Hello and Welcome. Today I wanted to share with you a technique that was featured in that same demonstrator magazine I was talking about the other day. In it they showed an example of No-Line Watercoloring. I haven't ever given this a try so I thought it would be fun to go for it. If you've done it before then you know what I'm going to show you but for those of you who haven't seen it yet or have never heard of it let me explain.
In the picture below you can see I have an ink pad that I pressed a clear block into getting it inked and another block with a polymer stamp on it. Below that there's a piece of Shimmery White cardstock that I stamped on but you can barely see it....I mean if you strain a little you might be able to tell it's there. The lighting of the picture makes it hard to see but....There is a very lightly stamped image there. How did I get it so light? Well I stamped the frame image in Sahara Sand ink and then stamped it off once on scrap paper before stamping it onto my project. The goal here is to get a very light image so that when you start adding the color to it you can't see your original lines.
Once I have my image ready I can start applying the ink. I used a Blender pen that I scribbled on the clear block that I dipped into the Soft Sea Foam ink pad above. Using the clear block as my palette I filled in the image with the blender pen giving it a watercolored look. It appears my starting stamped lines have disappeared. Now you can do this with an Aqua Painter or a Brush if you'd like but I like the control I have using the Blender Pen. The ink doesn't seem to get away from me and end up where I don't want it. Once I got all the green leaves done i moved on to the branches in Soft Suede ink again just wiping off my clear block and stamping it into the Soft Suede ink pad like I did before. Once I had the branches done I moved on to the berries in real red again the same way. If you look at the next photo you can see my progress...
Once I was done watercoloring my image I trimmed the cardstock down around it and added it to my project. I just used a card base of Crumb Cake cardstock that I cut to 5.5 x 8.5 and scored and folded at 4.25. I stamped the card base with the same frame image using crumb cake ink but again stamping it off before stmping it to my card base. I just wanted a light hint of the image on my background. I then cut a strip of DSP from the Farmhouse pack to 4.75 x 2.25 and centered that on my card base. I added the watercolored image and then used a piece of the Burlap Trim over the center of it. I cut a small stitched circle out of Soft Sea Foam cardstock and stamped the sentiment in the center with Soft Suede ink. Behind that I layered a twine bow and It was all layered on with some stampin dimensionals. Let's take a closer look...
The end result is that you cannot see the original stamped image lines...hence no-line watercoloring, and it looks like it was just free hand watercolored. Cool right? Now remember I told you I CASEed this project right out of that magazine... so i then had to try it out with my own design. Let's look below.
With this card I used the same basic idea I just changed up the images. I used the Farmhouse Christmas stamp set and it looks like my tree got a little extra watercoloring love but all in all you get the idea. I did learn that this technique works better with smaller coloring spaces. What does that mean? Well if you compare the small leaves and berries in the first example to the larger tree branches and truck in the second you can see how it was more difficult to get a cleaner look. IDK maybe it's just me but I was pleased with my first try at it. If you haven't tried this technique before I encourage you to give it a go. It's a fun and different look than just the usual stamping and coloring with blender pens or watercolor pencils.
Hope you have enjoyed this explanation of the technique. I'll have a product list below for ya. Thank You so much for stopping in today! You can get all of these products in my online store, and please let me know if I can help you with anything. Have a great day. I'll be back tomorrow with another Broke Stampers Unite Challenge. So come back and see that. Oh and Tomorrow is the start of the Year End Closeout Sale and the New Stamparatus travel bag will also be available to order. Exciting things happening tomorrow! Stay Tuned...
HAPPY STAMPING....CAROL
