Last week I watched a Jennifer McGuire video about a technique she calls the embossed watercolor lift. The short version is you watercolor a background, stamp and clear emboss a background stamp over the watercolor, and then use water to fade the color. The stamped image under the embossing retains the original color while the rest of the background color begins to fade away leaving a cool effect.
This technique was a great thing for me to try for a number of reasons:
-I'm not short on background stamps
-I'm very much a watercolor novice, and I love the look of it, so I keep trying to practice
-I've noticed that many card makers make lovely backgrounds, and then just pop a sentiment over it, and voila! They have a great card. This has rarely been my way. I tend to focus on the image, and make that fit the sentiment, or the intended recipient, or the occasion in some way. It was a good exercise for me to just make a background and not overthink it. Not too much, anyway.
I used Stormy Sky, Chipped Sapphire, and Seedless Preserves Distress inks, and an old Marvy dye ink pad - Plum or Wine, I forget which one. I stamped and embossed the Gibson Girls Background from Lost Coast Designs, and then used a paintbrush to wipe away a bunch of the color.
The paper was quite warped by the end of this, but using a stitched rectangle die was great for making it flat again.
Finally I added the Hey Gorgeous sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio (three layers in black over vellum).
This was a fun technique to try. Using my heat tool was a huge time-saver in-between steps. Next time, I'll try a different watercolor background - stripes of color was a stress free way to begin, but my guess is that just like acrylic block watercolor backgrounds, once you do the over-stamping, most background color imperfections fade away.
In other crafty news, I visited a new-ish craft store not too far from my house over the weekend: Creative Inkling. I know one of the two of you who reads this wants to take a class there with me sometime. Valentine or holiday card making retreat, anyone???
