Ellen Hutson: September Holiday Release!

Good morning! It’s release day over at Ellen Hutson, and we have some absolutely fabulous new products for you for September… with a holiday theme!!

For this holiday release, we have a new addition to the Mondo series… Mondo Holly. It’s a mega-sized holly and berries sprig, and it’s fantastic for watercoloring. I also can’t wait to dig in with my Copics… if only there weren’t that whole feeding my family thing to worry about. They’re so needy. (I am totally kidding.)

No-line coloring has become my new favorite way to color in any medium…. I really enjoy the challenge. So, I pulled out my Daniel Smith watercolors and Ink On 3 Fadeout ink and got to work with the new Mondo Holly stamp set.

I began by stamping the image on some Arches Cold Press watercolor paper several times using the Ink On 3 Fadeout ink, then began watercoloring it. I used Alizarin Crimson and Bloodstone Genuine for the berries with Olive Green and Sepia for the leaves. The trick with no-line coloring is to allow each section to dry before coloring the adjacent section. So, in this case, I added color to berries that were not touching each other and allowed them to dry. After they’d dried sufficiently, I went back in to color the rest of the berries. It takes some back and forth, but doing the coloring this way helps to keep the lines crisp and distinct.

I watercolored the leaves in a similar fashion using Olive Green and Sepia watercolors, then added a tiny bit of very-diluted Shadow Violet around the edges of the image to create a bit of a shadow and give it a more three dimensional effect. I trimmed the watercolored panel down and matted it on a panel of red foil card stock. I also added a red foil Believe die cut from the Essentials By Ellen line that I just learned has, sadly, been discontinued.

I mounted my matted panel on an A2 card stock base.  Nice and flat and easily mailed, with no extra postage required! My kind of holiday card!

I hope you enjoyed this project using the new Mondo Holly stamp set from Ellen Hutson… it’s just one of several absolutely fantastic stamps and dies released today. (Seriously, there are some fan-freaking-tastic dies that were released. Go look. I’ll wait.) Thanks for visiting today, and have a marvelous Sunday!