Remember the good ol’ days of back to school shopping… you know… for yourself?   There was all the boring stuff… pencils, check.  Paper, check.  Tissues, check.  Blah, blah, blah.

But then… there was the good stuff.  Namely, the brand spankin’ new art supplies.  The starring players being the giant box of Crayolas and the perfectly pretty and unmarred set of watercolors, paired with the obligatory oversized manila paper.

My school days may be but {ahem} a bit of a glimmer in the distance but now that I’m in charge of the school supply buying expeditions, who’s to say I can’t have my own set of watercolors again?  After all, they are perfect tool for cardmaking since they hit my two major requirements… cheap and easy. 

Adding some watercolor accents to your cards is super easy when you start with a stamped image.  Both  line art images and solid images will work.  Let’s get started with a line art image.

I stamped this folksy Christmas tree (from Papertrey Ink’s Winterberry set) on my card with a permanent ink.

This part really is as easy you remember it… just color it in.  For this tree I started with a lighter green on the inside, some darker blue green accents in the middle, and a pale aqua “halo” around the outside of the image.  I finished the card off with a simple sentiment and a few rhinestone accents.

A few tips…

• Load up your brush with water and color and then test it on a piece of scrap cardstock before brushing on your card.
• Keep a paper towel handy and use it to lighten up a watery brush… too much water on your cardstock will cause warping.
• Try not to go over your watercoloring more than a time or two.  Colors look best when they’re not muddied.

Watercoloring over solid images is even easier.  Experiment with using water based ink in a variety of colors.  Simply brushing a wet brush over the image can create a simple watercolor look by causing the image to bleed slightly.

I took a few solid wildflower images (from Papertrey Ink’s Wildflower Garden set) and stamped them with onto a card with chalk ink.  A very simple watercolor wash with a bit of coordinating color over the top of the flowers produced a quick and easy watercolor look for next to no effort…

My snazzy box of watercolors set me back 5 big ones at Michael’s.  I’d say that’s well worth the investment into taking me back to my childhood J 

Happy crafting!

Jess

(For all the supply information for today’s projects, head on over to my blog !)

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