I never get tired of watercolored projects. The watercolor medium is absolutely beautiful and it's certainly on trend right now. Everywhere you look there's some watercolor inspiration!
Today I'm excited to share a watercolor card design with you as a way of introducing the Watercolor Blog Hop hosted by Pretty Pink Posh!
The Watercolor Blog Hop starts tomorrow, (June 5th at 6am PST) and ends June 8th at 11:55pm PST. This gives you time to get started and inspired and to start creating! This wonderful watercolor extravanga is hosted on the Pretty Pink Posh blog and one of the sponsors is, you guessed it, Ellen Hutson LLC. Make sure you stop by for all the details. It's going to be a wonderful celebration of this wonderful medium.
And now on to the tutorial showing how I created my watercolor project...
Using a stencil was a great way to create a watercolored background of circles. I absolutely love this Pop Dot stencil from Memory Box. As you can see, it's stained with a lot of wear but that doesn't affect it at all! Well-loved is just fine when it comes to stencils!
It would be oh so easy if you use watercolors directly with stencils but you can't. If you lay down the stencil onto watercolor paper and apply the water and watercolor pigment, it will wick under the plastic and bleed across the paper. It's just the nature of the medium and this ability to flow gives watercolors that beautiful look we all love.
To combat this and still use the stencil as a pattern for my background, I lightly traced each circle with pencil to get the design onto the watercolor paper.
Next step was to add in the watercolor pigment. I used two Peerless watercolor pigment cards to add in the color. I'm sorry I'm not quite sure what they are called but they are from the Peerless packs listed in the supplies below. The key to getting the color to flow is to first add water to the circular area that you are filling in. Then slowly add in pigment and blend colors in each circle to get beautiful variations of color.
Quick Tip: If you get too much pigment on, add water and blot it off with a paper towel to lighten it.
Once my entire panel was done, I dried it with a heat gun and then stitched it to a card base. My card base (and every piece of paper on this design) was created from watercolor paper. I find that watercolor papers are rarely the true bright white that cardstock is and can tend to look a little dingy beside it. By using watercolor paper for the card base and all my die cuts, it ensures that everything matches perfectly.
Quick Tip: Watercolor paper tends to buckle after adding in water and pigment so be sure to flatten well after doing so. I like to stitch it onto the card base or use a LOT of strong adhesive to keep everything in place.
Next up is the die cut layers. I used two lovely Pretty Pink Posh dies: Stitched Labels 1 and Stitched Banner Duo. I love the "stitched" edges on these and they are such wonderful classic shapes that can be used over and over. I love how they coordinate with my stitched watercolor layer and they cut through the watercolor paper like butter. To each of these two layers I added some watercolor pigment and on the smallest banner, it became a sweet sentiment tab. I stamped it first with the Taylored Expressions Small Packages "happy birthday" stamp. I love the font on this! Before watercoloring over and around the sentiment I heat set the Jet Black Archival ink to make sure that it wouldn't bleed.
Next up are the accents on this card design. The flower die cuts are from one of my favorite die sets EVER. The Bold Blossom Stand Alone Dies by Julie Ebersole are so lovely. I know you've seen them before in the CLASSroom but I just can't resist using them over and over!
Also embellishing this card is a little shine. The Pretty Pink Posh sequins are so pretty. I love the classic clear ones and they go oh so well with the watercolor look!
Thanks for joining me today the in CLASSroom! I hope you'll be inspired to pull out some watercolors and get creative! Don't forget the Watercolor Blog Hop this weekend! I can't wait to see what you all create!
Supplies:
