Soft Watercolour Flowers

Both of the cards I’m sharing with you today caused me a lot of trouble… They came together in the end, and despite my annoyances I’m relatively happy with them. This was the first I made, and is a response to four challenges. The layout comes from CAS(E) This Sketch, and the colour scheme from TGIF. The photo prompt from Inspired By All The Little Things gave me the idea to do watercoloured flowers. And finally, Sweet Stampin’ wanted a project involving love in some form.

I started by cutting a piece of watercolour paper to the size of my card front. I masked off the area I wanted and painted it with pale pink. I then turned my paper over and started again because I’d managed to get green and yellow in it… Yeah, don’t ask.

I remasked, repainted and let it dry for a little while whilst I worked out the exact colours for my flowers, and which stamps I wanted to use. I of course turned again to the Heyda flower stamps I bought recently. Once my background was dry enough, and whilst it was still masked off, I got started with my stamping. I vaguely remember watching a video ages ago where someone coated their stamps with watercolour paint to stamp them. Perhaps I’m remembering incorrectly because it didn’t work too well when I tried it…

In any case I persevered and kept applying the paint to my stamps and stamping my pattern. I used the darker purple on one of the flowers and the lighter on the other and just kept going.

When I’d done with the stamping I felt it was too blotchy so I added a more water to help the colour spread. And then it was too wet and I had to pick up some of the water with a tissue!

I set it aside to dry for quite a while. Once it was dry enough I removed my masking and noticed that it hadn’t masked off everything quite properly… A few bits had gone past the masking.

I decided to add some splatters and make it all messier. Because if I pretended it was purposefully messy maybe the fake messy wouldn’t be so obvious… Oh and also I managed to rip the panel when removing the masking tape so… I had to glue that. It’s mostly hidden. I then scored around the edges of the stamped area to add a bit more definition.

Finally I added a strip of black paper with the sentiment stamped on, and adhered the panel to my card base.

I really was not at all happy with this card when I finished it. But it has grown on me. It has a kind of artistic feel to it, don’t you think?

Love,

Lady Joyful