Mixing Liquid Watercolors

2019 Catalog Watercolor

Apr 12, 2019 Jessica Frost-Ballas

Good morning! Jess here with a greenery-filled card featuring the fun Hang in There Potted Plants and liquid watercolors!

Okay, confession time...mixing watercolors scares the living daylights out of me! When I do use watercolors I tend to stick to single colors and play around with the amount of water I'm adding to get different variations on that single shade. But I almost never try mixing colors because I feel like I just end up with varying shades of brown no matter how much I work with color theories and mixing groups... But I decided to challenge myself and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

To start I placed a long panel of watercolor cardstock in my MISTI and stamped the plants from Hang in There Potted Plants with Versafine and heat-embossed them with clear embossing powder. Then I stamped the plants again on a second piece of watercolor paper. Next I added drops of Moss, Pine, Dark Teal, Leaf, Dandelion, Artprint Brown, Cocoa, Black, White, and Purple liquid watercolor to my palette. I started by wetting the stamped image...then I added a tiny bit of one color to one end of the leaf and a second color to the other end and let the wet paper blend the two colors together. Sometimes I'd use a damp clean brush to blend the colors together. I also experimented with mixing colors on my palette and using them to color the leaves, pots, and dirt. The great thing about a card like this is that plants come in ALL shades so variations of light green all the way to dark teal are acceptable! :) Finally I added a very watered down teal wash to the background of one panel and then let everything dry!

Once everything was dry I die-cut one panel of plants with the coordinating dies. This is a simple way to avoid masking intricate images! Simply stamp one panel and fill it in with die-cut images! ;) I used a mixture of Precision Glue and foam mounting tape to add the die-cut plants to my panel. I stamped the sentiment onto Pitch Black Hero Hues Cardstock and heat-embossed it with white embossing powder. I cut the sentiment apart to fit my scene better and adhered it to the panel with foam mounting tape to finish the card. This wasn't my intention when I started but the card really reminds me of my parents' home...my mom has quite the green thumb and her home is filled with plants! I think this might make a perfect Mother's Day card! ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a fantastic day!