Penny Black Dahlia’s in Watercolor

Hi there and welcome!  I’ve been working on a lot of cards and although I’m quick about photographing them and posting to social media, I’m a bit slower to get a blog post written to share the details!  Yesterday I decided to paint a watercolor using the beautiful Dahlias set by Penny Black.  I began by trimming a sheet of watercolor paper down to 6X8 inches then taping off one inch on all four sides, leaving me with a 5X7 space in which to paint!  I dusted the surface with my anti-static pouch then began to stamp, then emboss with Brutus Monroe’s Gilded powder, mask and stamp more blossoms and leaves until I had an arrangement I liked.  

Next, using my Kuretake Zig Clean Color Brush markers, I started laying in the background with black, then some shades of blue, moving the ink with a wet paintbrush.  I dried with a heat tool between each layer and built up a lovely, dark base of color.  Moving on to the largest dahlia bloom, I used several shades of red and orange markers, and also a lighter brown to fill in the petals, adding water to soften and blend the ink.  

I colored the rest of the flowers using shades of orange and yellow, a little brown for shading, then a little gray for shading.  I love how vivid they are against that background even though DO they look like flowers floating in space!  😀  To finish my panel, I spattered on droplets of water then patted it dry and finally a spattering of white craft paint.  This painting makes me very happy and I can’t wait to mat and frame it!  I may keep it, but it’s more likely to be sold!  Check my etsy shop to see if it’s there in a few days!  

Here’s a final peek at the finished painting; I’m really bummed that my paper tore a bit.  I don’t know why that happened; perhaps using the heat tool so much made the painters tape really adhere more than usual.  Thank you for visiting and I hope my post encourages you to get out your watercolors or Zig markers and have some fun with them!  

 

Penny Black Dahlias

I’ve had this Penny Black Dahlia‘s  set for about a year but have only used it twice for these two cards, which I actually LOVE and may never sell or send!!  😀  To begin, I taped around the edges of a cut-down piece of Canson watercolor paper (with painters tape) to create a border.  I then stamped and heat-embossed my images in white and colored them with Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers, adding water with a water brush.  I used a very wet, paint-dampened brush to loosely fill in the center of the panel with gray and soft yellow.  A spattering of white craft paint and gray ink were added.  Once the ink was dry, I carefully removed the painters tape, revealing a lovely, crisp border!  I stamped the sentiment using Versafine Onyx Black ink (waterproof) and added little jewels to accent the flowers.  The finished panel was adhered to a base card of soft gray.

I don’t know why these two cards move me so much!  Every time I look at them, I get a “squishy” feeling in my heart!  What on earth???  The subtle beauty of the gray paired with the purples above and the brighter red/orange below, and the simplicity of the designs appeal to me very much!  Okay!  Enough of that!  I pretty much made this card in the same way as the first one; Canson watercolor paper taped down, Zig markers, water brush, and a less-subtle spattering of paints!  I hope you love these as much as I do!