Just A Little Something

Hi and Happy Easter Sunday,

I took my "personal chef" to the airport at 6:00 am for a business trip to Florida for the week, so I'm hanging out with my stamps, paper and ink today since I'm home alone. I was looking through some of my favorite blogs and came across something that looked pretty fun to try. The Inspiration Challenge is hosted on Splitcoast each Saturday. Yesterday's challenge, here, is a watercolor inspiration and is inspired by the work of Kathleen McElwaine from Austin.

After looking through her gallery, I decided to use her sunflower paintings for my inspiration. When you look closely at her work, you can see how she outlines some of the elements in her paintings with black.

This was a pretty fun card to make and I rather like the way it turned out. I figured I'd need to do a few practice panels, but this is the first one I made and I went with it.

I stamped this really old wooden stamp from "Judith, 1993, onto watercolor paper using Memento Desert Sand ink so I could do some "no line" watercoloring. Using Zig Real Brush Markers I colored in the flowers using three different shades of yellow, a dark tan and dark red. The leaves are done using three different shades of green as well. Making sure the flowers were good and dry (I used my heat tool), using my Copic 0.3 black pen I quickly outlined the images trying to be non-precise. I did a blue wash with two shades of blue, then again making sure that was dry, I heat embossed some gold spots using the SU Gorgeous Grunge set. The panel was trimmed to 3.5 by 5.5 inches and layered onto a brushed gold panel. I used fun foam so it's raised up on the Whisper White card base. It took me awhile to figure out what to do with the sentiment, and finally decided on this black banner with gold.

Again, this was a really fun technique to do, so I encourage you to give it a try.

Thanks for looking in. I hope you all have a great week.
Colleen

Supplies
Stamps: Sunflower stamp by Judith, Gorgeous Grunge set by Stampin' Up, Woodland Gifts by Mama Elephant (sentiment)
Paper: SU Whisper White, Brushed Gold, Basic Black card stocks and cold pressed water color paper
Ink: Memento Desert Sand, Kuretake Zig Real Brush water color markers, VersaMark
Other: Die-namics Fishtail Flag die, gold EP, heat tool, large paintbrush, enamel dots, fun foam, the Big Shot