Watercolour Backgrounds

Hello everyone, I have a few projects to share with you today, featuring stamps from last month's TV shows on the Craft Store. I really enjoyed creating these projects, as they were a slightly different approach for me. I had recently taken a watercolour course with Lucia from The Wild Ink Workshop, and these backgrounds were a result of my practices. 

I started by creating the backgrounds, using scraps of watercolour paper, drawing cartridge, etc. These are of varying size, some are really small, and very cute! I have used a mixture of Jayne Davenport watercolours and Derwent watercolours, just whatever I had in my stash.

They would make lovely thank you cards, or little notelets, I love the whole concept. I stamped the silhouette images, and added some white details with a gel pen. 

I even had a go at drawing some foliage by hand as recommended by Lucia. This was such a relaxing thing to do, and I will definitely try to do this more often, time permitting.

I created a couple of backgrounds for the larger cards to tone in with the little panels. I used clear embossing powder to stamp and emboss the silhouette flowers first, then added Distress Inks with a blending brush.

On the second example, I ironed off the embossing powder, creating a faux batik effect, so that I could stamp a sentiment over the top. (You will need to place some copy paper over your background to protect your iron, and turn the steam off, if your iron has a steam setting!)

I have added a touch of gold watercolour to link the squares together, I used Gansai Tambi metallic watercolour, which is very creamy, and perfect to layer over regular watercolour paint, the gold really pops. These cards were relatively quick to make, and would be suitable for so many occasions. Chocolate Baroque has so many silhouette stamps. If you made lots of backgrounds, and then rummaged through your stamps, you could create a big pile of cards in no time.....

Lesley and David have said that although these stamps are not on the website, you can order them by phone - Retro Vases and Retro Florals, as they were a one off for the TV shows.

My final card was created using Distress Inks for the background, and stamping a selection of stamps from Make Your Mark to build up layers of depth. I used Versafine Clair coloured ink, and added circles in black ink, which I wanted to be more prominent. I then chose some floral elements from the two Retro stamp sets.

Make Your Mark is such a versatile stamp set, we reach for it again and again to create our backgrounds and to add an extra something to our cards.

I will be back later in the month with more projects to share with you. Thanks for stopping by, take care and stay safe xx