AECP-Stunningly Simple Watercolor Techniques

 The journey to become a Certified Altenew Educator continues and so does my learning!  Another great class was just completed.  If you have ever considered taking one of Altenew's many classes, I encourage you to do it.  You do not have to be part of the Educator Program to do so and I assure you that you will love it!  This class is taught by Lydia Evans and simplifies watercoloring.  

This is a sample of no line watercoloring.  For the card base, I ink blended over the Classy Stripes Stencil using Gray Denim ink and then stamped partial images using the Tall Foliage stamp.  The sentiment and bloom are from the Build A Flower-Gardenia set.  

The bloom was stamped on watercolor paper and then colored with purple and blue ink pads. I smooshed some ink from the pads onto my worksurface.  

This card uses an embossed image to "catch" your watercolors.  The raised embossed outlines help to keep the colors from bleeding into each other.  For the background, I ink blended Aqualicious around the edges and left the center mostly untouched.  Using the Garden Trellis Cover Die and a circle die, I cut my cardfront. After adhering it in place, I stamped the sentiment from the Vintage Garden set in black ink.

 Again, the bloom was stamped onto watercolor paper. Ink colors used for my watercoloring were Hunter Green, Aqualicious, Heart Beat and Caramel Toffee.

The focus of this card is the background.  I wet the entire piece and then added my colors and allowed them to blend on their own. The butterflies are from the Painted Butterflies set and the sentiment is from the Tall Foliage set.

If you look closely, you can see that the butterflies have a slight blue tint.  After heat embossing them onto vellum, I ink blended light blue onto the backs.  They are adhered with tiny glue dots behind the gold embossed areas.

The birthday card above used ink smooshing for the background.  The card on the right uses an ombre technique for the background.

This class was fun and I hope to utilize more watercoloring techniques in the future.

Happy Stamping!