May 16, 2018 0 Comments
Hello and happy Wednesday! It’s Tonya from Krafty Enchantments and I’m back today to share a simple one layer card featuring the ever-adorable Dare 2B Artzy Alpaca stamp set called Spit Happens!
I don’t know about you, but this alpaca is so adorable and so much fun to color up in a variety of ways. I was having a lazy Sunday and decided to play with my Koi water color palette.
Because I’m no expert at water coloring, I like to have a nice barrier around my images to help prevent bleeding outside the lines of the image. To create the barrier, I placed my stamps onto a piece of 140 lb Canson Water Color paper that I’d cut down to 4 x 5 ¼ – so just under A2 size. This gives me an idea for the scene I want to create and also helps me to identify any areas that I will need to create masks for in the event of overlapping stamped images like the cactus to the right on my card.
Using my MISTI stamping tool, I started by stamping my alpaca just to the left of the center using the Dare 2B Artzy Totally black ink. I stamped a couple of times to get a crisp impression on my water color paper. Next, keeping the stamp and paper in place in my MISTI, I cleaned off my stamp with a baby wipe making sure to remove the black ink. I re-inked the stamp using some Versamark ink for embossing. Again, I stamped it a couple of times to make sure to get a good saturation of ink on the water color paper. Then I sprinkled on some clear embossing powder to create a barrier for the inked image. The clear embossing powder allows me to water color without fear of the ink smudging and also helps to keep the water color paint inside the image you’re coloring. So as long as I’m not trying to embody Picasso or something I won’t have water colors mixing and blending in areas that I don’t want them to. Yay!
I repeated the same steps with the cactus and I did create a mask for the cactus on the right so that I could have a bit of an overlap. To create my mask, I stamped the image onto a removable Avery label and fussy cut it out and placed it over my initial stamped cactus. This mask protects the image while adding more stamped images in the same area. Masks can be tricky, but just remember that whatever image you mask will always be the foremost image. Everything else will appear to be behind that masked image once you’ve stamped all of your images and peel off the masks. This is what I like to call the big reveal. I didn’t get too crazy with my masking in this case, I had an ever so slight overlap of the cactus. You can create some amazing scenes using masks and flowers or other images. I think I need to work on that for a future Dare 2B Artzy card.
Now that I had my images stamped, I was ready to play with my water colors. The Koi water color palette I have has 30 colors in it so it’s a pretty basic set, but it has a good range of colors and it even includes the mixing tray and aqua brush pen which is what I used to paint the images.
Again, I’m no expert at water color, but what I have learned is that it takes a lot of patience. I started by putting down a layer of the Sepia color on the alpaca. The trick that I’ve learned and from watching other watercolorists, is that you work on one area of the image and then you let that dry while you work on a different area. Also, less is more when it comes to water and color. The more water, the more your colors will move and be softer. The less water the more pigment your images will have. The beauty of water color is that you can always go back over an area and add more color or more water. Often times this will also help to correct any areas of the image you are not satisfied with the look.
Since I’m not confident enough to mix water colors yet to create new colors (other than mud colors – LOL!), I stuck with the original colors that came with my Koi palette. However, I was able to get some depth and dimension with allowing colors to dry and then going back in and adding more colors to darken areas. The Koi colors are pretty vibrant so using the bright blues (Cobalt and Cerulean), orange (Permanent and Vermillion) and purple (Purple and Indigo) really pop against the Sepia of the alpaca and I really like that.
While my alpaca was drying I went on to color the cactus using some various shades of green as there are several in the pallet.
Once all of the images were colored, I had to decide what I was going to do to create the background scene. Ultimately, I decided to be brave and paint in some desert-like ground and a bit of a blue sky with some white clouds.
I figured those were two pretty basic things that I could paint without too much possibility of a major mistake. I started with a Burnt Umber for the sandy desert floor. While it was drying I painted in a blue sky leaving some areas white to represent the white clouds. There is a white paint in the Koi palette and I did try it, but didn’t notice too much of a difference between it and just leaving white space. I believe that the white is probably more for mixing with other colors to create pastel shades or toning down colors.
I did go back and add in some spots of grey and black for the desert floor to give it a bit more interest and then I did blot at them with a towel to pull up some of the color.
Once I’d finished painting everything and it was dry, I stamped the sentiment with some Versamark and sprinkled on some Ranger Tiger Lilly embossing powder and heat set it.
Keeping it a simple one layer card, I added it to a piece of the plaid Dare 2B Artzy paper and adhered it to an A2 side folding card base made from 110lb Neenah Solar White cardstock.
Coloring this card was a super relaxing, fun way to spend my Sunday afternoon. I’m really proud of how this card turned out.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope you’ve enjoyed today’s card and will try out some water coloring with Dare 2B Artzy’s stamps. It’s so relaxing and fun!
Hugs
Tonya
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