Watercolor Basics and Beyond: Part 2

The next lesson in Altenew’s watercolor class was on using watercolors as ink. It’s important in this technique to use concentrated amounts of watercolor which you apply directly to the stamp, and then lightly spritz the stamp with water before stamping onto watercolor paper. Following that you can use a small brush to distribute some of the watercolor and enhance some of the details. I don’t have a lot of Altenew’s layering stamps (it’s a technique I’m still learning to master), but using the detail stamp for the layering was recommended. Actually, the “Build a Flower” Magnolia” worked out pretty well for this technique.

I actually had a lot more trouble turning the piece into a card than I did executing the watercolored flower. I added some black and gold splatters after stamping the sentiment (from Altenew’s “Floral Frame” stamp set) and let them dry for over three hours. When I went to adhere the watercolor piece to a card I weighted it down and when I picked it up, some of the black splatters had smeared in the upper left-hand corner! I finally found a Spellbinders die that was the right size to incorporate the flower, the sentiment, and eliminate the smeared splatters. What a pain! I added a gold border and used a Memory Box licorice card. Here’s a closer look at the gold border and splatters.

I’m halfway through the videos for the class, and hope to finish it before the weekend. The next technique we learned was watercoloring an embossed sentiment. Looks easy, probably should be easy, but three attempts have hit the circular file. I’m moving on, although I’ll probably come back later and try again.