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!
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!