Fall Mum cards

Fall Mum's Penny Black Peony Brushstrok stamp

Watercolor and stamping are made for each other with Penny Black's line of brushstroke stamps.  Penny Black Peony stamp works perfectly for fall stamped cards and panels.

Here are some of my tips to get 6 different looks:

Background

I like to have an idea of what I am doing with my card before I start. Have a plan. Are you wanting a simple background, or more of a stamped background, lots of ideas and options so have a plan before you start stamping! (although as an impatient person, I like to start stamping and then figure it out, sometimes that works.)

For masking this particular flower I didn't need to use masking paper,  I wasn't worried about the placement because I wanted some space between the background stamp and the flower stamp. I didn't want the flower to feel crowded by the background stamp. 

The pop of yellow was used with some artist's tape or painter's tape to mask off a frame, making sure to keep the sides even. 

For washes, it's easier said than done, you want a lot of water for this, (lots of movement for this technique.) Make sure it's dry before you stamp!!!! Do this first before you start stamping!

Stamping with Distress Inks

Distress Inks work well for a watercolor look because they are water-soluble.  Use them and brush water over the stamped area and watch the ink act like watercolor. 

Don't wipe the stamp off right away, you can use the leftover ink to do a second generation stamped image... it's light but can still give a nice effect! 

To get more movement with the ink you will need to spray the ink once it's on the stamp with a spray bottle, helps the ink look lose and more like watercolor. (which I like) the drawback is that you lose some of the details.

The beauty of this technique with the distress ink is that the more the inks blend and you let the ink do what it's meant to do to, you get beautiful results!  Use this to your advantage and chose inks that blend well with others (same color family like red and orange, or blue and purple, or purple and red.) Colors that blend well will give you the best results! 

I love the MISTI stamp positioning tool because you can control what you want to blend and what you don't want to blend... (stems and leaves should be stamped after the flower is dried so there is no blending. 

Stamping with Watercolor

I love Kuretake Watercolor and Starry Colors for watercolor stamping.  You want a pigment that is has a good quality, You can now if it's good quality by the way it blends, If it has a chalky feel and look to it, it's not the quality that you want.

With a cosmetic sponge, or artist's natural sponge spray the sponge with a bit of water, and spray the paint with some water first, let it sit for a bit to get the water to activate the pigment. Then dip your sponge into the watercolor, and start applying the pigment to the stamp.

To get a good blending effect, you start with the lightest value (yellow) and then get the red, and apply the red pigment on after the yellow is applied. mist the stamp with a bit of water, not to much, you can always add more water.

To add the gold paint to the card, I like to think of sunshine coming through the flowers, so where ever you want a bold contrast to start there and move outward. I usually have a clean brush for just water in one hand and a brush with gold watercolor in the other to direct where I would like the gold watercolor to go. 

The workflow for creating these 6 cards:

Start by working on the backgrounds first, do the wash, and the masking frame first. 

I then started with the distress ink, the first one is always the hardest, you have to get just the righ amount of ink on the stamp, with some water to get it to look like watercolor, once you got it, then you can do a second generation stamp on a panel. 

Then I work on the watercolor cards, then once the pannel was dried I add the gold accent after the stamped image has dried, then I add the sentiments, and the Nuvo drops to the flowers. 

I am entering these cards into these stamp challenges:
Freshly Made Sketches
Penny Black All Sorts Blog

Happy Creating!