Hi everyone! Carolyn here. Before I get started, I want to thank Ellen for her invitation to join the CLASSroom. I am really excited to be joining her roster of designers/instructors. I look forward to getting to know you, her customers, better as we share creativity together! Now, onto the fun stuff!
Lately I have been on a HUGE watercolor kick. It seems to be a trend that is here to stay, which makes me really happy, as it just looks so dang cool, and, as a technique it is pretty fun to work with as well!
To get started, you will want to cut one piece of Ranger 8.5" x 11" watercolor paper in half (4.25" x 5.5"). This will be your card base. Using a corner rounder, round all four corners.
Next, grab your Ranger Craft Mat and Distress Ink pads in the following colors: Spun Sugar and Worn Lipstick. Take the lids off your ink pads and smush the pads onto the craft mat.
Using a spray bottle filled with water, spray a circle of water between the 2 ink colors. (If you don't have a spray bottle, you could also use a dropper to drop water onto the Craft mat, or slowly pour a bit of water onto the mat.)
Using a paintbrush, liberally mix water and ink to create a beautiful medium pink. Then, load up your brush with the watercolor and put onto card. I did this in 2 different ways, the first, is to flick the paintbrush which will spray little droplets of watercolor onto the card. The second way is to paint onto the card front. When painting, I recommend that you try to give your shapes organic edges that are a bit rough. Allow ink to air dry, or, if you would like to hurry the process, use a heat gun to set the ink.
Next, cut 2 strips of decorative paper. I used paper from the Brighton Pier 6x6 paper pad by Studio Calico and the Open Road 6x6 paper pad by Crate Paper. Each strip is 1.75" wide. The strip on the left is 4.25" long, and the strip on the right is 3.75" long.
Notch the end of each strip to get that flag shape. Glue the 2 strips to the card front, overlapping the strip on the right over top of the strip on the left as seen in the finished sample. When you apply the glue, do not apply it to the bottom of the strips. After you have glued the top and middle of the strips down, you will gently bend the ends of the flag strips up so that they are raised from the background giving some additional dimension to your card.
Next, you are going to add some green watercolor to a separate piece of watercolor paper for your leaves. Set the green up the same way you did with the pinks earlier, however this time, instead of using Distress ink pads, I used Distress markers in Peeled Paint and Forest Moss.
After painting the green onto watercolor paper with a paintbrush, use the leaf die cuts to cut out the leaves. Cut the whole leaves out of plain white watercolor paper, and the green cut out leaves out of the watercolor paper that you just painted green.
Next, stamp the flower onto watercolor paper with Clear Embossing Ink. Emboss with Pink Peony embossing powder. Assemble all the pieces together and assess the project...at this point, I thought that the card needed a bit more texture, so I sewed a little border (using a sewing machine and white thread) across the top of the patterned paper strips.
Place the flower on the card front, positioning it where you would like it to stay. Before gluing it down, you will want to glue the leaves first. So, apply glue to the back of them and tuck them beneath the flower. Next, using 3 dimensional pop dots, adhere the flower to the card front.
Using Brushed Corduroy Distress ink, stamp "You're the best" greeting onto the lower right corner of the card front.
To finish, using a Ranger Ink Applicator and Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink, very lightly distress the edges of your card to give it a bit of definition.
And, there you are! The card is ready to give away!!
- Carolyn
