Watercolor Wild Roses Card

While I love the watercolor trend that has been going strong for so long, I tend to shy away from it.  The looseness and imprecision can be really difficult for this math and science geek to embrace…but every once in a while, I like to force myself to try the things that scare me (or just make me reallllllly nervous).

It helps me to have a nicely defined border that resists bleeding…in other words, heat embossing my images allows me to watercolor without the risk of developing hives.  Here, I stamped the flowers and sentiment from the “Wild Rose & Hibiscus” and “Home to Home” sets by Crafter’s Companion in Versamark ink on watercolor paper, covered them in white embossing powder, and melted it with my heat tool.

The images were colored using Spectrum Aqua markers by first applying my darkest color directly to paper in the deepest shadow areas, pulling the color out a bit with my lighter marker, and then blending with my waterbrush while pulling just a tiny bit of color out to the edges (flowers – “Wildflower” and “Magenta”, leaves – “Leaf Green” and “Olive”).  To create the blue background, I simply did a wash of “Aquamarine” by scribbling the marker onto some plastic, mixing in some water, and spreading it over my paper using a wide brush.

Once dry, I added a twist of black jute and then matted the watercolor panel with some black cardstock.  To finish my card off, I added some clear sparkling sequins (I thought it gave it a nice dewy look).

I hope you enjoyed my experiment with watercolor today and I’d love to hear your comments.  What techniques scare you the most?