Happy Friday and weekend, crafty friends ... Sharon Harnist here with you again! Today I have two styles of watercolored cards to share, because I couldn't make up my mind which I preferred! I would love to hear which is your favorite, below in the comments!
My first card boasts a new technique I haven't seen anyone else share, and it was a fun experiment ... I hope you like it! I call this one "Textured Watercolor". To begin, I painted gesso onto heavyweight white cardstock using a regular paint brush and let it dry. You will naturally get some paint strokes in the gesso and this is what you want ... it creates some great texture in the final project! After the gesso was dry, I used Avery Elle Liquid Watercolors on top of the gesso. My original intent was to apply the watercolor directly from the bottle to the top of the tilted cardstock panel and just let them run down the panel, creating whatever pattern occured. While this could create a really great background, it just wasn't what I was looking for the background for this card.
Instead, I took a watercolor brush and smoothed the watercolor over the background panel and let it dry. (Note: The watercolor takes a little longer to dry on top of the gesso vs. standard watercolor paper and since it can't soak into the paper, the resulting colors are a bit softer). I love how the watercolor settled into the paintbrush texture, creating subtle shade variations! For the background, I used a combination of Avery Elle's Mint To Be and Aquamarine liquid watercolors. After the watercolor was dry I flicked some plaint water onto the background which dried and lifted some of the watercolor, creating a water droplet effect. It's not showing up in these photos very well, but more apparent in the top photo.
Next, I die cut Butterfly Parade from another gesso-treated panel and then started watercoloring each of the different elements in this pretty die cut. I used Cherry (pink-red), Fizz (orange), Lemon Grass (yellow-green), Sapphire (blue), and Sugar Plum (violet), dabbing the color on with a paint brush so I would get some variations in the depth of color. To finish the card, I added a white Wrapped Stitch Frame and gold embossed Thank You Sentiments. Both the Butterfly Parade and the sentiment banner were added to the card with foam tape.
My next card is a little simpler. For this one, I cut the Butterfly Parade from plain white textured watercolor paper and also watercolored it with the same Avery Elle liquid watercolors. I also die cut a Wrapped Stitched Circle Frame from watercolor paper and watercolored it with the Cherry Avery Elle Liquid Watercolor. The watercolors here appear more vivid. Both elements were glued flat to a white panel die cut with a Stitched Rectangle Layers:
To finish the card, I gold heat embossed the Birthday Sentiments onto the white panel.
So which card do you prefer? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks so much for joining me today!
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