Happy Friday!

Today I just wanted to share a bit about watercoloring, as it is a great way to color in stamped images.  To be honest, I have never been all that great at watercoloring, as I find it takes more patience and time than I have. :)  But after playing over the years, I have found a few easy tips to make watercoloring fast and easy - and fun.  (If you are interested in a more informative, “correct” way to watercolor, be sure to check out Lisa Spangler’s excellent video HERE.)

This first card shows several of my watercoloring tips:

• Use watercolor paper. It is much more forgiving and allows for lots of layering of color. By layering, you can get vibrant colors.  For these roses, I used red, orange and pink colors.
• Paint in your images and then cut them out. Then you don’t have to bother staying in the lines!
• Be sure to leave your painting a bit splotchy. After all, you want it to look like you painted it, right? It adds to the artsy feel.
• If you aren’t good at determining colors for flowers, find a photo to “copy” from.  Just do a Google search for certain flowers. For mine, I used a wedding photo.

For these roses, I actually used my Distress Inks as watercolors. This is my favorite!  Just press ink onto an acrylic mount (or another non-absorbent surface) and spray it with water. Voila!  You have watercolor paint.  Love this!  (To see this technique, check out THIS fab video by Shari Carroll. She is a pro at this.)  Oh, and this card is for my husband. The roses look like those in our wedding…

Supplies:

• Special Moments
• Everyday Sayings
• Antique Flower Background
  
• Black Staz-On Ink (on clear piece), Artprint Brown and Black Memories Ink
• Chocolate Notecards
• Clear Gemstones (colored with Copic Markers)
• Other: Tim Holtz Fragment (clear piece), Distress Inks (Worn Lipstick, Fired Brick and Spiced Marmalade), vintage textbook paper, watercolor paper (the thick, inexpensive notepad type found at Office Depot in the art section), Creative Impressions silk ribbon

This next card uses basic watercolors and demonstrates a few more watercolor tips. Again, these are tips for making it quick and easy to do…

• Mix colors for more dimension. See the leaves on this card?  I used dark green and lime.
• Watercolors are great for a soft sky background.  First, just paint the surface with plain water to get it wet.  Then go back with a bit of blue.  This helps to even it out and make it faster.
• As you are working, keep a heat gun in your other hand.  Heating it speeds drying, so you can know if you need to add more color or not.

Supplies:

• Friend
• Flower Background
• Ruby and Black Memories Ink
• Watercolor Paint Wheel
• Medium and Small Pearls
• Other: Creative Impressions twine, Fiskars border punch, watercolor paper

OK…these next cards are about REALLY fast watercoloring with a watercolor pencils.  Here are some great tips I have stumbled upon while playing…

• Instead of stamping your image with black dye ink, instead stamp with black pigment ink and emboss with clear powder.  The embossed image will resist the watercolor, forcing you to stay in the lines!  This REALLY speeds up the coloring process.  I promise - try it!  I recommend this for all watercoloring.
• Just use watercolor pencils to scribble color here and there.  (Check out my example image below.)  Then just grab a wet brush and blend them.  It really is quick to do and works great. (For more help on watercolor pencils, check out the helpful video by Sally Traidman HERE.)
• Looking for a bit of pearly shine?  Try what I did here: Mix a dot of Liquid Pearls with water and paint over the final watercolored images. When it dries, you will be left with a pearly shine. It’s a  great touch on simple cards like these…

Supplies:

• Flower Blossom Borders
• Everyday Sayings
  
• Clear Embossing Powder
• Liquid Pearls
  
• Other: Staedtler watercolor pencils, Ranger black embossing ink, cream watercolor paper, EK Success 5/8″ circle punch (to cut the corner notches)

Here you can see how I scribble the pencils in the image, and how finishing with Liquid Pearls and water adds a pearly shine.  (Click to see bigger.)

Well, I hope you have had fun with these coloring tips…especially the ones that help with quick coloring. After all, the less time we spend coloring, the more time we have left to make more cards.

Happy Friday,

Filed under: colorit

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 4:10 am and is filed under Fun Fridays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.