I am so excited\u00a0to be doing a collaboration with Justine Hovey again! When we decided to do water coloring projects, and I knew immediately that I wanted to play with my new Heartfelt Creations “Feathery Peacock” stamp and some Tim Holtz Distress Inks.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I started with my go-to Strathmore Cold Press 140-Pound (15-Sheet) Watercolor Paper<\/a>\u00a0as the base. \u00a0Then I had some fun with 3 different water coloring techniques.<\/p>\n

The first involves inking some crinkled tin foil and transferring the ink to wet watercolor paper. This creates a beautiful fractured look, which is unique to each pressing (as you can see, the 3 cards I made each have unique backgrounds). \u00a0I created the backgrounds using\u00a0Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Salty Ocean<\/a> and Peacock Feathers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second technique is to use a\u00a0Clear Wink of Stella Glitter Brush<\/a>\u00a0like a water brush to watercolor\u00a0in an understated shimmery color. I used\u00a0this technique on the head, neck and breast of the peacock with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Chipped Sapphire<\/a> and achieved a really gorgeous regal look. It’s hard to capture the shimmer in photos or in a video but in person, you can really see the shimmer.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The third technique is to simply smoosh out color from the ink pads onto a craft mat to create a palette to use with water and a paint brush (or in my case a Medium Pentel Waterbrush<\/a>). \u00a0I used all of the above colors as well as Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Picked Raspberry<\/a> and Mustard Seed<\/a> to watercolor in the stamped image. To add\u00a0even more shimmer to the peacock’s feathers, I also used a Sakura Clear Star Gelly Roll Pen<\/a>, which gives a stronger, more\u00a0opaque sparkle\u00a0than Clear Wink of Stella to all the areas I wanted to glow.<\/p>\n

Lastly I mounted this card on a textured dark blue card stock mat to coordinate with the dark blue of the peacock’s body and layered the whole thing on a silver glittered card stock base, which seemed to bring out the Clear Wink of Stella and Clear Star Gelly Roll Pen sparkle even more.<\/p>\n

Ok, I couldn’t leave it at that. On two of the cards that I am sending to crafty female friends, I had to add some coordinated sequins in dark blue, teal, silver and iridescent shades to add a blingy sparkle. A girl can’t have too much bling, right? \u00a0\ud83d\ude00 The one card going to the father of a crafty friend turning 92 years old is sans sequins. LOL<\/p>\n

The following is a watercoloring tutorial video that demonstrates all the techniques and card assembly:<\/p>\n