How are your relationship with watercolors when it comes to cardmaking? As most relationships it takes some work and I realized that it was time to dive into the matter. For me, it’s a matter of letting go and also patience. Letting go of control, just relax and let it float. And the patience of trusting the process and oh, watching paint dry. Like that’s fun?! But hey, it’s I think we’re heading for a love affair!
Type of project: card
Occasion: spring birthday
Style: dreamy
Techniques used: watercoloring, stamping, diecutting
Decoration: die cuts, enamel embossing Powder
Main colour: purple
Media used: watercolor, white ink spray and Shimmer spray, distress ink
Equipment used: dies
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Did you you see Amalia Montanos article yesterday. Without knowing it we seem to have focused on watercoloring at the same time. I take that as a sign of a trend, don’t you?
I often color with water soluble media like watercolor pencils, distress inks, and watercolor markers. It takes just a small amount of water to get a result. I often use a brush filled with water and I feel in control.
This time I wanted to use my ”real” watercolor set. I also wanted to try to paint some elements free hand and have some nice fluid color going. Feel free to follow the steps in my process:
Stamp an image with water soluble ink. I started with stamping the tulips three times using a light brown Distress ink color (tea dye). Normally you want to use waterproof ink but if you carefully color with water soluble ink it’s almost blend into the watercolor. Try it. Not too much water in this step.
Add something to the image using nothing but the brush. Next I painted some leaves free hand. Not that difficult. Baby steps out of my comfort zone. I like how they turned out.
Add some stains. Then I filled the brush with water and color and then tapped it over the paper to get small stains.
Color a dreamy fluid frame. Next I coloured a frame. I also stamped stars and some scripted text using both distress ink and colouring the stamp with watercolour aka. aquarelle stamping. I liked how the later turned out – just look at the purple stars.
To make the surface extra dreamy I sprayed it with both white ink spray and shimmer spray. I finished the card by drawing a frame with a regular pencil, adding the die cut text and melt some enamel embossing powder at the center of the flowers. (sorry for the difference in light when photographing my project, night vs. day…)
This gave me courage to move forward in my relationship with watercolours. I hope you do too!
Karin Åslund is from Sweden. Karin has been writing for TPC since 2020. Karin started paper crafting in 2005 and she makes cards, mini albums and do some Art Journaling. Her paper projects are often made in traditional Vintage or in a Whimsical style.