Forever and Always Watercolored Cards

Hello again, Altenew friends! Norine here and I'm back to share a couple of cards made with one of my very favorite techniques – watercolor painting with white-embossed outline stamps! I used the delicate and stunning stamp set Forever and Always.

Remember the recent watercolor paints release? I'm still gaga for this beautifully curated palette of watercolor paints and I want to create all. my. projects. with them!

For today's cards, I stamped the two bunches of roses from the Forever and Always Stamp Set onto watercolor paper with some Clear Embossing Ink and heat embossed it with White Embossing Powder.

For the most part, I used the paint colors straight from the palette with only a little color mixing to create similar muted blends of the pure paint colors. I often (almost always) do this with green shades no matter what type of coloring medium I'm using.

Using a very loose painting technique, I “painted” enclosed areas (like one entire rose bloom) with a wet brush then lightly filled a brush with a paint and dropped the color into the wet areas to let the pigment wick away in an organic fashion. Then, before the paint dried, I added more intensity to the centers of the flowers with a little more paint of the same color.

Another favorite painting technique I like to do is to create a colored background from the same colors and shades that I've used on the stamped image, by dragging some of the paint outside the lines, to spread out behind the leaves and flowers. Where the paint colors are analogous (similar in hue and close to each other on the color wheel) I don't mind overlapping them on the background so they can blend and dry into a unique shade of its own.

But when the colors are complimentary, (opposite each other on the color wheel, such as pink and green) I try to keep them from blending together, because they will just create an unappealing shade of brown. Once the painting is dry, I like to splatter dots of the same colors of paint that I've used for painting by loading a brush with plenty of water and paint and tapping the brush against my finger to allow the paint to splatter where it will.

I stamped two of the sentiments from the same Forever and Always Stamp Set and heat set with a little clear embossing powder. Then I added a few matching enamel dots and mounted each painted panel onto a colored cardstock card base.

I've used diluted shades of the paint colors to achieve the muted look of my cards today but these paints are very capable of much more intense shades as well!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

SUPPLIES USED:

Forever and Always Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Watercolor 36 Pan Set [ ALTN ] Embossing Ink [ ALTN ] Pure White Crisp Embossing Powder [ ALTN ]