It’s time again for another Watercooler Wednesday Challenge, and this week Bev has chosen a colour challenge that is very appropriate for tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day – it’s all about the greens!
My first thought was oh my goodness; how was I ever going to put all these greens together and keep it looking nice? Then, I decided to try out a new technique I saw online, where you emboss on top of watercolouring!
Here’s what I came up with – and of course I had to include a 4 leaf clover (Shamrock) as my nod to St. Paddy and my Irish great-grandparents 🙂
This was really fun to do; the hardest part was being patient in between watercolouring, and allowing it to dry without using the heat tool!
There are quite a few tutorials and videos on this technique, but I followed the directions found in Wendy Cranford’s Youtube video; I found it easy to follow.
Basically, I started with a panel of Watercolour Paper measuring 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ – I made it a bit bigger than I wanted to allow for taping down to my board, and trimming off 1/4″ when I was done.
After taping down the paper, I used my Mint Macaron, Cucumber Crush, and Mossy Meadow Stampin’ Write Markers and coloured from the top down on the watercolour paper. I then took a wide, flat paintbrush, and wet the entire sheet, moving my brush from side to side.
On the first pass, the colours didn’t really move, but when you repeat it several time, you can start to see the inks move, and you’re able to blend them and remove the harsh colouring lines.
You have to then set aside your paper and board; let it dry naturally. I was able to work on another project while this one dried.
Next, I inked up the flourish and dots using the Timeless Textures stamp set in Versamark ink, and stamped directly on top of the now dry watercolouring. I covered the stamped images with Clear Embossing Powder, shook off the excess, and heat set the powder using my Heat Tool.
Once the embossing was cool (very quickly, thank goodness; patience isn’t one of my strongest virtues!), I again wet my paintbrush with clean water, and moved the ink about; you can see that it lightened up on the unstamped areas, but the colour remained under the embossed images. Now, the Timeless Texture images aren’t really solid images – they are meant to be textures – so the images are as ‘hard’ as they would be if I had used more solid images.
In this next picture, you can see how the colouring changes a bit when I slanted the camera angle, and you can see a bit more of the stamped images.
I trimmed down my inked panel, and layered it onto a panel of Mossy Meadow cardstock, then layered that onto a card base of Wild Wasabi cardstock.
The sentiment was stamped on Whisper White cardstock; I inked the sentiment in Cucumber Crush, and the flourishes in Mossy Meadow ink using the Markers again; the sentiment is from the Choose Happiness stamp set. I die cut the sentiment piece and the Mossy Meadow cardstock layer beneath it using the Tags & Labels Framelits dies – my ‘go to’ set for layering sentiment.
I wanted to add the Shamrock, so I used the retired Hearts Framelits to die cut 4 of the smallest hearts from Mossy Meadow cardstock. Once die cut, I put them together with the points all touching, then stamped the flourish image from Timeless Textures in Mossy Meadow ink on top of the hearts, and the little stem. I then attached them in the shape of the Shamrock to the card front, using Glue Dots.
I’m quite happy with how the card turned out; I can’t wait to try this technique again with lots of different colours and stamps! Maybe I’ll even try doing a video tutorial – let me know if you’d like me to do that! Just leave a comment on this post, and let me know!
Now, I hope you’ll check out the rest of the Watercooler Artists’ designs – they’re very cool! Then of course, join in with your own card – we need to have at least 3 submissions in order to choose a winner! We appreciate everyone who joins in the challenges, and love to visit your posts and leave you some blog love!
Last week’s challenge only had 2 participants, but I want to give a shout out to Heather Hopson and Heather Heroldt for their awesome cards – just click on their names to see the cards they created for the reflection technique.
For now I’d like to leave you with this Irish saying:
“May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live“
Until next time – happy stamping!
Wow, Deborah! Those are hard colors to use. You did an awesome job with it though!
Thanks, Susan! I’ve never used so many greens all at once; I’m glad you think it turned out well 🙂
Very creative and gorgeous. Definitely worth a try. And I think a video of YOUR process would be really cool. Thanks for sharing Deb.
Thanks for such a wonderful compliment, Louise! I’m glad that you like my embossed watercolour card. I will practice some more with the technique, and try my hand at a video! Thanks for the vote of confidence 🙂
Deb thanks for persevering with the challenge. I knew you could do it and boy did you do it! I hope you do a video on this technique sometime. I would be interested in seeing it. What a lovely card. See — Greens are your friend 😉
Bev, it was a great challenge – because it was challenging! With your vote of confidence, I will record my next use of this technique; skipping over the ‘waiting for ink to dry’ parts! 😉