Good Wednesday morning and welcome to the CLASSroom. In my early years of paper crafting I became intrigued with creating outdoor scenery around a focal image using foliage stamps and simple hand sketching. Art Impressions has been creating watercolor scene building sets for years and I was thrilled to see Ellen carrying some of the sets in the store. I am pretty rusty using my paint brush, stamps and inks but thought I would share a step by step tutorial to show how easy Art Impressions has made it to create lovely watercolor scenes. My project was made using Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper, the Wooden Gate Set, Watercolor Foliage Set 1 and Watercolor Flower set. I used Distress markers to apply ink to the stamps.
I was happy to see step by step instructions enclosed in the packaging with the wooden gate set. They were very easy to follow and really helped me keep on track.
Start by inking the gate using the Faded Jeans marker and stamp the image.
Using a small damp brush lightly pull the color out of the lines of the image. Note: your brush should just damp enough to move the ink. Too much water will distort and wash away the lines of the image.
Apply Peeled Paint ink to the vine stamp and stamp it around the border of the gate and then lightly soften the lines and leaves with a damp brush.
Apply Peeled Paint ink with the marker to the grass stamp and tiny grass stamp from the foliage set and stamp on both sides of the gate opening.
Light soften the grass with a damp brush and pull the color out away from the image.
Apply Dusty Concord ink with a marker to just the top portion of the tall flower from the Flower Set and avoid getting ink on the stem.
Stamp the flowers on both sides of the gate to appear to be coming out of the grass.
Lightly pull the color out of the line of the flowers using a damp brush.
Apply Dusty Concord ink to the to the trailing flowers from the gate set and stamp them across the top of the gate. Remember to stamp the inked flower images once and then stamp multiple times to create the soft faint images. Soften the lines of the flowers with a damp brush.
Apply ink to an acrylic block or palette with the blue marker, mix with water to create a pale blue wash and lightly paint in the inside opening of the gate around the foliage and flowers.
Put a tiny drop of Pumice Stone reinker in the lid of your ink pad, mix the ink with water and paint on the ground area in front of the gate.
Light sponge blue ink around the sky area.
Lightly smooth out the ink with a damp brush. Note: I sponged the blue instead of trying to paint because I was fearful that I would wash away my delicate flowers around the top of garden gate.
Apply strips of mounting tape to the back of the scene and attach it to the Easter Grass layer.
Apply strips of mounting tape to the back of the green layer and attach to the Gummy Bear card base. I added three tiny purple butterflies to the scene but they barely show in the photos.
Art Impressions has a YouTube channel with wonderful videos showing how to use their sets. I hope my simple tutorial will inspire you to try creating a stamped image watercolor scene of your own.
Card size: 5.50” x 4.25”
