Backporch: Inspiration Station

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Inspiration Station

Sorry it's been so long since I posted, but it's been a crazy busy summer for me so far!

I realized that I had not posted the last few Inspiration Station cards I made at Art 'n Soul. Our theme in June was Magenta Stencils, which coincided with the new Magenta release of the designs from talented designer Christine Gaudreault of Marie Lune Design (designing exclusively for Magenta). For the stencil cards, I used a new product by Magenta called Nuance. Nuance is a water-soluble powdered dye that creates magic with paper and water. There are other powdered dye products on the market, and I have tried several of them, but Nuance is my favorite because I love the range of 15 bright, beautiful colors.

Playing with Nuance is such great fun. I have made numerous colorful backgrounds with this product. Just sprinkle the powder onto a piece of watercolor paper and spritz! You can continue to add powder and water as you wish, and you can also use a brush to spread color around if you wish.

For spritzing, I prefer to use "pearly water" (1/4 tsp of Perfect Pearls Pearl with 2 oz water makes a great pearly spray). The mica in the Perfect Pearls powder gives a sheen to your background that is nearly impossible to photograph, but looks great in real life. The card above was done over a Nuance background. The flowers are a stencil that I outlined with a black Micron pen. I then painted bleach onto each flower to make them stand out from the background. The sentiment was added in Versamark ink and embossed using White Diamond embossing powder. So simple and so fun.

FYI if you are bleach painting, it's best to use a brush with synthetic bristles. I read a post on line that suggested to put bleach into a water brush, and I'm definitely going to devote one of my water brushes for this purpose!

I adore this little frog by Christine Gaudreault! His name is Henrí, and he is available in small (pictured) and large stencils and small stamp. So Adorable! We have many tree frogs on our property and do they ever sing in the Spring!

Again, I was creating cards to feature stencils, but also using Nuance. On this card, I placed a stencil onto watercolor card stock and added powder with the stencil in place, and spritzed. I removed the stencil and loved the background effect. I then used the flower stencil and outlined it with a black Micron pen. I added more color to the flower by painting with Nuance. You can add a little powder to a palette and dissolve with water to paint with just like you would do with any watercolor.

Here's one more card, and this one was for July's Inspiration Station. For July, our theme was Nuance. I had fun creating this card, which is somewhat different from the ones above. Was I thinking of a Hawaii vacation, perhaps?

I put down a little color on the left side of a watercolor panel, then stamped the flower several times with Versamark ink. The flowers were embossed with clear embossing powder to act as a resist. More Nuance was added to the rest of the panel (and spritzed with pearly water). The sentiment was added with Versamark ink and embossed with White Diamond. A few flower sequins were sprinkled on.

I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you will try Nuance. The colors are vibrant and beautiful!

Materials Used:

Life is Art:

Magenta products used: