AECP Creative Watercolor Media

Today’s card features a project I made after completing the Altenew Educator Certification Program (AECP) class, Creative Watercolor Media. This course focused on tips and tricks for creating beautiful watercolor projects without actually using watercolors. Lessons included painting with dye inks, re-inkers, and sprays, but for my project. I decided to create a watercolor project using Lindy’s Magical Powders.

To start, I pulled out my Poppy Garden stamp and die set and stamped several images onto Arches watercolor paper with Versamark ink before heat embossing in gold. Watercolor paper is always the best option for any watercolor technique because it can hold more water than regular cardstock and this really helps with moving the color around the paper and creating unique blends.

In the course, acetate was often used as a smooth surface to hold the media used for water coloring. Instead of using acetate, I just grabbed a ceramic plate.

I prepped every thing by sprinkling the powders I planned to use on the plate and grabbing a small bowl of clean water. The colors I used for the flower petals include:

• Rudolph’s Nose Red
• Crumpet Crumps
• Pinkies Up Pink

And for the leaves I chose Bells of Ireland Green.

Using recommendations from the course, I started by painting one petal at a time in the lightest color using a wet on wet technique. You start by applying plain water onto your image and then applying water to the pigment powders before applying the color to the image with your brush. Once my lighter colors were applied I then moved onto to darker shades to create depth and movement in the petals. I am no watercolor artist so I kept everything pretty loose and simple and the embossed lines of the image helped keep my colors in place.

While creating the card two things happened when using the magical powders. First, the powders add a sparkly shine to your images, but also… the various pigments within the powders can change colors at random. If you look at the image below you will notice two of the flowers are a pinker peach tone whereas the 3rd flower is more yellow and orange. All 3 flowers were painted at the same time, using the exact same colors, and the exact same techniques. Why the change… I guess it is “magic.”

Once I was done painting my images and they has all dried I carefully die cut them and set about placing them on a background I made by applying Altenew’s Antique Gold Metallic Ink Spray to a white card panel. I matted my card panel in both a brushed gold cardstock and a peach cardstock to pull out the colors within the flowers. I then gently curled the flower die cuts and adhered them in a triangular pattern with foam tape to create dimension. I decided I need a little extra gold so I cut a few leaves from brushed gold cardstock using the Itty Bitty Branches die set. I finished things off with a small stamped “Thanks” sentiment and my card was complete.