Monday, November 24, 2014

Watercolor Birthday

I am still quite happily playing with my water colors.  They are definitely one of my favorite mediums for creating backgrounds.  It is always a mystery how they will turn out, and more often than not, they look much better dry than wet.  I think I have tossed out only about 5 out of a whole bunch...and only because my color choices turned to mud when blended.  Otherwise I have been happy with the results.

This card used a few scraps of paper, and a watercolored background. I used Mama Elephant's stamp set Make a Wish for the greeting and heat embossed it in white. I love blues purples and greens together.

Below are 4  shots of the background in process. Starting from upper left to right, then bottom left to right
I started with a piece of water color paper (Canson 140 lb weight cold pressed) with the smooth side facing up.  I tape it to an acrylic cutting board.  Next I spritzed it with water from a mister, and then added a bit more water with a wet brush.  Next comes my base color, the one I want most of on the piece. I just splotch it around. You can see the water moves the color, because the card is fairly wet.  Next, I load a rounded brush with wet color, drippy wet and flick it on the sheet by tapping the brush.  You can see how it spreads after it lands.  I did this with the purple and green.  Lastly, I lightly respritz the sheet with water to get some more blending.

Then I leave it to dry.  (I have my laptop on a fan, and the fan on a wire mesh stand.  I stick my projects to dry under it while I move on to other things.  The fan doesn't create a big breeze, but it does pull warmth from the laptop.)

Once this was dry, I added some gold Heidi Swap Color Shine.  Again, just flicking the bottle end of the sprayer over the paper.  Once that too was dry, I added my sentiment and heat embossed it in white. Lastly it was all layered together with a few strips of cardstock scrap and a bit of gold string.

Thanks for stopping by!

6 comments:

joy said...

Love seeing your process, Cat, and the results are gorgeous! I love making backgrounds with many different media - there is always that surprise element that gets me excited to make more. :)

The ME sentiment was a great choice for this beauty!

Betty said...

thanks for sharing how you do your watercolor backgrounds - i too love seeing the end result and it's so nice to have backgrounds handy for a quick card

Leslie Hanna said...

SO pretty! My green & purple would have blended into yuck. I have a piece of w/c paper taped to my board. Perhaps I should go play. :)

Becca Cruger said...

Isn't it fun to be messy?? This is such a cool card and for some reason the colors just remind me of Christmas - like blown glass.

Barb Ghig said...

Perfect sentiment with your beautiful background, Cat! I love the colors, the splatters you added with Color Shine, and the strip of glitter! Really beautiful card!

Greta said...

Love seeing how you do your backgrounds, Cat! Your card is totally gorgeous!