Folded with Care

The AECP Level 2 watercoloring class teaches ways to watercolor WITHOUT the usual watercolor paint pans.  Options include using re-inkers for ink pads, layering inks from pads to help show depth, smushing, and shimmer sprays or regular spray ink.  I don’t have Altenew re-inkers or colored shimmer sprays so I chose the smushing technique.  I do have some Altenew Antique Silver ink spray so I made something of my own!

A new acquisition was the 6 stamp cubes in the Icy Lake collection from Altenew.   I love the deep blue Sapphire color.  Since I wanted shimmer, I experimented by mixing the Sapphire ink – smushed onto my Tim Holtz media mat—with the Antique Silver spray.  I sprayed it with a bit of water and took my brush to mix the two colors together.  Then I dabbed and rubbed my 41/4” x 6” Canson XL water color paper into the mat of ink. I dried it with my heat tool then added more ink the same way until the whole piece of paper was covered.  I waited for it to dry completely and it gave me exactly the look I wanted…that beautiful deep blue with some iridescence to it.  This became my background piece for this card.

I love hydrangeas but my hydrangea stamp hadn’t come yet so looked for another big flower to use as my focal point.  The Bergenia Builder Stamp set has a great large flower that worked well for this.  I used again the Altenew Sapphire blue on one part of my mat and Altenew Pinkalicious on another part.  After spraying each with water I took turns putting my paper into each color, drying in between so they only blended some but each color still showed.  When totally dry I positioned the large Bergenia Builder flower stamp over the area of the paper I wanted in my Misti stamp positioner.  I used anti-static powder then Altenew embossing ink.  I poured Altenew Pure white embossing powder over it and heat set it.  And, again, because I like shimmer, I sprayed the die cut flower with Ranger white Perfect Pearls in water.  Once dry, it shimmered also.

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Since the background came out so well, I wanted to make a larger card.  I laid out my design and decided to add some white splatter to the blue background.  I smushed some white pigment ink on my mat and took my Tim Holtz splatter tool and splattered LOTS of things on my desk.  Luckily the background was there too and did collect most of the splatter as intended.

 This card base is 5” x 6.5”.  Watercolor paper warps some from the water used so I needed a strong adhesive to attach the background to the card base.  I used some strong double side tape.  Then I heat embossed the sentiment, also from the Bergenia Builder stamp set, with the same white embossing powder.

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To finish, I popped up the flower with foam tape and sprinkled some iridescent sequins around; tucking some under the flower to have them peek out.  The layout is simple – but that helps to show off the beautiful watercoloring and shimmer overload.

I sure hope you like this!  It really taught me not to be discouraged if I didn’t have certain supplies.  Instead, take what you have and make it good!