Hi there! Carolyn Peeler here today to share a step by step walk through of this no line watercolor pickup truck. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to be invited to participate in a blog hop with the team from Honey Bee Stamps and I had so much fun so I thought I would recreate the card, using different colors and papers, for today's CLASSroom post. I'm a huge fan of the no line watercolor technique. I love that the finished project ends up looking very organic and freehand. And it actually very easy to do, with little practice needed in order to get fantastic results.
This aqua pickup truck was the card I made for the hop with Honey Bee. If you'd like to see the supply list, it can be found here. The painting technique for the two cards is identical.
Let's jump into today's Pink Pickup card project.
To start, you'll want to put the (AWESOME) Honey Bee Stamps "Little Pickup" truck onto an acrylic block and color it with Distress Markers. For successful no-line watercolor you will want to stamp the image using a light shade from the same color family that you will be using to paint the interior of the stamped image. For my card, I colored the stamp using Distress Markers in Spun Sugar and Pumice Stone.
If you are coloring a large stamp it is possible that as you finish coloring, the ink from the first part of the stamp that you colored may dry before you are ready to stamp. So, in order to combat that, I usually spray one pump from a water sprayer to lay a light mist of water over the image in order to reactivate the ink. Once you stamp, onto watercolor paper, it will look something like this. Don't worry if you didn't get a perfect impression, you just need to see enough of the image to use as a guide for your watercoloring.
Next you will get your ink set up to watercolor. For the body of my truck I used the following colors of Distress ink: Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick and Tea Dye. I smooshed the ink pad onto my Ranger Craft Sheet which I used as my painting palette. I then sprayed a few squirts of water below the ink. I mix this water with the inks in order to make my watercolors.
To start, I began with the Spun Sugar (lightest pink) ink and painted over the entire body of the truck. I made sure to paint over the stamped lines in order to blend them out so that they were no longer harsh. Sometimes this requires adding a bit of extra water (not too much mind you) and rubbing with your paint brush to blend the line out.
Next, I added the Worn Lipstick and painted some areas deeper pink. Notice that I did not paint the entire truck with this darker paint, you want it to be a bit splotchy so that the truck has both highlights and lowlights.
For the next step I added some of the Tea Dye into the mix. I used the Tea Dye to simulate a bit of rust on the body of the truck. In my mind's eye this is a vintage truck that had been kept out in a farmers field for a while, so it is "farm fresh" (as the boys on "American Pickers" would say). I also watercolored the tires using Pumice Stone and a dirt ground using Tea Dye and Vintage Photo.
You will also notice that in between the last photo and the two below I used the Worn Lipstick ink to reintroduce some of the lines back into the image - for instance those of the door, and along the bed of the truck.
Next I picked the patterned paper that I wanted to use on the card. The one I chose was from the On Trend 2 6x6 paper pad by My Mind's Eye and it is the front and backside of the same sheet of paper!
I glued a strip of the lighter paper above the truck and the darker paper below the truck....and, it was then that I realized that I forgot to load the bed of the pickup truck - oops! So, I took the Christmas tree from the "Little Pickup" stamp set and colored directly onto the stamp with the following Distress ink marker colors: Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint and Forest Moss. After coloring, I used a water sprayer to lightly mist the stamp a few times so that the tree would not be super defined, but instead be watercolorish.
Now, stamp the tree into the bed of the truck. BUT - do a better job than I did!! In the image below you can see that I messed up the positioning of the stamp and ended up with a gap between the edge of the truck and the tree. Obviously, not the look I was after.
So, I used Peeled Paint ink as a watercolor to extend the bottom of my tree so that it touched the truck.
After doing that, I took a strip of vellum and sewed it across the bottom of the dark pink patterned paper. The vellum is only attached using the stitches, not with any glue.
Next I mounted the card front onto Bazzill Peanut Cluster cardstock leaving a little border of the dark tan showing around all four sides of the card.
It's time to add the greeting to the card! The "Tis the Season" is from the "Tis the Season" Essentials by Ellen stamp set. After stamping it with Memento ink in Tuxedo Black, I took the card back to my sewing machine to stitch a straight line across the light pink patterned paper.
The final step was to mount the card front onto a white cardstock fully functioning card once again allowing for a narrow border around all four sides of the card.
And there you have it! Your card is done! Thanks for taking the time to read through today's tutorial and please let me know if you have any questions.
(PS - you will notice that before I called this card finished, I decided to use the Worn Lipstick ink one final time to watercolor in the lines defining the front and back wheel wells. I think adding them back in gave just the right amount of definition to the design of the truck.)
Here are the links to today's products in the Ellen Hutson shop.
