Did you know you could watercolor with SU Markers? You sure can! And it's easy too! Trying a new technique can be a little intimidating (for me anyway), but this beautiful bird image kept me inspired! Kelley at Our Daily Bread Designs has outdone herself this month. The 2 stamp sets she'll be releasing on the 15th are absolutely amazing! I'll have more samples to show you in the coming week. This set is called Sing to the Lord and includes 4 scriptures, the bird on a flowering branch, an extra flowering branch, plus a "hand stamped by" stamp! Wait till you see the other scriptures, and the other stamp set, they're awesome...love the fonts, love the verses...pretty much love everything about these sets, can you tell? I challenged myself last week to try some new ideas & techniques. So I put the Copics away for a few days {gasp} and used some of my other supplies. The images on today's cards were colored with SU Markers, some water and a watercolor brush. I stamped the images with Black Stazon onto Watercolor paper. I managed to make coloring the bird harder than it had to be, by trying to add layers and layers of color (okay, I admit it, I was thinking of my Copics, lol!). After completing that image, I moved on to one of my SU stamps...
Blooming Beautiful from the Occasions Mini Catalog! After learning my lesson about adding too many colors on the bird, I took a much simpler approach with this image, and it was sooo much easier. I just added some touches of color to the Hydrangeas with Pretty in pink and Regal Rose markers, then went in and blended/melted the colors together with my brush & water. I used Old Olive marker on the leaf and Chocolate Chip marker on the flower pot. Same thing, just drew in some lines of color with the paintbrush end of the marker, then went over it with a paintbrush to create some shading and softened the lines. The water allows you to create a lot of variation even with just one color, like the chocolate chip. It's a fun technique to try : ) ! I like this variety of pink Hydrangea. I have a miniature one in my backyard by our pond. It's not looking great at the moment, but hopefully I'll see some blooms soon. My plants are always in danger of drowning from the abundance of rain we get, or beaten down by the gale force winds and if they manage to survive all that, there are periods of drought later in the summer when it stops raining & I forget to water them. My poor plants. It's amazing any of them live : ) . I'm going to try a lot harder this year to water and fertilize them and give them the TLC they need : ) ! Tomorrow (Sunday) is the 8th, so normally we'd be posting our Divine Design Bible Verse Challenge projects...but we've decided to post on the 9th this month, since the 8th landed on a Sunday and it just worked out better for several of the girls. My projects are all ready and I'm excited to share those with you on Monday morning at 8am!! Supplies for the first card~ Stamps: Sing to the Lord (ODBD, to be released on June 15th) Paper: Regal Rose, Close to Cocoa, Watercolor paper, Summer Picnic DP, Bali Breeze DP Ink: Stazon black SU Markers: Regal Rose, Close to Cocoa, Chocolate Chip, Caramel, Bordering Blue, Mustard Accessories: 1/4" polytwill Olive ribbon, Dew Drops, Stamp-a-majig, Paper snips
Supplies for the second card~ Stamps: Blooming Beautiful, Hugs & Wishes Paper: Regal Rose, Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, Watercolor paper, Summer Picnic DP Ink: Stazon Black SU Markers: Regal Rose, Pretty in Pink, Old Olive & Chocolate Chip Accessories: Hodgepodge Hardware in Pewter, 1/4" polytwill ribbon in Chocolate & Olive, Distressing tool (Cutters Kit), Paper piercing tool/mat pack
Have a GREAT : ) weekend!
Quick post to show you a card made with the beautiful Fifth Avenue Stamp set and watercolored with 3 of the new in-color inks: Melon Mambo, Rich Razzleberry and Crushed Curry. I have to thank my good friend, Nancy Littrell, who shared this technique with me the last time we got together. I'm a real novice at watercoloring, so if I can do this....anyone can! We stamped the rose with white pigement ink onto watercolor paper, hit it with the heat gun, sprayed the image with a water spritzer (you want the image to be wet), then took a watercolor brush and used re-inkers for our paint. I started with Curry, added some Melon then added touches of the Razzleberry last. 
After the image dried, I cut it out and mounted it on the card. The new Razzleberry Lemonaide DP and along with textured card stock in Razzleberry and Melon provided great layers and pulled all the colors from the rose together. This card highlights one of the things I love most about Stampin Up... perfect color coordination of the products! Plus, those re-inkers make beautiful "paint" ... I felt like a real artist while adding the color and watching the rose come to life! A simple sentiment from the All Holidays set was the finishing touch (punched out with the Large and Small Oval Punches). I used lots of Dimensionals which gives the card plenty of dimension. If you want to see some REALLY beautiful cards, including several using watercoloring techniques, be sure to check out Nancy Littrell's SCS gallery .... I guarantee you'll be inspired! You can find her gallery right HERE. 
