I LOVE the look of watercolors don't you? They are such a beautiful medium and I love the transparent and free look of them. They remind me of spring.
One of my absolute favorite products released this year at CHA Winter 2015 was the Cosmo Cricket Just Add Watercolor line. From the first peek at it on Instagram to actually seeing it in person, I seriously could NOT wait to get my hands on it. This year was my first year working at the show and the moment I had a little bit of free time, the very first place I went was the Cosmo Cricket booth to see it.
So now that it's in stock at Ellen Hutson LLC and the mail arrived with my order, I just had to get right to it and try it for myself. I'm really excited about how easy it was to use and I'm looking forward to using up every single piece of this beautiful product.
Today my projects use the 8x8 Just Add Watercolor pad to create a couple cards. There's also canvases, tags, 12x12 pads and more in the line. Love it all!
Here's one of the watercolor sheets from the pad. It's hard to see but it has been divided into panels for you to cut up and use, each with a different embossed pattern. The watercolor paper is high quality and is embossed to make a resist effect easy as pie and gasp...look at that gold foil!
I have a few different types of watercolor from Ellen Hutson LLC but I just love the colors in these Peerless Watercolor Sheets. Because the color is so saturated it may be difficult to see the exact color. I love to test it on some paper first before committing to my design palette. If you flip the sheets over, you'll find the color printed on the back and the color on this reverse side (see above) will give you a pretty good idea of the final color.
This gold foil watercolor design features an embossed wreath.
The panel once cut looks like this. To highlight the embossing, simply add watercolor. Pick up some color with a wet brush, test the saturation on a scrap paper and then add in the color.
Quick Tip: If you add too much color, blot damp watercolor pigment with a tissue or paper towel to remove it.
By adding color to wet areas, the colors will blend into each other.
To finish off the card, I adhered and then stitched the watercolor panel to a 5" square white cardstock base. With watercoloring, I really like to keep the embellishing simple so I just added in some gold sequin stickers to coordinate with the gold foil sentiment.
My second card uses a simply embossed design from the paper pad. It can be hard to see the embossed areas perfectly when watercoloring but don't worry. With watercolors, anything goes and the beauty of them is that you are not going for a perfect look.
Add color as desired but resist the temptation to overwork the design. White spaces are good. Working on the image too long will muddy the colors.
This image gives you a good look at the shine of the embossed areas that form the resist. To finish off this design, I added a stitched layer of vellum behind the watercolor panel and stamped on a sentiment.
Quick Tip: You can stamp on this Just Add Watercolor line but be aware of where the embossing is when doing so. You cannot stamp over the embossed areas.
Thanks for joining me today in the CLASSroom! Have fun adding in some watercolor to your spring projects!
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