Watercolour Wednesday - Grassy Grove

 Hello on another lovely and warm Wednesday. We have had some gorgeous weather for the past week which is really lovely to see. How long it will last...no one knows but I am enjoying it while it's here. For my watercolour card this week I have used the Grassy Grove stamp set and watercoloured onto Fluid 100 watercolour paper. I literally soaked the paper with a spritzer full of water and stamped the first set of plants in the centre. As it was very wet, it bled onto the paper quite a bit which I was happy about. It has given me some lovely colours throughout the whole image. I did soak up some of the ink that had bled across the sky using a piece of kitchen tissue but am really pleased with the tinted green effect.

Watercolour Wednesday - Magnolia Mood

 Hello on another watery Wednesday! Yes, lots of rain ... for a change!! Today's card was one that I have made from when I made a card for our blends class only this one is using water based inks and not alcohol based pens. Using the Magnolia Mood stamps today, I stamped 3 times on one side of my Fluid 100 watercolour paper. 

First of all though, I started with cutting a standard sized mat of 10cm by 14.4cm. I masked off the area in the centre of the mat. I was left with approximately 7cm across the centre that was uncovered. Then I chose 4 equal sized acrylic blocks and stamped each one onto 4 different coloured inks. The colours I chose were, a beautiful soft but fresh lemon colour of Lemon Lolly, the bright pink of Melon Mambo, the gorgeous bright blue of Azure Afternoon and the bright green and my favourite Granny Apple Green. I used a large water brush and added a few drops of water from the brush and blended it in. I picked up some of the colour from the block with the brush and painted it onto the paper. I started with the lemon and swiped the brush over the masked off the area and added more colour until I was happy with it. I repeated the same with each of the colours and extended each of them a little on each side to blend all of the colours together. There was a little of the Granny Apple Green left so I added a hint of green over the lemon.  

I then stamped the magnolia image 3 times using Memento ink pad and coloured a butterfly from the Paper Butterfly Accents using some Melon Mambo.

              

Watercolour Wednesday - Festive and Fun

 Welcome back and thank you for stopping by. Today I really had fun with the water colouring and Festive and Fun stamp set. On Fluid 100 watercolour paper, I stamped the giraffe to one side of a whole piece of paper and then had loads of fun watercolouring it. I cut a C6 card base and added a piece of the beautiful fun Designer Series Paper (DSP) and added it to the card base. I cut off the giraffe and then cut a mat 8cm by 11cm. Using the softest pale greenish blue of Pool Party, I added some ink to a block and added some water on top from my water brush and proceeded to wash it across the mat. Once dry, I embossed it with the Christmas Words embossing folder. I fussy cut the giraffe out and using Dimensionals, (foam Pads) adde it to the card base and placed everything together.

Watercolour Wednesday - Seasonal Branches

 For the watercolour card today, this one has not turned out anything like I intended it to! However, using a block stamped into Coastal Cabana ink, I added lots of water to the ink on the block then using the large water brush, I washed it across a piece of Fluid 100 watercolour paper which I had soaked earlier. It went really smoothly across the card mat. Once dry I added some more different colours including blue, pink, yellow.... Once I was completely happy with the mat, I set it aside to dry. I die cut several of the large branch dies out of Pecan Pie card using the Seasonal Branches dies. Then using the stamp set, also called Seasonal Branches, I stamped lots of the leaves onto another piece of watercolour paper. I die cut them out once they were dry and put them aside to when I wanted to add them. I die cut the centre frame out of some Gold foiled card and embossed it with the Metal Plate embossing folder. I added the branches and leaves onto the mat and added the frame around the whole front of the card. I die cut a few golden apples (who wouldn't love a golden apple tree in the garden)?

Watercolour Wednesday - Translucent Florals

 For my watercolour day, today I went the whole hog so to speak! I had a piece of Fluid 100 watercolour paper and soaked it using a water brush back and forth across the paper. Then using 2 different colours, I chose Berry Burst, Lemon Lolly and Pretty Peacock ink refills. I put a drop onto some acetate and picked a little up with a narrow brush and let it smoosh across the very wet paper. I did the outer 2 colours first and then the Lemon Lolly in the centre last. I loved watching the way the colours all merged together with the softened edges too. You can see the even the Pretty Peacock has different shades too. While that was drying, I took another piece of watercolour paper and washed that too with a large brush. I then used Balmy Blue to cover the whole piece. I love that there are dark parts and lighter parts offsetting the whole page. Once the first sheet was dry, I stamped the leaves and flowers across the colourful mat and squeezed as much in as possible.  It was then just a case of fussy cutting them all out. That was fun! I do love a bit of fussy cutting! I then placed several of the pieces over the blue mat to see how they looked. I am pleased with the end result. 

