I took a watercolour painting class a number of years ago and still love to play with the paints when I get the chance…unfortunately that's not all that often these days. This rose card, however, gave me the chance to watercolour without hauling out the paints, palette and large board to work on.
I used the rose image from Fifth Avenue Floral and embossed it in gold. This created a tiny "ledge" to keep the water from running all over the place. Working in small sections, I flooded an area of the image with water from my aquapainter brush. I picked up some Regal Rose reinker with the tip of my aquapainter, then touched the watery area of the image to fill the area with colour. As the colour spreads, there will be gradations in intensity which adds to the artistic nature of the card. If you add more reinker to the area, it gets darker. You can also go over areas again later once it's more dry to add more colour with a bit more control…but as my watercolour teacher used to say "Let it go, let it flow". Using Stampin' Up!'s watercolour paper makes this technique pain free and adds to the artistic nature of the card. The "tooth" of the watercolour paper means that it also stands up to the amount of water used with this technique. I used Rose Red designer series paper on the Rose Red card to add another dimension but not detract from the image too much. Brushed gold metallic cardstock backs the flower image, and I used 1/4" circle punch outs of gold metallic cardstock to add interest but not bulk, so it's easily mailed and not crushed.
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! Not sure that this card will actually get given to my mother…since she was at the class where we did this one…think I should come up with a different design for her!!
