A new beginning…

Well, my goal to post daily in November kinda crashed and burned.  Since then we’ve gotten almost completely settled in the new house and it is really starting to feel like our home!  One of our big winter break projects was creating my craft room and it is easily my favorite room of the house (followed VERY closely by the kitchen)!  I can spend hours down there but the set-up also allows me to grab a minute here and there when I’m waiting for a student or have a minute or two between lessons.  In our old house my craft supplies lived in the dining room, basement storage room, and music studio…it was definitely not conducive to crafting let alone crafting in a hurry.  This new set-up has definitely upped my creative output.

So, the house construction posts are over…I expect to post occasionally about how the various rooms are turning out, design-wise, and will probably post a recipe here or there; but for the moment, you’re probably going to get a bunch of crafting posts.  I apologize if that’s not your thing…

Anyway, I’ve been following various crafting blogs for several years and one of my favorite bloggers, Jennifer McGuire, offers online card classes.  I’ve always wanted to take a class but I didn’t have the time or space during previous classes.  Ha, I probably still don’t technically have time to take a class but when I saw that she, and several other favorite card-makers, were offering a watercolor for card makers class I had to jump on it. So, class started today and I thought it’d also be a great place to jump back into blogging!  Today’s class focused on watercolor card backgrounds and here are my homework assignments:

The first card is a mix of two of the techniques they showed us.  I started by using painter’s tape to tape a piece of watercolor paper to a glass board so that it wouldn’t warp when it got wet.  I took a large rectangular acrylic block and smushed peacock feathers, salty ocean, and chipped sapphire distress inks onto it in lines.  Then I liberally spritzed the block with water until the ink began to pool and firmly pressed it onto the watercolor paper.  I kept the block pressed against the paper for about 30 seconds to give the ink time to absorb into the paper and begin to blend.

After I lifted the block I quickly placed a stencil (a star design on acetate cut by my Silhouette cutting machine) over the paper and taped it down with painter’s tape to hold it in place over the paper.  The paper still warped from the water so I placed several Cuttlebug plates on top of it to keep the paper weighted down and totally flat.  After it dried completely I removed the stencil.  The ink pooled in various spots around the stars and gave it a very soft look which I loved.

I trimmed the paper down to get rid of a few blotchy spots that I didn’t particularly care for.  Then I cut and scored blue cardstock to make a landscape card.  I attached the watercolor paper with a Tombow adhesive runner.  Then I die cut the ‘hello’ from black cardstock and adhered it with Ranger multi medium matte.  I finished the card by tracing the ‘hello’ sentiment with a Wink of Stella glitter pen for a little more shine and adding a few Neat and Tangled Sequins.

This card is my favorite and uses embossing resist and watercolors.  I started off by using the EK powder tool on a piece of watercolor paper.  Then I used versamark on a My Favorite Things background stamp and pressed the paper onto the stamp.  I used the Hero Arts white embossing powder to raise the image of the music.  Then I used a large flat paintbrush to wet the entire piece of paper. I used the Hero Arts watercolor wheel to paint a rainbow on the card.  Wetting the paper beforehand allowed me to blend the colors better.  If I had painted on dry paper the color would have been brighter but more streaky (and not the soft look I was going for).

After I finished painting I was impatient so I used my heat gun to dry the paint.  Using the heat gun also allowed me to ‘push’ some of the wet paint around for better coverage.  After that was dried I adhered it to a black cardstock card base.  I stamped an image from Lawn Fawn’s Many Thanks stamp set onto black cardstock with versamark and embossed it with Hero Arts white embossing powder.  There were a few stray bits of powder around one edge so I brushed a border around the black cardstock with my Wink of Stella glitter pen to hide my mistakes!  In hindsight I wish I had double-matted the black cardstock square with a pink frame to help it stand out.

And finally my last card uses the stencil technique again but a different method of applying color.  I started off by smushing seedless preserves, shaded lilac, and dusty concord distress inks onto an acrylic block and spritzing liberally with water.  Instead of pressing the block to the paper I decided to paint on the ink with a brush so that I could better control how the colors blended together.  So I wet the watercolor paper with a large flat brush and then painted on the distress inks using the acrylic block as a “palette.”  I made sure to keep it really wet so that when I pressed the stencil against the paper there was plenty of ink to pool around the design.  Again I taped the paper and stencil onto a glass sheet, weighted it down with Cuttlebug plates, and allowed it to air dry.  After it was dried I removed the stencil.

Unfortunately I wasn’t totally fond of the way the middle of the design turned out.  I originally planned to cover that section with my sentiment but then realized the sentiment was too large to fit appropriately.  So I decided to lop the design diagonally into two pieces and trim them to fit onto an A2 card.  I then adhered them to a white cardstock base and stamped a sentiment from the Winnie & Walter The Big, The Bold, and The Happy stamp set diagonally in between the two watercolor pieces with Momento Tuxedo Black ink.  I should have used my stamp press so that I could have aligned the sentiment better but I learn something new everyday.  The sentiment wasn’t totally solid so I went over it with a Copic multi-liner.  Then I finished it off with a few Neat and Tangled sequins.  It’s not my favorite but it was definitely a good project and gave me a few things to try in the future.

Eeesh, this post is WAY longer than I originally planned.  Well, I’m super excited to see what the rest of class brings and I look forward to sharing more card-making projects!  Thanks for reading!