Watercolor Cards

When I watercolor cards I just love the effect.

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
~Stanley Horowitz"

Last year for Christmas I completed several cards with my City of David stamp set from Stampin' Up! using the watercolouring technique and heat embossing, with some paint daubing thrown in for good measure. Instead of watercolouring paper, this time I used glossy white cardstock to stamp on and then finish tinting. Want to know how to get this result? Here we go!

Here are the tools I used:

• Glossy white cardstock
  
  
• A stamp set
  
  
• Stazon inkpad
  
  
• Silver embossing powder
  
  
• Various markers
  
  
• A fine paint brush and water
  
  
• An ordinary saucer from the kitchen
  
  
• A heat gun
  
  
• A glittery paint dauber
  
  
• A silver gel pen

Here's what I did:

• First I stamped my image with black Stazon ink on the glossy white cardstock
  
  
• Then I scribbled some marker on my saucer, wet my paintbrush with water and picked up the colour from the saucer. I used this to paint the colours I wanted on my image, using light pastels for the buildings, shades of brown and yellow for the sand, and shades of blue and purple for the sky
  
  
• Next, I used the glittery paint dauber to highlight the sand as though starlight was shining on it
  
  
• Then I used the silver gel pen to mark in the stars and the edges of buildings where I thought starlight may fall
  
  
• Straight after using the gel pen, I poured silver embossing powder on the image and then flicked off the excess embossing powder
  
  
• Finally I heated the powder with the heat gun to melt it

To finish this card:

I tore around the edges of the image and inked them with purple ink. Then I mounted the image (using double sided mounting tape) on some coordinating cardstock that I had previously cut out with deckle-edged scissors. I mounted this on a plain white card base and added some gold cord I had tied into a bow.

And there you have it. A watercolor card for Christmas!

Be sure to use this technique for other occasions too, of course!

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