Thank You For Helping Me Grow

I just love the look of watercolor, don’t you?  I love the soft and loose feeling of it, but I have a really hard time achieving that look.  I’m a complete amateur when it comes to watercolor. So, I like big stamps which are easy to loosely paint, like this bunch of flowers from the Fleur 1 stamp set by Pinkfresh Studio.

I started by stamping the floral image with Versafine Black Onyx ink onto Canson XL watercolor paper.  Versafine is watercolor-friendly, so I knew the ink wouldn’t bleed when I added water.  I also added a sentiment from Hero Arts.

Then I taped down the panel to a board with painter’s tape, to prevent it from warping as I painted. Using a few colors from a small set of Windsor & Newton Cotman pan watercolors, I very loosely painted the flowers and leaves, intentionally going outside of the lines.  If you’re like me, ignoring the lines is not easy!  I used Alizarin Red and Purple Lake for the flowers, and Sap Green for the leaves, applying the wet watercolor directly to the dry watercolor paper. Once those were dry, I wet down the area around and among the florals and dropped in a bit of watered-down Cerulean Blue.

Once everything was dry, I removed the painter’s tape and cut down the panel using a Stitched Rectangle die from My Favorite Things.  Finally, I glued the card front onto an A-2 sized card base.

The closeup photo shows just how messy it is, but I’m happy with it.

Thanks for visiting!