Watercolour Wednesday Simply Zinnia

Watercolour Wednesday's are so much fun when you take the pressure off! Using  watercolour techniques can be a bit intimidating... but not the technique I've used for today's Simply Zinnia inspiration! 

It all starts with a piece of grey board from the back of a pack of pattern paper.  Add some low tack tape,  reinkers, water, basic white cardstock and a waterpainter and your set for a fun easy way to create watercolour backgrounds that you can use in so many ways!

Cut your cardstock to a size slightly larger than the size you want it to end up at. Next use the low tack tape and tape the cardstock onto the grey board creating a narrow boarder all the way around. Taping onto the grey board helps keep the cardstock flat when dried.

Next drop a few drops of reinker onto a wipeable surface or into a clean bottle cap and add a drop or two of water. Next with your widest waterpainter load up the ink and swipe it across the white cardstock continuously until the colour runs out.  Continue until the panel is coloured the way you want it to be. You can add layers of colour to the cardstock but don't be tempted to add too much water as it's not watercolour paper 😉 Then either leave the panel to dry or use a heat tool to speed up the process. 

You can also add splatters of colour across the panel too. I used white and black on the piece I created for the flowers on the card.

Top tip if your tape doesn't want to lift easily the use your heat tool or hairdryer to gently warm the tape. The warmth will loosen the adhesive and help it come away easily. 

Once the backgrounds were dry I adhered the green one onto a card base. 

The pink one I stamped the single flower from the Simply Zinnia stamps in black ink onto it. I ended up with 5 full flowers and 2 partial flowers which I die cut out using the coordinating Dies.

The leaves were stamped in black ink onto green cardstock. Then I used my watercolour pencils to add shadows and highlights to the leaves befor die cutting them out. 

I used the white watercolour pencil on the leaves and a white gel pen on the stamps of the flowers. These white highlights really help make the finished piece look beautiful. 

The part flowers are used to decorate the inside panel of the card... you can't waste such pretty things 😉.

The flowers and leaves are adhered flat but with some of the leaves just not completely adhered down to give a little texture. The sentiment is adhered using 3d foam .

All in all a fun and colourful card that doesn't rely on colouring in to give the flowers their colour.. great for those of us who aren't that way inclined 😉