Creating Pale Pastels with Hero Arts Liquid Watercolors
Hi there! Emily Midgett here with you today to share some super pale pastel inspiration created with the ultra-concentrated and vibrant Hero Arts Liquid Watercolors! With such concentrated watercolors in primary shades, it's really easy to find yourself creating vibrant, saturated projects, so I wanted to challenge myself to create some pale pastel colors for a unique feel. Let's get started with the details!
I began by silver embossing a few images from the Ornate Carousel stamp set onto watercolor paper. I then did some mixing and matching with the Hero Arts Liquid Watercolors in shades of Purple, Strawberry, Pink, Orange, Leaf, Dark Teal, Indigo and Pewter, liberally adding drops of iridescent shimmer watercolor (from one of the previous My Monthly Hero kits) and several drops of clean water to create super diluted, pale, shimmery colors. I used a watercolor technique called glazing to create custom shades, adding a thin, diluted layer of color over another color that had already dried to create a unique color. 
I also created my background by taping down an A2 panel of watercolor paper to my watercolor board, saturating my paper with water, then dropping the same diluted colors onto the wet watercolor paper. I tried to use colors that would blend well together; for example, I avoided mixing green and purple to create an unpleasant shade of brown, instead focusing on mixing the blue, purple, and red shades on my palette. I used my heat tool to speed the drying process, then added another layer of diluted color, swirling the drops of pale color around with my very wet paintbrush to create an even paler, ethereal backdrop. After the background was dry, I used my paintbrush to flick some Pewter droplets in the bottom corner to add an artistic flair and some additional texture.
After I'd finished my watercoloring, I used the coordinating dies to die cut the carousel images out. I also die cut some shimmery bunting using the Decorative Edge Fancy Die and some of the beautiful shimmery vellum from the DIY Ornament Kit. I die cut the large Happy from white card stock and heat embossed the greeting from Ornate Carousel on strips of white card stock using silver embossing powder. I added all of the die cuts and the greeting to the card front, adhering them using both liquid and foam adhesive for lots of texture and dimension.
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12 Responses
Annette Gordon
May 30, 2019
Stunning! I love how you used the decorative die for banner/streamers. Will have to try that out soon. Love the look. And your water colouring is amazing!
Pat Borden
May 25, 2019
Gorgeous card. Thank you for the inspiration to try something different!!
Henriétte
May 25, 2019
It’s an incredibly beautiful card Emily with the soft pastel colours. I love the carousel horse image, it brings back memories. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful card.
Karrie Lasater
May 24, 2019
This is a beautiful card! I love the cooors and the big sentiment “happy”
Debbie Siddle
May 23, 2019
Beautiful work. xxxx
Linda Clark
May 22, 2019
This card is beautiful and I will try to use more combinations of color on my cards.
linda
May 22, 2019
Beautiful!
Alice
May 21, 2019
Lovely card . Creative use of die cuts and paper , thank you for sharing your inspiration
Helen
May 21, 2019
Delightful card, Emily. I like this idea for pastel coloring…and the idea of the silver embossing for this particular image. It carries through the glitzy idea of a carnival carousel. tfs
Lagene
May 21, 2019
Beautiful creation, I love the soft colors!
Karthikha Uday
May 21, 2019
Fun cool card! :)
Bonita Reyes
May 21, 2019
You never cease to amaze me with the beauty of you creations