Watercolors

I was excited to see that Virginia Lu has started a new challenge blog, called Virginia's View Challenge. She is providing an inspiration photo and a required element for each challenge. 

I haven't done much watercoloring, but it seems the perfect time of year for it. Spring about to bloom (I hope) and those soft beautiful colors will start popping.  

If I were still in California, I would be seeing lots of flowers starting to show their colors.  Here in southern Maryland I am seeing lots of snow.  However, it was just reported that the Cherry Blossoms should be at peak April 8-12.  So spring is just around the corner!

Here is my first card, I stamped the Delicate Blossoms (Hero Arts) in black Stazon, then colored lightly with  a wet water brush lightly stroked across the color points of Derwent pencils in red and green. I applied heat to dry it, because I am a bit impatient. The blue background was added by using Distress Inks in  Tumbled glass and Salty Ocean to the moistened paper. Then I spritzed the whole thing with water.  I blotted with paper towels and dried it again.  I mounted it with foam tape, and resisted urges to add some sparkle to it. Card base is Bazzill. Sentiment stamp is Hero Arts.

My second card is my favorite of the two.  I took Distress Markers and scribbled on my craft sheet. Lightly spritzed them, so I only had small water beading on the sheet.  I laid my Distress Water Color paper on top of the wet colors and let it sit there  a  few seconds.  I did not try moving the paper around. I picked it straight up and decided I wanted it to blend a bit more, so it got spritzed again. This time the colors ran a bit,but I liked it.  Dried again with the heat gun.  I wanted to see if clear embossing over the water colors would darken like it does on cardstock. I clear embossed the Hero Arts Numbers background onto the sheet.  It actually appeared to lighten the colors.  I had taped off a strip near the bottom to white emboss my sentiment as well. I trimmed my panel, added a touch of pink ribbon from Stampin Up, and mounted it with foam tape on to a Neenah Aspen White 110 lb card base.  This one was so hard to photograph, I finally found an angle that shows the clear embossing.  Thanks for making it through this wordy post!