Watercolored Tulips

Hello Friends!  I hope you are enjoyed your weekend. I’ve been doing a little watercoloring and I wanted to share one of my projects with you. I have watercolored these tulips from Papertrey Ink’s Friendship Jar Spring Fillers many times. But, I have fallen in love, and I do mean LOVE with using Stampin’ Up ink pads for watercoloring and I wanted to try something that I had rolling around in my head.  Let’s get right to it!

I drew inspiration from a piece of Designer Series paper. It’s called Watercolor Wonder and it’s from Stampin’ Up! What’s nice about this, is that I have ink pads to coordinate with the colors in the paper.

I stamped my image onto the textured side of a piece of Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Card stock, using Versamark ink and sprinkled on some WOW White Pearl Super Fine embossing powder. I heat set it with my heat tool and let it cool. Then, came the fun part…the watercoloring. I squeezed the closed ink pads to transfer some ink into the lids and I used them as my palettes.  If you don’t want to get your lids dirty, just smoosh some ink onto your craft sheet or an acrylic block. Both work just fine.

I used several sizes of watercolor brushes. I needed different sizes for different areas. A “0” for small tight areas and adding shading, a #2 for the blooms and leaves and a #4 and #6 for the blue background. Just a note here, I’m no watercoloring expert, but I learned from those who are that, it is of utmost importance to the end result of your project, to invest in quality paint brushes. I purchased a nice set of brushes from Simon Says Stamp. And then I filled in the gaps with brushes from Michael’s. I use a 50% off coupon to help defray the costs. I can tell you, I have used inferior quality brushes in the past and there really is a difference. Now, I get no shed bristles and they hold water better. Okay…back to the card. Loooooong winded Barb today!

As usual, I taped my piece onto a watercolor board to help prevent warping. Even though the embossing powder traps the color into separate sections, I still colored blooms that were not touching each other first, just in case I got a little wild with my brush, I wouldn’t ruin anything. I didn’t use much water on my brush, so the drying time was not too long. And, as usual, I let my piece air dry. After everything was completely dry, I added a little pale blueish green ink around the image to ground it and to help the colors pop.

I matted the focal panel with a piece of my inspiration patterned paper and mounted it onto my card base with dimensional adhesive. Then, it was time to embellish! I pulled out an old set of tag dies and cut the little circle. Then, using the Card Word Puzzle stamp set from Close to My Heart, I stamped the greeting with Memento Peanut Brittle ink. I glued that down with liquid adhesive and added the bitty bow with a glue dot. I had sequins on the card at first and then thought I would try pearls to bring out the pearl embossing powder.

I finished off the inside of the card with a sentiment from another Papertrey Ink stamp set, Heartfelt Basics. I've used this a lot, too during my Mother's Day card series. I also used the "Happy Mother's Day" sentiment from the Spring Baskets stamp set from Waltzingmouse Stamps and a butterfly stamp from WPlus9.

I used the Rock and Roll technique on the butterflies. I inked up the image with Crisp Cantaloupe ink, then rolled the edges of the wings in Crushed Curry ink. Then I went over them with a Clear Wink of Stella glitter brush marker. I added a small strip of the inspiration paper on the bottom of the panel for continuity and then I matted it with Crisp Cantaloupe card stock and my card was finished.

Ultimately, I ended up using several Stampin’ Up! Inks for this project. As I stated in the beginning, I am really impressed with the results I am getting from these inks. I like that they keep their vibrancy and yet, can be watered down to be very pale. I used only the inks pictured below to watercolor my image. I just used the colors at different strengths to get the look I desired. I also like that I can use the inside of the lid as my palette. This makes it super easy to watercolor on the go. I can just grab the ink pads I need and a waterbrush and be off.  Generally, I am not a fan of using the waterbrush, but I think it’s the best bet for travel mode watercoloring.

So there you have it! Lots of pictures in this post but, since I’m not set up to do videos, I thought it would be helpful to show pictures of my process. I hope you enjoyed having a little peek into what goes on in The Hive.

***I am entering this card into the ANYTHING GOES challenge at Simon Says Stamp.***

Thank you for stopping by! I appreciate it!

Blessings~

supplies~

Stamps: Friendship Jar Spring Fillers, Heartfelt Basics(Papertrey Ink)  “For You” from Card Word Puzzle(Close to My Heart)  “Happy Mother’s Day” from Spring Baskets(Waltzingmouse Stamp Co.)  butterflies from Mother’s Day Bouquet(WPlus9)

Card stock: 80# and 110# Neenah Solar White(Simon Says Stamp)  Crisp Cantaloupe(Stampin’ Up!)

Specialty paper: Tim Holtz Watercolor Cardstock(Ranger)

Patterned paper: Watercolor Wonder(Stampin’ Up!)

Ink: Versamark, Memento Peanut Brittle(Tsukineko)  Crisp Cantaloupe, Crushed Curry, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Pool Party(Stampin’ Up!)

Dies: Tiny Tags(Provo Craft)

Bling: Blush, Champagne pearls(KaiserCraft)  Clear Wink of Stella glitter brush(Zig)

Other: White Pearl Super Fine embossing powder(WOW)  pink satin ribbon(Offray)   #0 watercolor brush(Grumbacher)  #2, #4, #6 watercolor brush(Claudine Helmuth Studios)