Watercoloring Techniques

Hi Everyone,

We are doing 3 different watercoloring techniques at my Stampers Ten clubs this month using a Sale-a-bration set, Botanical Blooms. We are using Watercolor Wonder Crayons, Watercolor Pencils and Stampin' Pastels (chalks). The only additional tools you need are Blender Pens and our Aqua Painter. Here is a picture of the simple card we are making and examples of the same image using all 3 water coloring techniques. All 3 of these techniques are very easy and turn out beautifully on projects. It gives it a painted on, more artistic feel. It's an easy way to try something new!

For the Watercolor Wonder Crayons, you simply color in the rubber directly on your stamp with the crayon of your choice. Make sure the image is fully covered with your crayon color. Use the Aqua Painter to brush water lightly over the rubber so there is a light layer of water over the crayoned image. Then stamp your image on your paper. They recommend Watercolor Paper (also in our catalog) for this technique but it is not absolutely necessary. This gives it a sort of blotchy, painted effect.

Using Watercolor Pencils and Stampin' Pastels is super easy as well. For the pencils, you just choose the color of your choice and color in the edges of your image. Then you take your blender pen and start to drag the color throughout the center of your image. You could also color in darker areas throughout your image, not just on the outer edge, and then pull the color around to fill in the image with your blender pen. For Stampin' Pastels, or our chalks, you simply dip the tip of your Blender pen into the color of your choice and color your image. Keep dipping for lighter or darker areas. These two techniques gives a very nice variation of color on your image.

TIP: If you'd like to get a taste of this technique before purchasing any of the watercoloring supplies, you can also achieve a little bit of a watercolor look by squeezing your stamp pads so that color gets on the back of your pad and then dipping your blender pen into that ink to color in your image. This gives you a softer look and variation in color as well.

For this project we are also using a 2-Step Stamping set, Botanical Blooms, where you have a base image and then a colored-in image on top of that base to create a more 3 dimensional image. You simply stamp your base image in a bolder color and then overlap it with your colored-in image using a contrasting color, usually a lighter color. I use my Color Coach all the time to match colors that will look good together for this.

If you have any questions please email me. If you'd like to do a watercolor project at your house with friends, just let me know and I'll plan the projects for us! Have fun!

April