Watercolour Wednesday Little Monkey

For today's watercolour inspiration I've created a simple gradient wash over a panel of watercolour paper.  I chose watercolour paper because it can take a lot more water than normal cardstock. I wanted to create a jungle insired background for the swinging monkey from the Little Monkey stamp set. 

I started by choosing my 3 colours. I wanted them to all be shades of green. I chose shaded spruce for my darkest tone, granny apple green for the mid tone and lemon lime twist for the top note.

I then wet the watercolour paper with water and added the inks to separate acrylic blocks. Next I added a drop of water to each block and made sure my waterpainter was damp. Starting at one end with the dark geen I washed the colour across and up about 1/4 of the way up the panel. I then cleaned my brush and added another band of colour using the mid tone. Clean the brush and finish the reat of the panel in the lightest colour. I like the paper and ink to be fairly wet so that the colours meld together but not so wet that they merge together entirely. 

I then dried the panel and splattered some of the dark green over the panel. I then trimed it down a little and mounted it onto a white panel. Adding it to the front of a card that already had a white mat on it using 3d foam.

I used one of the cut off strips to decorate the inside of the card.

I used my Stampin' Blends which are alcohol markers to colour the images for this card.  I love how easy it is to colour with them and how good-looking the images turn out.

I did fussy cut the images out but they weren't too difficult to cut out. A little 3d foam to pop them up on the panel and a fun sentiment and the card was finished.