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!