Sunday, January 18, 2015

When Life Gives You Lemons: It's A Happy Thing!

I love watercolor and all of it's possibilities. I also love that you can use Stampin' Up! inks to watercolor with.  This sweet little lemon and the sentiment are from the Sale-A-Bration stamp set "A Happy Thing". During Sale-A-Bration, if you spend $50 (before tax & shipping), you can choose the set as your free gift. It is wonderful colored with our Blendabilities markers on Whisper White cardstock, but look how yummy it is stamped and watercolored on our oh so awesome watercolor paper! 


Instead of stamping this image with one color, I used markers to color directly on the stamp. For the leaves (Old Olive), the stem (Baked Brown Sugar) and the lemon (Daffodil Delight). Don't for get to "huff" on your colored image when you do it this way, so the inks on the stamp will be moist enough to leave an image behind. Don't worry in this case if the image isn't perfect, you can fill in and correct it when you paint it. 



Next: find you some lemon art online to help you with where to do the shading. Start out slow and I find that in this instance, it is better if I either let a section dry or use my heat tool to dry it before I move on to the next section. This keeps the colors from becoming muddy and blending more than you want them to. I worked on the lemon first, dried it, then moved on to the leaves. One more little trick I can suggest: take a soft lead pencil and barely go around the edges of your stamped image. It ends up giving your images some instant depth. 



I did the background last using watered down ink, then stamped a second generation image of the Stampin' Up! Dictionary background stamp with Baked Brown Sugar. Used the Dots decorative mask with a sponge & Lost Lagoon ink. Sponged the outer edges with Early Espresso. Stamped the sentiment & added Rhinestone Basics colored with Crumb Cake Blendabilities. I have listed the particular colors of reinkers I used for this project below. If you have any questions about any other specifics of this project, let me know. 




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Sale-A-Bration is going on now! Earn yourself a FREE Stampin' Up! product gift with every $50 purchase. (before shipping & tax) See all of the Sale-A-Bration details here. 




Check out the Weekly Deals! Save up to 25% on the items below. There are also still some amazing items on the clearance rack.


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Hope your Sunday is amazing. Don't forget to Pay Art Forward when you can. You might just delight someone's day, week or even their year by sharing something you made yourself. 

Artfully Yours,
Kim

8 comments:

  1. Your card is beautiful! ! It is the first one to even tempt me to add to an order. Thanks for the great instructions you included.

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  2. Thanks so much for the kind compliment!

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  3. This card is gorgeous! It is the first "lemon" I've seen that I have liked! I have the set ... More for the bird than the lemon.... But now I must try to do so thing extraordinary with it! Thanks for the inspiration!

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    1. Thanks so much Ruthie! I haven't perfected the bird, but have been playing with it. There are a few pics on my Stampin' Artfully facebook page.

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  5. This is such a beautiful card. I love the technique you've used to achieve the water coloured effect. Amazing work! TFS!!

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  6. Beautiful card! and thanks a lot for all details!

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