Watercolour day 3 attempt 1 & Uniko Studio challenge 9

Hello all,

It was day 3 of the watercolour class yesterday and yet more inspiration to be had. The first two days were focusing on watercolour backgrounds whereas yesterday was looking at stamping using watercolours. The first technique was so so simple (I thought!!) but yet so effective (Jennifer Rzasa made it look amazing!!)

The technique was to create watercolour look by quite simply inking up a stamp, spritzing it with water and then stamping the image on watercolour card. This gave such an amazing effect. I decided last night in a tight window of opportunity to create a card using this technique that I would enter in to the Uniko Studio Challenge. Jennifer had used Memento inks as she found them to work the best with this technique. Whilst I had 6 or so Memento inks, none matched the colours of the palette given for the Uniko Studio challenge.

I therefore had to make do with using a set of Hobbycraft's own stamps which had the advantage of being in a variety of colours. The Memento inks are water based and the Hobbycraft ones Pigment based, but I thought I would still give it a whirl anyway.

Since the theme at Uniko is Easter - to me, Easter not only means vast amounts of chocolate (yummy!!), but it also means lovely flowers - spring I guess would be the same. I therefore got out all my flower stamps from Uniko Studio (I have quite a collection now) and set about testing each one using this technique on a scrap bit watercolour card to assess how many times to spray it with water before committing it to the final card.

I have to say, some of these inks worked better than others.  I was not overly happy with the end results - this is purely down to the inks, and so I got out my watercolour paints and painted over each of the stamped images to give a softer feel to them. I found in particular the flowers from Flower power 1 were really hard to judge - with them 2 sprays left the image still to  lean cut, but 3 sprays of water totally smudged!! I decided to go for the two sprays and soften with a layer of water paints. The leaves from Nature's Treasures worked brilliantly though and didn;t need any amending. I covered a small piece of card stock using the various stamps and inks and then once painted and dry, I die cut a large heart out of my newly created water coloured patterned paper. I adhered this on to kraft card stock with some lemon thread behind it (loving this look just now) and added my sentiment. I needed this to be quite big to balance the card, so I decided to opt for Congratulations from All occasions sentiment 1 set. As always, I just had to add a bit of bling by way of three co-ordinating sequins, and some yellow crystals at the centres of the flowers.

This is a funny card - I like the idea of it, but I am a bit disheartened by the fact it never turned out the way I was hoping….I'm still not sure the watercolour paints have given the required effect I was looking for. I will definitely be remaking this card using the exact same stamps (which have been amazing) but using Memento inks…..Another lot of items to add to my ever expanding wish list.

I hope you like this card anyway, and as always, I am over the moon with any comments people leave.

Laura xx

Resources used:

Cardstock - kraft card by Jellybean, watercolour card by Daler-Rowney

Stamps - Flower Power 1, Nature's Treasures, All occasion Sentiments 1 (All Uniko Studio)

Embellishments - crystals by Anita's, Sequins by Hobbycraft, Thread from stash

Ink - Yellow, green and brown by hobby craft. Tuxedo Black by Memento (for sentiment)

Paints - Reeves