Serene Watercolors

Since February 29th doesn't come around every year, I thought I would also share a card that is unique as well.  This idea wasn't exactly my own, however, I did see something very similar at this blog post when I was looking through Pinterest the other day.  I thought it was so lovely, but had to figure out how she did it.  I think I did pretty good.

Using watercolor paper, I heat embossed the wild flower image from the "In The Meadow" stamp set, multiple times across the bottom of my paper in clear.  I then inked up my clear stamp block with Pool Party (for the sky) and Pear Pizzazz for the ground, spritzed it a bit with water and then stamped it down on the paper.  This was a little tricky because I didn't get the look I wanted right away, so I did it a couple more times.  Then I spritzed the paper itself and the colors began to bleed a bit into each other.  I then took a stamp from "Timeless Textures" to add a smudgy border around the edges in Crumb Cake ink.  I then continued using Crumb Cake to sponge the edges, and went over it again with Early Espresso ink.  I used my blender pen to add some Old Olive to flower stems, and Rose Red and Delightful Dijon on the Flowers.  Once again, I spritzed water over the entire image and let the inks all blend together.

As you can imagine, this curls the paper a bit and gets it fairly soggy, despite it being watercolor paper, but to speed up the process, I applied heat on the low setting, with my embossing tool.  After that, it flattened out pretty well.  I then stamped the sentiment from the Picture Perfect stamp set.

Just for some extra texture, I decided to frame it with some paper piercing using the piercing tool and the Updated Essentials Piercing Template.  I think used a generous amount of Fast Fuse adhesive to mount it securely onto a Basic Black, and then mounted that on a Very Vanilla card base.

I am excited to try some more cards using this technique.  I think it turned out very artistic.