Hello and welcome to today’s blog post, which features water coloring with the Soft Pastels Assortment and the Celebrate Sunflowers stamp set and coordinating Sunflowers Dies! When the Soft Pastels Assortment were first introduced, I absolutely wanted them! But then after they arrived, it was like “ok, now what?”. While I did do a little bit of experimenting with them, I just couldn’t get the hang of them. I tried coloring directly on cardstock, I tried blending with a sponge dauber, I tried blending with a blender pen, and I even tried coloring with a blender pen by picking up some of the chalk with the blender pen, but alas, I just didn’t like the end result and they have sat neglected and ignored ever since! I did have hope that somehow, some day, I would find a way to use them! Well, that day has come, and it is using the Soft Pastels Assortment with Water Painters! I really like how easy it was to watercolor with the chalk and the end result of color variation and blending!
The base layer for the card front is Crumb Cake cardstock, cut at 4” x 5 ¼”, I used my Stamparatus to stamp the Stacked Stone Background Stamp in Early Espresso ink, and a Blending Brush with Crumb Cake ink around the edges:
For the rest of the card front, you will need:
1. On Fluid 100 Watercolor Paper, stamp the leaf stamp two times in Granny Apple Green ink and the large sunflower stamp in Crushed Curry ink, using a sponge dauber with Early Espresso ink for the middle of the sunflower. I used the flat tip of my Take Your Pick Tool to scrape some Granny Apple Green and some Daffodil Delight chalk on my craft sheet and the leaves are colored in with the Granny Apple Green chalk and the sunflower leaves with the Daffodil Delight chalk using the fine tip Water Painter and a small container of water-I found this works best for me to control the amount of water on the brush tip versus squeezing water from the pen. I tried to mix different colors of chalk to create a brown color for the center of the sunflower but ended up stamping a small clear block on my Soft Suede ink pad and lightly coloring in with Soft Suede ink. These are then die-cut out with the coordinating dies.
2. You will need enough of the Early Espresso Faux Suede Trim to tie around the cardstock base layer into a knot.
3. You will need three of the large Brushed Brass Butterflies, not pictured.
To assemble, I tied the faux suede trim around the cardstock base layer into a knot, adhered the two die-cut leaves to the back of the die-cut sunflower and used dimensionals to adhere to the cardstock base layer, placed the three large Brushed Brass Butterflies as shown, and then adhered this to an Early Espresso cardstock card base, cut at 4 ¼” x 11” and scored at 5 ½”:
For the inside of the card, cut a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock at 4” x 5 ¼”, stamp the sentiment in Early Espresso ink and the small sunflower stamp in the two corners shown, first inked in Crushed Curry ink and used a sponge dauber with Early Espresso ink for the middle, first and second generation:
For the coordinating Very Vanilla Medium Envelope, I inked the small sunflower the same way for the inside of the card and stamped first, second, and third generation as shown:
What a fun way to use your Soft Pastels Assortment! While I did have a little “boo-boo” with the sunflower on the card front when I used the sponge dauber with Early Espresso ink, I decided to leave it and see what happened with the Daffodil Delight chalk. If I had just been a little bit more careful, I could have not gotten Early Espresso ink on a few of the sunflower petals. But in the end, I am happy with how this first attempt at water coloring with the chalks turned out!
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I hope today’s project inspires you to get creative! Please contact me if you have any questions about the products used on this or any other project. I hope you enjoyed today’s blog and thanks for stopping by!
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