Hey Crafty friends! I love and have always loved watercolor but I definitely struggle with it. Some cardmaking artists are incredible at it like: Kristina Werner, Caly Person, Effie from The Ton Stamps and Dawn Woleslagle from WPlus9 Stamps. Of course, there’s more…these three ladies immediately came to my mind. Dawn inspires me the most and it’s her latest technique that moved me to pick up the brushes again and I’m glad I did!
Dawn recently posted a video on an easy watercolor technique and you can watch it on YT here. If you struggle with watercoloring, I recommend watching and trying this yourself. Basically, you use paint daubers, Distress Oxide inks, a stamp set and of course…water. You ink up the stamp using the daubers, spray the stamp to give it a mist and then stamp the image on watercolor paper. With a wet paintbrush, you can push the color in and around your images leaving this beautiful watercolor look! I used a #9 round brush.
I made 4 cards because I was just too excited! I used Distress Oxide colors: Blueprint Sketch, Lucky Clover and Picked Raspberry. I ran out of watercolor paper so I used Bristol Smooth paper. However, I want to try this again with Distress watercolor paper which is what Dawn used. I think the inks will move better on a thicker paper.
I made sure my paintbrush was not overly saturated with water, because I wanted to leave some details in my flowers. I also went around my image to produce a bit of shadow. I just love how my flowers look and these 3 colors blend so well.
I let all my card panels air dry, didn’t use a heat tool. The paper curled a bit so I ran them through my laminator between copy paper to get them flat again. I’ll link to the laminator I have at the bottom of this post.
I stamped my primary sentiment with “Simon’s Watermelon” Pawsitively Saturated ink.
My first 3 cards is Simon Says Stamp’s “Beautiful Flowers” stamp set. This is by far my absolute favorite and I’ve used it so many times! I’ve used Copics on this stamp before in this post.
For my 4th card, I used Simon’s “Beautiful Butterflies”, another one of my favorite sets! I also used both stamp sets for my sentiments.
I wanted my panels to have that torn edge effect so I trimmed a little off with Tim Holtz’s Deckle Paper Trimmer. Then, adhered them to black cardstock for a border. I layered this over The Paper Boutique “Damask” pattern papers. The colors in this collection blend really well with my ink color choices.
I’m so in love with this technique that I MUST try it again, gotta order some watercolor paper first! LOL 😀
- Simon Says Stamp “Beautiful Flowers” Stamp set, Coordinating Die set here
- Simon Says Stamp “Beautiful Butterflies” stamp set
- Simon Says Stamp “Intense Black” ink pad
- Paint Daubers
- Simon Says Stamp “Watermelon” Pawsitively Saturated Ink
- Paper Boutique Damask Delights Collection – 8 x 8 Paper Kit
- Cardstock Warehouse Black Cardstock
- Distress Oxide Inks (Collections and Bundles available too)
- Ngwall Round Paintbrushes (set of 12)
- Bristol Smooth Paper
- Distress Watercolor Paper (I recommend for this technique)
- Tim Holtz “Deckle Torn Edges” Trimmer
- Distress Spray bottle
- Accents 100 lb. White Cardstock
- Bearly Art Glue
- Royal Sovereign 9″ Laminator
