Watercoloring With Distress Christmas Poinsettia

 I often watercolor with Distress Inks. I think I go to them because I know what I'm going to get. I want to get as familiar with my many kinds of watercolors as I am with Distress, but that will probably happen in a quieter time than right now.

I started with a stamp that has been in my collection for awhile, but I had not used before, the beautiful Poinsettia Sketch stamp from Impression Obsession. Since this is a large stamp, and my card panels are not larger than 4.25" x 5.5", part of the design is lost.

This is how I store my large stamps, most of which are backgrounds. I stamp it onto chipboard so that I can see the entire image stamped out. The stamp is behind the chipboard, standing up in a basket. This method makes it easy to see what I have, and also easy to pull them out and use them.

I also stamp a white tag and that gives me a good idea of what the stamp would look like on a smaller panel.

To make this card, I first selected the red mat color, and then the Distress colors I would use. I like using Distress stains, because they are undiluted ink and easy to use for watercoloring. Unfortunately, these dauber versions of the Distress stains are no longer being made, although there are spray versions.

I stamped 10 panels of Neenah Solar White 110# cardstock, and embossed them with gold embossing powder. Although I planned to watercolor on them,  I did not plan to get them very wet. I used the wet on wet technique, and worked with one petal or leaf at a time. When I was finished with the painting, I let them all dry and then flicked gold paint on them. I die cut them with the Penny Black Antique Frame die set to give them a deckled edge.

The gold embossing is very hard to highlight in a photo, but it adds a lot to the cards in real life.

This is one of the panels before I stuck anything down. I tested out several colors of red cardstock before I settled on the one to use for the mat and sentiment. The sentiment is the lovely small Merry Christmas die from Elizabeth Craft.

I hope you like it!

Products Used:

Impression Obsession Poinsettia Sketch CC220

Penny Black Antique Frame die PB51-397

Elizabeth Craft 1599 Merry Christmas Small die

Distress Stain: Candied Apple,

Mowed Lawn, Twisted Citron

Versamark Ink

Ranger Gold Embossing Powder

Neenah Solar White 110# cardstock

PTI Pure Poppy cardstock