Totally Techniques Blog Hop - Watercolour Technique

I am feeling really excited about this month’s hop with the Totally Techniques design team – the reason being that I know how incredibly talented they are at water colouring. . .

You have possibly just come by from Heather Wright-Porto's blog. Wasn’t Heather's card incredible?

Here is mine and I have to admit to being a bit of an amateur at water colouring and I wanted to use only Stampin’ Up! products so of course am using the Classic Ink Stamp Pads as my colour medium:

Surprise, surprise a square card lol!

The base card is Rich Razzleberry, since Blackberry Bliss was released two years ago, I don’t use this colour as frequently as I once did but I thought it was perfect for this card. The square mount on top of the base card is Old Olive.  I tend to lean towards square cards because I can fit more stamping and textures on them and I notice that the people I give them to seem to keep them on show a little longer. I am sure that they end up in the bin ultimately but if I can extend the shelf life that’s what I am all about lol.

I have been having trouble with the quality of my Stampin’ Up! water colour card so I opted to use the Coaster Board as my stamping base. Because I wanted a stamped image to be the main focus I heat embossed in white the flowers from the Helping Me Grow set. I like to unclip the lid of the ink pad and squeeze the lid and the base together so that you are left with a big squelch of ink in the base that is easy to pick up you are water colouring.

I dampened the embossed flowers with water – it’s really simple to do this with a clean aqua painter and it helps the colour to be taken up. I then water coloured the flowers using an aqua painter and Classic Ink Stamp Pads I used Rich Razzleberry as my main colour and then blended in the tips of the petals with Blushing Bride – I wanted two colours that contrasted as well as complementing each other.  I allowed the images to dry a little then came back in with Rich Razzleberry in the centres to have a more dramatic contrast.

The stem is coloured in Old Olive and Mossy Meadow.  I used Old Olive and the fern stamp from Butterfly Basics in the background but didn’t stamp that aspect until I had done the background.

Whimsical backgrounds can be created with ink pads as well and that was my goal with this card. I spritzed the background with water being careful to avoid the coloured flowers so that they wouldn’t bleed into the background. I came back in between the individual flowers with a clean aqua painter to dampen the areas which I was trying to avoid bleeding into (this meant that the blue background would still spread on the background between these images as well).

In order to get a fair bit of ink on the background without looking like it was dabbed on I squeezed the lids and base of the Classic Ink Stamp pads until there was a large amount of ink residue in the base. I then spritzed the base of the stamp pad with water (it makes a colourful puddle), mixed the colour and the water through and applied it to the still damp background with an aqua painter. I squeezed the aqua painter as I went to ensure even more water flowed through the nib. The colours I used on the background were Pool Party and Old Olive for the background.  

Next I generation stamped the ferns from Butterfly Basics across the bottom left hand corner to blend the stamped images a little more.  I also stamped the fly poo dots from Gorgeous Grunge in Pool Party ink to add to the randomness of the background.

On a separate piece of Whisper White cardstock I stamped the border from the Rose Wonder set in Rich Razzleberry and the ‘happy birthday” sentiment in Tuxedo Black Memento Ink. I fussy cut the shape out to avoid the white edge on the boarder.

I wanted to tie in the base card colour and the images on the front of the card so I punched three Rich Razzleberry flowers using the 4 petal flower out of the Itty Bitty Punch Set. These are mounted with glue dots and I couldn’t resist adding some pearls for the centres. To have a contrast to the flowers and the flatness of this card I used Linen Thread for texture and criss-crossed it across the card three times.

I hope that you have found some inspiration in my card, feel free to leave a comment - I love to hear what you think. And don't leave - stick around and check out the next blogger Nadine Weiner!

Happy water colouring!

Cheers

Shanni xx

Totally Techniques Design Team Roll Call

Sandi MacIver

Patrice Halliday-Larsen

Amy Koenders

Lee Conrey

Shelagh Freemantle

Marine Wiplier

Erna Logtenberg

Heather Wright-Porto

Shannean Moncrieff (that's me)

Nadine Weiner

Alison Solven