Hum to Your Own Beat...

Good morning! Emily Midgett here with you today to share a project using the new Hummingbird set that was an add-on for February's My Monthly Hero kit! The add-ons this month were SO fabulous... and I thought the Hummingbird set was just perfect to pair with the new Liquid Watercolors that will be available for purchase in the Hero Arts store tomorrow, February 15!! 

For my project today, I started by stamping the flowers included in the Hummingbird stamp set a few times on masking paper, then cut them out and used them to create a pretty bush in the bottom corner of a panel of watercolor paper, stamping both the flowers and the hummingbird itself with Hero Arts's Intense Black ink, which is waterproof and perfect for watercoloring!

I used a variety of the watercolors (which will be available tomorrow!) to softly watercolor my flowers and hummingbird: Strawberry, Mulled Wine, Dandelion, Moss, Pine, and Cobalt. I simply dabbed them into my inexpensive plastic palette and mixed and matched the colors until I had the shades I was envisioning in my head. I wanted something soft and ethereal, and these watercolors are so deeply pigmented that I was able to use just a single drop of each color for this entire card (with the exception of the Strawberry, which had two drops!) 

After I had colored the main images, I used the wet-on-wet technique with the super diluted watercolors to create a lovely, ethereal background. (This technique can cause your watercolor paper to warp, so I made sure to tape my paper to a cutting board with painter's tape to help diminish some of that effect.) I tried to keep the colors near the watercolored images to create a kind of Monet-ish, washed out effect, almost like the paper had gotten wet and the colors ran. After the background had dried, I stamped the coordinating sentiment from the Hummingbird stamp set using Intense Black ink again. 

After completing the colored panel, I trimmed it down slightly and mounted it on a shimmery black A2 sized panel from the Shimmer Paper Assortment. The final step was to use some of our new Crystal Clear Lacquer (available in the store tomorrow!) on the hummingbird to add shine and texture to this one layer card. 

Well, that's all for me today! Be sure to come back tomorrow to join in the 2018 Catalog Release festivities! Have a marvelous day!