Quick Watercoloring With Art Impressions

As you know, I’ve been taking a lot of classes in all kinds of different card making, coloring, and scrapbooking techniques.
I have been loving every minute of it and it has been fun to go back and look at my cards to see how my card making and design has changed over the last year.
Today I’m sharing my first attempt at watercoloring with watercolor markers and Art Impressions stamps.
Art Impressions stamps are designed to be used for watercoloring. Specifically, you add color to the stamp directly with a watercolor marker, stamp it on watercolor paper, then dab dots of water over the stamped image with a brush to blur the stamped impression giving it a watercolor look.

This is really fun and relaxing, but it is clearly going to take practice! Check out my first attempt:

I actually purchased 5 or 6 small stamp sets and this is a combination of images from several of them.   They come as unmounted rubber stamps in sets of several small sets by theme, like foliage, flowers, containers and so forth.

The sentiment is from an MFT stamp set called Beautiful Day.  The strip of patterned paper is a leftover from one of my Simon Says Stamps card kits.  I loved the soft pastel plaid pattern with the water can florals.

I’m looking forward to Saturday when my house cleaning is done and I can just turn on a movie and practice this technique.  I learned about it in one of my classes.  They actually had a video created by the owner and designer of Art Impressions show us how to do this.  I really like the effect and it is very quick to do.

I do think there is a fine line between completely blurring the image and just blurring it a little.  I also think that I have to get used to these watercolor marker colors.  I just got a set of Distress Markers and I need to play with color combinations because that one green stem in the middle isn’t the right green with the rest of it!

I’m embracing the imperfections as I learn and try new techniques!  I’m sharing all the results with you.  The good, the bad, the ugly…and some that I absolutely love!  I’ll decide tomorrow how I feel about this one!

You know how a card always looks better the next day.  Once it has completely dried and the colors have blended and softened, it makes a better impression.

To finish off the card, I added clear droplets.  Some are from Studio Katia and some are from Pretty Pink Posh.

I created this card for this week’s Paper Craft Crew challenge which is an inspiration challenge!

I cannot wait to get my gardens cleaned out and my porch decorated!  I felt inspired by the water can as I was creating this card.

Since I’m very brave, I’m also going to add this to this week’s Stamp, Ink, Paper Challenge which is a color challenge!  Since I’m trying a new watercoloring technique, this seemed like a perfect challenge to enter this card in!

I invite you to stop by the Paper Craft Crew and Stamp, Ink, Paper and try these challenges this week.  We love to have you join us in the challenges!!!

Be brave and embrace the imperfections!!!