Creative Watercolor Media

New Year, new course submission, with me kicking and screaming all the way!  LOL!  Read on to find out why!

The Altenew Level 2 course that I have been watching for a couple of months now is entitled “Creative Watercolor Media.”  Oh My, the beautiful cards that have been made in this course!  Talk about eye candy!!  Totally stopped me in my tracks.  We’re talking frozen, here.  I am most definitely NOT a watercolorist.  Now my mother is, but sadly, I must have been hiding when they passed out true talent.  So I have really been stymied about jumping in and getting this module finished.  So on December 31, 2024, I finally said, “Enough is enough,” and stumped off into my studio to wrap this class up.  Now, 3 days later, here we are, slogging through a blog, so to speak.  I have created no less than 4 cards for this course.  Yes, 4!  I guess we better get started…

Card 1, which was actually the last card that I made, is probably the one I like the most.  For this card, I used the Library Blooms stamp and die set.  Stamping onto rice paper and embossing was an experiment that turned out surprisingly well.  By using VersaFine Clair Nocturne and then embossing with clear embossing powder, I managed to create an eye popping image on the rice paper.  And painting the rice paper was much easier than I expected.  I used the “smoosh” technique with ink pads on my glass mat.  Simon Hurley’s Grr, Remember Me, and Clear Skies, VersaFine Clair’s Nocturne and Sand Dune, and Tim Holtz’ Lucky Clover Distress Ink, lightly mixed with water, added color to my “canvas.”

Then I used Tim Holtz’ Speckled Egg Dixtress Oxide to ink blend the edges of a white card panel, but left the center white so that the stamped image would shine through.  After ripping the edges of the rice paper in order to fit it onto my panel, I used a glue stick to affix it to the panel.  Then I glued the panel to a card base and there you have it…

Now let’s take a look at the first two cards I created for this course.  Both were created using the Quaint Blooms stamp set.  The card with the pink panel was heat embossed with rose gold embossing powder.  It didn’t shine like I thought it should have, so I ran it through my MINC foiling machine with gold foil.  Doing this caused my watercolor paper to be less absorbent and the re-inkers that I used to paint the image did not flow like I thought they should.  And when I tested the fussy-cut image on the panel, it lacked pizazz, so I decided to splatter the card panel before adhering the flowers.

The second card of this duo was also heat embossed on watercolor paper, but this time I used black sparkle embossing powder.  I painted it using the same Simon Hurley reinkers as the one above, but opted not to fussy cut this image.

And the third card I actually made is featured last in my little litany.  Here, I used the Literary Blooms stamp to emboss my image with the black sparkle embossing powder onto watercolor paper.  Next, I used Tim Holtz Distress Spritz Sprays to paint the stamped image.  After the sprays dried, I “fixed” the glittery look by setting the sprays with hairspray.  Then I ran the image through my die cutting machine.  Next came a HUGE dilemma…I would either need to CUT my image or - GASP - use a different card size!  I decided to CUT!  So I chopped and hacked and trimmed away my image, slapped it onto a silver panel using foam tape, and called it done.  This card was actually “finished” last, but the focal point created third.  Could it be that it’s late, I’ve spend three days working on these cards, and am getting just a little cranky?  Well, I did warn you that I am not overly fond of water coloring!  So…which of the four cards do YOU like best?