Lovely as a Tree Watercolour

What a fun day!!  I spent a few hours in the art studio this morning making a masculine card (see below) ... and then went shopping with Jer.  I picked up a pair of yoga pants (soooo comfy!!) and then we headed for the $1 Store.  You have to sift through some junkie stuff, but I always manage to find some really nice things there.  Today I picked up some hand-made paper in both green and rust - just beautiful!  Can't wait to try making something with them.  Of course, it's the best place to pick up adhesives for card making.  I go through A LOT of adhesives and it's nice to save some $$!  I also found some crepe paper that I thought might work well for making roses.  I'm going to try that out later today ...

On to the card for today.  I'm loving working with the watercolor paper.  Jer is an artist and he had a stack of watercolor paper just sitting there and so he told me to help myself.  Awesome!  I used the Watercolor Spritz technique to add the tree stamp to my paper and then took my AquaPainter and added more water and it really looks like I'm a watercolor artist!  I sponged the bottom of the card and added water (again with the AquaPainter) until it blended.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Hope you like.  If you need instructions on how to construct an easel card, click on this link to the Splitcoaststampers tutorial.

"Lovely as a Tree Watercolor"

 

 

 

Stamps:  Lovely as a Tree, Just Believe (sentiment) (SU!)

Paper:  Early Espresso, Soft Suede Designer Series paper (SU!), watercolor paper

Ink:  Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Sahara Sand, Kiwi Kiss, Old Olive; Stampin' Write Markers:  Early Espresso, Old Olive, Always Artichoke, So Saffron

Accessories & Tools:  Sponges (I used Colorbox Stylus), AquaPainter, mister, hemp twine, wooden button, sticky strips, glue dots, adhesives and dimensionals

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Before I inked the oak tree stamp from Lovely as a Tree set, I had to decide where my light source was coming from (upper left).  I inked the stamp using Stampin' Write markers (early espresso, always artichoke, old olive, so saffron), using the darker green on the right hand side of the tree (with a little lighter green in random spots), and using the lighter green with more yellow on the left hand side of the tree.  I used my AquaPainter to add more water on the paper in order to blend the inks.  I sponged the "hill" starting at the top with Kiwi Kiss and added Old Olive to the bottom.  Again, with the AquaPainter, I added more water to the paper to blend the inks on the hill.  I then added a small about of Early Espresso at the bottom of the tree trunk and blended with more water.  I used my So Saffron Stampin' Write marker and random added lines of ink around the background of the tree (did the same on the sentiment paper) and then added lots of water to create a "wash".  I sponged the edges of the watercolor paper with Early Espresso to give it an "aged" look.

I also sponged on the Soft Suede Designer Series paper, random areas in Sahara Sand, Soft Suede and Early Espresso and then sponged the edges of both pieces in Early Espresso.  I used my Early Espresso Stampin' Writer to add stitching around both pieces as well.

I mounted all the pieces as per the picture above, adding two strands of hemp twine knotted on the corner of the main image and also two strands through the wooden button and across the corner of the sentiment (which is popped up with dimensionals)