How I Watercolour

First you need to stamp your image

















You need to use an ink pad that doesn't bleed. I've used Versafine, but I have used Brilliance and some people use Stazon. The card is thin cheap white, nothing special at all.(blame the photographer for the blue photos) When I first started card making, money was tight and watercolour pencils didn't come cheap, but six years down the line I'm still using my original watercolour pencils from WHS, but I do recommend that you get a good make, have tried cheaper versions and they don't seem to work as well.


















Some stamps have shading already on them, so all I do is to colour where they are, leaving the rest of the are uncoloured.


















Again colour darker shading areas of the stamped image, this is how I cheat at shading.


















I use a painbrush but some people use an aquabrush, yes I do have one but I don't seem to get on with it, so I use a size 2 paintbrush and a pot of clean water and load my brush with water. It it's a small area, I brush my paintbrush over the top of my hand to make sure it's damp rather than wet. I drag the paintbrush from the colour across the white area. If you have too much water you can blot it with a bit of kitchen roll.


















I have done exactly the same with flowers, sometimes my paper curls but if you let it dry out and I mean really dry out like overnight, its usually alright.


















Here I layer two images the same, then cut out the flowers, I embossed the petals so that they curled, stuck the centres down flat and used 3d foam to lift the petals.


















Heres a couple more samples. In the case of a stamp what doesn't have obvious shading remember shadows are usually on one side. So in the case of the sample below, I've coloured the image on the left hand side and dragged the colour over to the right.