Watercolor Class

I am not sure why I hemmed and hawed about taking this class at Online Card Classes. I have dabbled in a few water color cards and enjoyed them, but was having a hard time mustering enthusiasm for the class. I kept hoping to win a seat to make my decision easier.

Late last night or was it early this morning, I took a look at my watercolor supplies...trying to decide if I wanted to take the class.  Obviously I had enough "stuff" to probably be able to mimic most of the techniques.

So I decided to sign up.   As I looked around the site, wow...preclass videos...and suggestions to actually play with your "stuff" to get used to how it works.  GENIOUS SUGGESTION LADIES!  So at around 2 am I started to play with my stuff, I made swatch cards and a plaid background.  I did learn an important lesson...the watercolor paper should be of a better quality. I had some cheap stuff I had cut up for practice and used it for the swatches, and I could really tell when I used my distress markers.  It did not blend well at all. So for about 2 hours I played while most people were tucked in and sleeping away. My swatches:

I went to bed at least curious and less ambivalent than I had been about this class.  This morning I had an online poker tournament to host and some housework to do before being able to attend class.

I am no longer ambivalent, I am IN TOTAL LOVE with this class.  I love the videos, and even more I loved playing and making my cards.  This was not HOMEWORK, this was so much fun.  My cards are my first efforts, and one of them could definitely use some refinement, but they go into my binder and are for me.

I can promise however, that watercoloring will definitely be a go to for card making.  My favorite of the three is the small thank you card with the oversized sentiment.  I will definitely be making card sets similar to this for gifts!

And finally, here are my cards from today's lessons.  I pretty much cased the designs, and used what I had on hand for stamps and dies.

watercolor with stencil laid upon it

 I wanted to mimic the diagonal strips in the card base, and embossed the tag. I probably would leave that off next time and get a stencil with smaller openings so the pattern will pool better.

watercolor with large sentiment die cut

 I so love this one.  The class card had the watercoloring on a panel which was placed on a card base along with its already white border.  I was a little uneven and messy with my color placement, so I die cut the panel with a deckle edged spellbinders rectangle. This is a small card only about 4 x 2.75 inches.

watercolor and resist embossing

Vellum is not forgiving at all. I was trying for a Beatles vibe here.

I used an 8 pack of crayola watercolors for the first and third cards, distress inks for the middle card. Embossing powders were from Hero Arts, Versamark Ink.  My blue ink on the first card is Hero Arts Neon Blue, the gold is Delicata. The thank you die is Hero Arts, the love die is Simon Says stamp. The heart brads are from Peebles. Embossing folder is from Sizzix and the twine I found at Target years ago.

Thanks for stopping by and getting through this long post.