VIDEO: Loose Watercolor with Yana Smakula

Hello everyone! This is Yana Smakula and today I’m sharing a gratitude card featuring loose watercolor technique.

I am very much addicted to watercoloring these days and I’m using it more and more to color various images for my projects. There are many different ways to watercolor and in the past, when using watercolors, I’d color my images completely and would leave no white space. Recently I discovered a new-for-me loose watercolor look that I simply adore.

Even if you are not a watercolor enthusiast I think you'll find this way to watercolor very enjoyable.

Watch above or watch in HD at YouTube

To create my card I started by stamping leaf outlines from the Autumn Leaves stamp set in Coconut Husk ink. I wanted a softer look with a little less contrast, so instead of using black I went with rich brown color and stamped my images onto watercolor paper.

My watercolor medium of choice these days is Distress Inks and I used two colors of Distress ink for each leaf. The lighter colors were used for the base layer and than I used darker colors to add shadows. I really love how simple and beautiful my background turned out. And this watercoloring technique can be applied to a variety of different images, especially flowers. You can also use other, more traditional watercolors for this.

If you’d like to learn more about watercolor I highly recommend taking Dawn’s Watercolor for Cardmakers class from Online Card Classes - it will blow your mind (not to mention greatly improve your watercolor skills).

After my background was dry I trimmed it down to 4 ¼ by 5 ½ inches and adhered onto an A2 top folding card base made out of white cardstock.

I wanted this card to have a fun and playful look so I also stamped an adorable puppy from the Friends For All Season: Summer set, watercolored him using the same technique and cut out using a coordinating die.

To help my puppy stand out on the background I added a layer of vellum. It not only helped to mute a portion of the vibrant fall leaves background, but also ended up being a great place to house my sentiment.

I heat embossed With Much Gratitude from the Grateful Greetings stamp set and used Copper embossing powder to try to match the color of my heat embossing to my outline image stamping.

I adhered the pup onto the vellum layer and foam mounted my vellum onto the card base. Lastly I adhered several clear drops in various sizes.

I love how I was able to mix images from the more traditional Autumn Leaves stamp set with a fun and playful Friends For All Seasons set to create this Thank You card.

Featured Supplies

For your convenience, here is a list of the supplies (or equivalents) used on today's project(s), along with links to purchase. Please note: this list does contain some affiliate links.

Friends For All Seasons: Summer Friends for All Seasons: Summer Die Wplus9 Autumn Leaves 4x6 Stamp Set Grateful Greetings Wplus9 Coconut Husk PURE COLOR Dye Ink Neenah Classic Crest 80 LB SMOOTH SOLAR WHITE Paper Pack 25 Sheets *Tim Holtz DISTRESS WATERCOLOR CARDSTOCK Ranger Ink TDA39549 Medium WATERCOLOR BRUSH Pen MWCBP101 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad WILD HONEY Ranger TDP40293 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad SPICED MARMALADE Ranger TDP40187 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad PEELED PAINT Ranger TDP40071 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad FOREST MOSS Ranger TDP39983 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad FESTIVE BERRIES Ranger TDP39969 RESERVE Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad CANDIED APPLE Ranger TDP47391 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad TEA DYE Ranger TDP40231 Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad GATHERED TWIGS Ranger TDP40002 Sizzix BIG SHOT MACHINE Gray And White 660425 Tsukineko Versamark EMBOSS INK PAD Watermark VM-001 EK Success POWDER TOOL Applicator 54-04002 Hero Arts COPPER Embossing Powder PW116 https://www.simonsaysstamp.com/product.aspx?id=344255 Precision Heat Embossing Tool Gun Hero Arts PW200 Wagner Sakura QUICKIE GLUE ROLLER PEN 38480 Plus VELLUM ADHESIVE Double Sided Glue Tape 38234 Tombow XTREME Permanent Adhesive Tape Runner Pretty Pink Posh 6MM CLEAR DROPLETS (medium) Pretty Pink Posh 4MM CLEAR DROPLETS (small) *Scrapbook Adhesives 3D 217 WHITE FOAM Squares Adhesive

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