sending hugs...

Hello my fabulous friends!

I have loved Altenew flowers from the time I first saw them. They are gorgeous, and so fun to color! However, when I painted these, I was in a bit of a slump... I had recently purchased some Mission Gold watercolors, and while I'm very comfortable with watercolor markers and watercoloring with inks, I found the actual paints to be a bit tricky... I was also trying out new paper (Arches Hot Press) so I was really feeling out of my comfort zone...  I was really struggling to get the watercolors to do what I could so easily get watercolor markers to do, and honestly I was getting a bit discouraged...

Paper: Arches Hot Press; LDRS Creative Candy Counter

Stamps: Altenew Beautiful Peony; Tracey Hey Some Bunny

Ink: Inkon3 Juicy Clear*, Blackout*

Coloring: Mijello Mission Gold watercolor

Other: Inkon3 Arctic White* embossing powder; Heidi Swapp Silver foil

So I decided to let go of the control... Instead of trying to do a no-line watercolor that was very controlled, I heat embossed the flowers with white embossing powder, then allowed myself to just play..

When you heat emboss, it creates little walls that help keep the watercolor contained in each petal, so you don't have to try so hard to keep inside the lines... This exercise allowed me to relax and play with the watercolors, and let the watercolors (and the water) tell me what they wanted to do, and how they wanted to settle into the paper....  I became a lot more comfortable with the watercolors and the paper doing this, and I felt more confident moving forward with other projects!

Some papers (like Candy Counter from LDRS Creative) are printed with the right kind of ink for foiling... 

This ended up being a very distressed foiling with lots of  spots that got missed, but that's because I was using left over foil (you know, when you sent a piece of foil through the machine once already, but theres enough foil still left on the foiling sheet to do another small project, so you send it through again...) 

Left over foil never seems to foil smoothly form me, but since I know that, I chose paper that would match my project even if it doesn't foil evenly.  I think it gives it great texture!

After adhering my flowers over the stripes with a little foam tape, I added a simple sentiment...

I love how this turned out... the mixture of sparkle loose watercolor... the simple colors scheme that has a bit of sophistication to it... So pretty! And I think I know what I'm going to do with it too...

See you soon!
~Kassi

For more inspiration, follow me on:

Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube

*Affiliate links used when possible. This doesn’t affect the price you pay, it simply allows me to continue bringing you better content. :)