Technique Tuesday... let's watercolor!

Hey y'all!

Today I'm sharing projects that feature the watercolor technique. The artists gathered today are part of the Technique Tuesday blog hop. 

So did you know that you can watercolor paint from your stamp pads? Yep you totally can! Simply squeeze the closed stamp pad in the center. This will deposit some ink in the lid. This ink is what you water color with. Of course you can always drop a dot of re-inker on to a clear block, but that's cheating. No not really but who wants to clean up blocks after playing. I like to use the aqua painters but you can use a paint brush and a cup of water.

Details for today's card

Let's take a look at the two cards I'm sharing with you. Both of these cards were made using Stampin' Up! stamp pads, the StazOn stamp pad, and an aqua painter. A couple of tips when you want to watercolor using any type of watercolor paint or ink. First the most important thing to remember is WATER. It is the first word in watercolor and it needs to be respected. To have this look right you need water and you need to let the water do its job. So when the water pools, let it and use it to your advantage. I'll talk about this more in a second. The other thing you need to remember is PAPER. Not all paper is going to hold up to the water. It's not supposed too. Many people use the Shimmer White paper with their watercolor. I'm not a big fan for all applications. I love it for the wet wipe type of water color where you do not need to saturate your paper. But for what I'm sharing today, you will need watercolor paper. Before you go looking for watercolor paper Stampin' Up! has a good starting point. Artist quality watercolor paper can be VERY expensive... ask my dad about the bills he got from all of my art classes in college. 

In this card I stamped the flower and leaves stamp on to watercolor paper using StazOn ink. Then I watercolored with Bumblebee and Grannie Apple Green ink and an aqua painter. I mentioned that you need to let the water do it's job. So what is the job of water? In this case, it's job is to dilute and disperse your color. See the little flowers? To paint those I first painted them all with just water. This made little water "bubbles" on my paper. Then I simply touched the yellow to the water and it did it's thing. I repeated this technique with the leaves and stems. The top stem (over the strawberry) had a little too much water and that is why the color goes out as far as it does. I stamped the strawberry on Whisper White and added to my  card. 

This card is showcasing watercolor painting in a little different way. I started with watercolor paper and stamped Poppy Parade ink. I then stamped the strawberry tops in Grannie Apple Green on to the watercolor paper. Now the fun part happens. Taking a clean aqua painter I added water to the strawberry. The first "layer" of water is just water. Once everything was wet, I started adding some of the Poppy Parade ink from the lid of the stamp pad. This is how I was able to get some shading on the strawberries. You can really see the color variation on the tops of the strawberries. 

I hope that you have been inspired by my watercolor projects. Check out the rest of our Watercolor Technique blog hop.

Roll Call:

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If you are in the United States and not currently working with a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, you can order supplies in my online store, here.