Watercolour Wednesday - Cheerful Daisies

 Hello again, I am so pleased that I chose the Cheerful Daisies this week as the weather has been so very lovely here, it's been what I call lovely smiling weather. Today's card is one that I have seen done several times but I never had the luck of making it turn out right. I started by choosing 3 similar colours. The first is Fresh Freesia, then it's Highland Heather and finally Gorgeous Grape. I first of all spritzed the piece of Fluid 100 water colour paper in water really well. Then starting with the lightest, I stamped a Stampin' Up! acrylic Block C onto the ink pad and made sure it was covered in ink. I spritzed the block with water and placed it onto the paper. Where I had gone wrong before was that I lifted the block off. I shouldn't have. I tipped the block lightly from side to side and top to bottom so that the ink on the block covered the whole of the square that I wanted covering. I repeated with the other 2 colours but as the Gorgeous Grape ink is quite strong, I didn't over ink it. All 3 blocks were overlapped and dried really well. 

I stamped the large and small line images and inside colours onto white paper then die cut them all out. I mounted the small daisies using Dimensionals and the centres of the flowers were rounded/stretched a little and added with Dimensionals too. The whole of the mat was placed on Adhesive foam sheet so that it straightened out and laid flat well before placing them all onto the Fresh Freesia card base.

Watercolour Wednesday - Atristically Inked

 Do you ever have one of those days when you have done so much but when you look back at what you managed to do you realise that you haven't done the 1 main thing you wanted to do? That's me today. I set out to today's card and did so many other things but not the card!! Crazy isn't it? Anyway, I have now made my card for today! In actual fact, I have made 2! It started with a piece of watercolour paper and an acrylic block. I soaked the watercolour paper by spritzing it with cold water. I stamped the block onto a Fresh Freesia Ink Pad and just blobbed it all over. While it was still wet, I added Melon Mambo, Granny Apple Green and Bermuda Bay inks in the same way as before. I then spritzed it again and  dried it with a heat gun. Using the large and small flower stamps from Artistically Inked stamp set, I stamped the flowers in Melon Mambo repeatedly across the paper.

Using the Artistic dies, I then die-cut the large flower and leaf out of the watercolour paper. I embossed the mat which was now dry using one of the trio of Embossing Folders called Basics 3D folders. I used some black dimensionals to mount the flower and leaf to the 2 mats and completed both cards with a simple sentiment stamped onto the strip of card that I removed from the watercolour mat. 

Below is the mat before it was die-cut. It looks very odd I know but I am rather pleased with it.

 

                                                                            2nd card

Watercolour Wednesday - Christmas Lights

Christmas Lights and Brightest Glow 

Today's card is a watercolour tree that sort of floats over the card! I start by stamping the Christmas tree from the Christmas Lights stamp set onto watercolour paper and then spritzing the paper with water all over. I used Stazon Ink Pad for the stamping as it's a pigment based ink and not water based as the classic ink pads are. Using my usual form of taking ink to the water colour paper, I stamped a block onto the classic ink pad. I used the gorgeous, rich green of Shaded Spruce and then added some drops of water to the ink on the block. Using a large water painter brush, I added lots of ink in several layers all over the tree and drying it with a piece of kitchen roll in between the layers of ink. Once I had got the strength of colour that I wanted, I left it to dry for a while. I then prepared my card base by adding a piece of the In Colour glimmer card in the beautiful shade of Orchid Oasis. I had prepared it by die-cutting the tree from the centre of the card mat and also die-cutting a silver tree to add to the inside of the aperture. The purple mat was added using Dimensionals and the silver tree straight through the centre of the hole. I had poked a small hole through the star at the top of both trees and added a piece of Dimensional below the top one. Then I placed a small white brad between the 2 trees and secured them both in place. This then enables the green tree to float and wobble above the card. 

Watercolour Wednesday - Joyful Flurry

I have had fun with today's card. I took a pot and added 3 drops ink refill of Gorgeous Grape a really rich purple, then added about a spoonful of water to it. While the ink was mixing, I took a piece of watercolour paper and using Versamark Ink Pad, I stamped several of the different snowflakes all over the piece. I poured Clear Heat Embossing Powder over it all and then heat set it. It was quite shiny. Then using a wide water brush, I dipped it into the inky water and washed the colour all over the piece. I stopped occasionally to wipe some of the ink off of the embossed images but didn't really need to as it doesn't stick to it. I continued to do this a few times until I was happy with the colour.

I then dry embossed a small mat using the Wintry embossing folder, die cut one of the snowflakes partially on one end and added a sentiment and piece of ribbon. When it came to a card base I tried several different colours including Rich Razzleberry and Basic Gray but the Gorgeous Grape won. 

 Gorgeous Grape card base  

    Rich Razzleberry card base  

Basic Gray card base