Just Because | Concord & 9th Color Collection Feature Friday

Happy Friday, friends, I hope you had a good week!

It’s the second Feature Friday of the month celebrating the release of Concord & 9th’s new color collection.  Today I’m sharing a card using one of the first techniques I learned, watercolor block stamping.

I learned this technique from a Jennifer McGuire video (of course!) and have only ever tried it with regular Distress Inks.  But, the Concord and 9th ink pads are so juicy that I had to give this technique a try!

I started with a large acrylic block that’s just a bit smaller than an A2-size card, but you can use any size block you like.  I smooshed Aqua Sky ink onto one end of the block, Oceanside in the middle (slightly overlapping Aqua Sky), and Peacock at the other end (slightly overlapping Oceanside).  Because I overlapped colors, I deliberately moved from the lightest color to the darkest, so as not to get darker colors onto my lighter ink pads.

Holding a Distress Sprayer about a foot away from the block, I spritzed a fine mist of clean water eight or nine times making sure to evenly cover the block.  Then I quickly turned the block over.  The colors ran into each other a little bit mid-flip, but once the block was again parallel to my work surface, they didn’t move as much and I had time to position my block over my Canson XL watercolor cardstock panel just where I wanted it.  I set the block down onto the cardstock and then placed a few heavy books on top and set a timer for five minutes.

At the five minute mark, I lifted the books and the block and found a really beautifully inked panel with really interesting texture!  I experimented several more times with varying amounts of water and found that more water resulted in more solid coverage (i.e., not as many uninked spots as you can see near the top of my card) but less texture.  Less water resulted in more uninked spots and more texture.

While the panel dried, I die cut a bunch of elements from the Just Because die set.  The white elements are cut from Neenah Solar White and the yellow elements are cut from Buttercup cardstock.

To assemble the card, I adhered the die cut elements with a combination of glue, Zots adhesive dots, and foam tape for a variety of dimension.  The I adhered the card front to an A2-sized card base.

Thank you so much for visiting, and don’t forget to check out the new color collection if you haven’t already!