem stitch which is a nice outlined stitch so we're going to go around this way I'm going to attempt to do this right-handed so I've already come through the back into the first hole I'm going to skip this hole I'm going to go down into this one I'm cheating already I'm using my left hand oh dear so I want you to just leave a little loop here leaving the loop to the bottom coming back up through that middle hole now and then you can let that fill in down through the next hole and then we're coming back up into that middle hole again and then let that loop close in down the next one and then back up that same hole from the one past from the one before sorry I'm letting that loop close in and I'm on my last stitch here I'm going to slightly past the where the matting will be that one and I'll just go back down through the same hole and tie it off and that's what that one looks like it's a little twist looks like it's twisted now we're going to do the stem stitch again but with the variation you know how we always have the loop coming down the bottom well this time we're going to do it again from this one down here but we're going to do loop down loop up loop down loop up and they call that a side to side stem stitch other people might call it a cable stitch so let's do that one and we're going to skip one hole we're going to come into this one and let's start like we did last time with the loop on the bottom coming up into that middle hole and finishing off that one let's come in to the next stitch this time we're going to make that loop stay up on the top so I'm going to come back down into that little stitch there and now we'll pull it up through and now it's causing it to go down and then up let's do that again let's reverse it again this time we're going to that loop on the bottom this time it's going to be on the top on the top now you can see the importance of making sure your loop is in the right position I'm taking this one past the framing border so we don't have to worry too much on how we're ending this one but it's my last stitch that's going up and then I'll just come back down the same hole and finish it off you've got that up and down look so it's up and down up and down now you can do as much embroidery as you like depending on how much you want to relax how you much you enjoy the slow stitching because that's the name of the game to slow down and just enjoy the stitching now when you feel like you're finished you can come in and add some other embellishments with doodling and my favorite pins are always the micron pins and I work quite often with a zero five and I think what I'm going to have to do is define this circle here because it doesn't make any sense that my lines are just hanging there just grab another one of my pigment liner pens and this is a point A I just wanted something a little bit thicker because I've decided to round my corners a little kind of a little bit like neurographics it's not a true neurographic but that's what I want to do and so I'm going to round my corners I like the look of that and of course this is the hard part is like when do you stop right sometimes I overdo sometimes it's just right and maybe just something to fill in some of this white spot you can maybe connecting these two just with some squiggly lines and I'm kind of digging that so I'm going to overdo it maybe and just do a few more of joining some more of these circles with other circles and bring them all together it is so hard to stop but you can let me know in the comments what you've done and how would you embellished certain areas like would you've not put any of the circles in here or would you do something else maybe there's so many options I'm just about done here and then we'll call it a day and a finished piece of art lots of different elements painting and embroidery doodling so much fun and right now I'm relaxing again because I'm just doing doodling any repetitive motion drawing and repeating a pattern it's very relaxing for you so I do encourage you to try this sit back relax enjoy it and then end up with a beautiful piece of artwork you got to relax while you were doing it which one is your favorite and tell me in the comments what you would have done different what you like or dislike about each one do you like the embroidery accents do you like the doodling do you like the colors or the shapes let me know in the comments I would love to hear and now that you have enjoyed three relaxing mixed media art forms you have a wonderful piece of art I've given you lots of ideas on how to work with watercolor I gave you lots of embroidery stitching and some doodles at the end and all three come together for a mixed media piece of artwork that you can frame and be proud of remember to breathe relax slow down and just enjoy the process and heal because 2026 is a great year for healing all right until next time bye