Today I want to show you my project for the Altenew online course "Creative Watercolor Media". The special thing about this course is that it is taught by three trainers: Jennifer Rzasa, Debby Hughes and Laura Bassen. In 6 lessons they show that besides watercolors you can also create beautiful watercolor effects with (glitter) color sprays, dye re-inkers or inkpads. I've been stamping for a while and I like coloring with inkpads, but I haven't used re-inkers or color sprays yet.
I usually buy inkpads together with the re-inker, so I already have some re-inkers waiting to be used. Therefore, I decided to design colorful backgrounds with re-inkers.
Brief description: The motif is embossed several times e.g. with white embossing powder. The paper is sprayed bit by bit with water (e.g. with the Minimister) and the re-inkers are dripped onto the wet paper with a brush. The re-inkers spread across the water along the embossed lines (or beyond) and create a lovely watercolor effect. I liked the cards the trainer showed us very much.
Since it is a very wet technique, the paper should be suitable for it. I tried all kinds of paper, even watercolor paper, and was disappointed at first. One paper bubbled, the other one dissolved and the watercolor paper absorbed the water too fast. Then I bought another watercolor paper and it worked great.
Basically it is best to rub each paper with the Anti-Static-Pad before embossing it, so that the embossing powder only sticks to the desired places.
On the watercolor paper you can hardly see the ink from the Versamark embossing inkpad. That's why in this course you are advised to pour the embossing powder immediately after each impression so that the motif is visible. In this way I embossed the watercolor paper in white and gold with one of my favorite Altenew flowers from the set "Handpicked Bouquet".
For the re-inkers I âabusedâ an old ice cube tray. I started with Altenew re-inkers, which I dripped into the little ice containers, and then I tried many other re-inkers from other companies. The Altenew re-inkers I have are all new and work great. But a few of the very old re-inkers had lumps and were drying up. That's why I think these alternative ideas for the re-inkers are great: they shouldn't just be meant to dry out.
Dripping the paint onto the flowers sprayed with water is a lot of fun. You can't really influence the result, but that's exactly what I like. I like to leave things up to chance. I did not change my examples, so you can see this watercolor effect well. Of course, once the paper has dried, you could create further effects with other colors (e.g. markers).
After drying, I die-cutted the backgrounds with square and rectangular dies. Some paper remained, then I punched out the blossom with the suitable Altenew die and also arranged and glued it to the card. I added some more words or letters from Mirror/Glitter Cardstock or Craftfoam and the cards were finished.
A wonderful workshop to get the re-inkers and some sprays out of their shadowy existence.
Have fun trying it out!
Gabriele
Date: Monday, October 21, 2019 GMT Views: 519
Favorited:6
Splitcoast Dirty Dozen Creative Crew SU Design Team Alumni
Registered: May 18, 2004 Location: Southwest Michigan Posts: 37112
Mon, Oct 21, 2019 @ 10:35 AM
Oh, Wow! This is just stunning ~ I love the beautiful, vibrant colors you chose and the gold embossing and sentiment are fabulous. Thank you for sharing your process. This is going straight into my faves!
------------------------------ Claudia Splitcoast Fan Club Member
Stunning! I love the colours used! I also like that you die cut and adhered the floral image separately, it really looks nice!
Thank you for entering your work to the AECP assignment gallery.