With watercolor techniques still a big trend in papercrafting, I wanted to try my hand at a night time sky look and this is what I came up with (click on any photo for a larger view):
Here are the easy steps (all bold products are linked below in the supply section):
1. Wet a piece of watercolor paper thoroughly with clean water, so it is saturated. You may find it easier to work in sections, in order to keep the paper wet long enough to apply the color.
2. Next, add a little water to the first lighter Blue #64 Kuretake Gansai Tambi in the color palette, using a waterbrush. Keep the color more intense by adding less water, or add more water for a lighter intensity of color. Load the brush with color and then spread the color over a section of the wet paper, letting the water on the paper carry and "bleed" the color pigment over the paper. Add more of the Kuretake pigment where needed. On this piece, I added the lighter blue pigment in the upper left and lower right corners.
3. If your paper has dried out in the next section you want to work in, add some clean water to it, before applying more color. Move on to the darker Deep Blue #67 and repeat the process, allowing the darker color to bleed a little into the lighter blue color in spots. This time I concentrated the darker blue color in the lower left and upper right corners.
4. Finally, I used the Black #20 to fill in the middle right and up into the upper left corner. A few spots didn't get any color on them and left the white paper showing through, so I left them to act as stars in the night sky!
Alternately, if you don't have these watercolors, you can try swiping your dye ink pads onto an acrylic block (to use as a palette from which to pick up the color with your watercolor brush), using dye ink pad re-inkers, or dye-based or watercolor markers.
5. After letting the paper thoroughly dry, I die cut it with Avery Elle's awesome new Wonky Stitches die, then lightly sanded and distressed the edges of the paper. Unexpectedly, the paper started looking a little like stitched blue jeans, which I loved!
6. I loved this pretty Taylored Expressions Light as a Feather stamp and die combo set, which has three different feathers AND sentiment stamps and two feather dies included! I white heat embossed the feathers and sentiment onto Ellen's awesome 40 lb. vellum and then die cut the feathers. To give the sentiment strip a little more detail, I also die cut the ends with the stitched die.
7. To finish the card, I mounted the watercolor background with Copic Foam Tape onto a Neenah 110 lb. Solar White card base and scattered a few clear sequins.
I hope you'll give this night time watercolor background a try! Happy weekend!
~ Sharon
