Water coloring on cards

Using Watercolor For Card elements and backgrounds

My latest post is exploring the use of embossing powder with watercoloring flowers as well as using ink sprays as watercolor. To showcase some of the watercoloring, I’m using the Altenew Adore You stamp set because the flowers are large, open images perfect for coloring. This post was inspired by the Altenew Academy class, Creative Watercolor Media. In the class, the instructors used different ink types as watercoloring mediums. When I watercolor, I typically use my Distress Inks so I wanted to try Gansai Tambi watercolors. I also have some metallic ink sprays and wanted to see how they worked as watercolor inks. I also stamp the image in archival ink before painting but this time I wanted to see the difference in the image if I emboss the image in gold versus clear powder. Please read on for how my cards turned out.

Watercolor vs Embossing powder

The Altenew Adore You Stamp set has some really nice images. On water color cardstock, I stamped and embossed one set of images with Wow Gold powder and on another piece, I embossed the images in Hero Arts clear embossing powder. The clear powder will show up white because it traps the color of cardstock beneath it which in this case is white paper. For the leaves, I embossed some in the clear powder and some in Hero Arts Green Gold powder. I then added water to the image I was coloring and then with a different brush, added color from my set of 36 Gansai Tambi watercolors.

Heat embossing the images before watercolor takes away some of the possibility of the ink going rogue and gives you more control over where the paint ends up

Images watercolored. Notice the differences in the images with the embossing

In watercoloring, there’s two ways to lay down ink: wet on wet and wet on dry. With wet on wet, the paint will move and the color will be a bit muted whereas with wet on dry, the paint will stay and the color will be more intense. For the flowers, I went with a wet on wet approach and laid down some water on the flower image, then added color. I colored some images with purple and blue and other images with pink and orange. I painted the leaves in the same way.

Building the background

I wanted the flowers to rest on an interesting watercolor wash background and I wanted to use metallic sprays as the ink source to see how they reacted with the water. On a piece of watercolor cardstock, I used a brush to lay down a generous amount of water. I then sprayed Hero Arts Blue metallic shimmer spray on one card and Hero Arts Seafoam green spray on another. I then added drops from Mister Huey’s silver spray to the blue inked panel and Mister Huey’s gold spray to the green panel. To add the drops, I just unscrewed the cap from the bottle and tapped the ink from the bottom of the sprayer onto the cardstock. Where the panel was wet allowed the color to spread out and on the dry parts, the color stayed in drops.

After allowing the panel to dry, I cut it down to 3 3/4" w x 5"H. I wanted to add more metallic shine so I masked off a thin edge around the panel, added VersaMarker ink and then WOW silver embossing powder to the blue background and WOW gold powder to the green background and embossed a thin metallic frame outline to the edge of the cardstock. This was time consuming but I think the effect ties in the metallic shimmer spray. 

Putting it together

After the flower and leaf images were dry, I used a pair of Fiskars spring loaded scissors to fussy cut all the images. I then arranged the images on the background panel and once I liked how they looked, I took a picture to remind me of the placement. Before adhering the flowers, I heat embossed the sentiment in the same embossing powder as the frame. The sentiments are from a collaborative stamp set between Altenew and Simon Says Stamp, Dainty Sprig. I like how the script word has tiny printed words below and thought these sentiments went well with the card.

To assemble the card, I used strong 1/2" adhesive tape from Elizabeth Craft Designs to adhere the panel to a top folding A2 (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") card made from Gina K baseweight cardstock. I then added the flowers using Gina K foam squares and tape. I like this foam tape because it is thinner than regular foam tape and it allows for just enough dimension. I then put liquid glue on the leaves and stuck them behind the flowers. 

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this has inspired you to break out your watercolors and embossing powders and try some different color combinations. Let me know which card you liked best, the gold embossed flowers on green or the clear embossed flowers on blue. Have a crafty day.