If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that while I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down to create videos and blog, I have been taking all kinds of crafty classes.
Lately I’ve been enjoying watercoloring classes. I’ve been learning some new techniques and perfecting some old ones.
I fell in love with Stampin’ Up!’s watercolor pencils last year. I could take the supplies with me and do that anywhere.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of ink blending and watercoloring with Stampin’ Up! inks and different ink techniques. Some I like, some I need more practice with.
I embossed the flower from Beautiful Day first in white and then in Sparkly Sand Dunes by WOW. (I got that in a kit some time ago and it is quite a pretty powder with a lot of sparkle.)
I used watercolor paper and wet each petal and dripped ink onto the water. I added two colors to each petal and let the water do the work. I liked my first attempt and I’m liking my second attempt more now that I let it sit for a few hours while I organized my Project Life supplies and unpacked 5 boxes. (I’m so close to being done unpacking…by the end of February break I will have this basement done!)
I don’t hate this one! I think the colors mixed in a pretty way. You go through petal by petal and each one comes out a little different. I need to work on consistently getting the dark areas where I want them to be, but all in all, the water does all the work.
Here is the attempt with the sparkle powder:
I actually think that I did a better job with consistency on this attempt and I left some white space which I actually liked more after it dried. I don’t hate this one either.
This is a fairly easy technique and I’m thinking that if I made these into cards with mats and sentiments, I might actually be happy with the results.
The next technique that I tried is a no line watercoloring technique. Generally, most people use Ranger Distress inks which I do not have (or have not yet unpacked the couple that I do have). I attempted to do this with Stampin’ Up! dye inks. A demonstrator did a demonstration of this technique at the OnStage Live event. Of course her sample was perfect!!
I need wayyy more practice at this and I am going to try it on another brand of watercolor paper with the distress inks and see if that makes a difference.
This little bird is from the Color Me Happy stamp set and you can see I was doing okay until his tail. I wanted the tail darker and it just blurred everything.
I decided to try the Beautiful Day flower:
I’ll be practicing this more! Phew…this looks bad! I’m embracing the imperfections on this one. I think that the Fresh Fig was too strong of a color to use. You can’t even see the lighter color in there and the lines of the petals still show. I’ll try this with some different colors. Practice does make perfect and I’m not shy about trying things until I master them.
It certainly is a relaxing technique and I hope to do some more tomorrow.
One more stack of boxes to unpack, organize a shelf of stamp sets and play with watercolors.
My next steps…
I have watched a few videos of people who are serious watercolorists and I’ve noticed that they use nice brushes and watercolor paints. I’d like to try that.
If I want to really make beautiful watercolors, I think it is worth investing in the supplies to really do it.
It’s so beautiful when a person masters it and it certainly is a relaxing way to spend a couple of hours. I will be doing some research to find some good supplies at a reasonable price to take this to the next level.
I will also be trying this with distress inks and with my Catherine Pooler inks to see how they work. I like her inks quite a lot because she uses the foam pads like Stampin’ Up! does. I love Stampin’ Up!’s ink pads. The foam pads are fabulous and I love the way they stamp. Catherine Pooler’s inks are really beautiful too. Tomorrow I will try watercoloring with those and see what difference, if any, it makes.
All in all…a relaxing and productive day! The best part of today though is that I have tomorrow off from work and I can do this again. It feels so good to be in my craft studio organizing and crafting!
Thank you for stopping by. I would love your comments and suggestions for things you’ve tried with watercoloring that have worked well…or things you need more practice with.
In the meantime, let’s embrace the imperfections!
