Saturday, June 25, 2011

Pot of Flowers

I saw an on-line advertisement for Art Impressions and checked out their website.  I think their stamps are really nice, but a little on the pricey side.  Anyways, I watched several of their video tutorials on how to watercolor with stamps ... the artist, Bonnie Krebs, is the owner of AI.  She is very talented and makes it look so easy on the videos.  Of course, as with doing anything well, it takes practice, practice, practice.  I decided to give it a go, improvising with the stamps I already have.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for one of my first tries using this technique.  Hope you like.
 
"Pot of Flowers"
 

Stamps:  Clay Pot (Rubber-Art Stamps); Grass (Stampscapes); Flowers:  Pocket Silhouettes, Silhouette Sentiments (SU!)
Paper:  Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant (SU!); Watercolor paper (Arches 140lb. cold-press "Natural White")
Ink:  Old Olive, Soft Suede, Bashful Blue, Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, Always Artichoke, Daffodil Delight
Accessories & Tools:  Artist's brushes, Palette, Stamp-a-ma-jig, Sizzix Square Lattice embossing folder, sticky strips and dimensionals
 
* * * * *
 
I started with the watercolor.  I inked the pot in Soft Suede and stamped onto the watercolor paper.  I dipped my brush in water and pinched out most of it, leaving just a little water on the brush.  I went along the outlines of the pot to soften the lines (this is the technique used with each stamping).  I masked the top of the pot.  I added grass in Old Olive with my Stampscapes "Old Fence" stamp, tall purple flowers with my Pocket Silhouette stamp, vine and pink flowers with my Silhouette Sentiment stamps and just dots of yellow for the yellow flowers - each time, softening the stampings with water.  I scribbled Old Olive ink (Stampin' Write marker) onto my Palette, added lots of water and did a wash along the bottom of the pot.  I scribbled Bashful Blue ink (Stampin' Write marker) onto my Palette, added lots of water and did a wash in the sky area behind the pot.

I ran a piece of Elegant Eggplant cardstock through my Big Shot with the Square Lattice embossing folder and then cut it to size.  I mounted it on my card base of Perfect Plum using sticky strips.  I mounted the main image onto a frame of Perfect Plum with sticky strips and mounted it on top of the embossed background using dimensionals to give it depth.

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