Creating a Vintage Color Palette with Neutrals!

Hi there! Today, I’m up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel with a video using my oldie-but-still-a-goodie Miss Your Smile stamp set, which was one of the very first sets that I illustrated for Pinkfresh Studio! Miss Your Smile may be a bit older, but coloring it gets even more fun with each use, and today I share some tips on how to get more from your watercolors by mixing neutrals with your super bright colors to create a more vintage-y color palette. You can watch the video below or click HERE to watch on YouTube.

In case you can’t watch the video, I’ll do a quick rundown of how I made this project with some still photos. Let’s get started with the details!

I began by heat embossing the large floral image from Miss Your Smile using some metallic peach embossing powder onto a full size slimline card base created from Arches Cold Press watercolor paper. The metallic peach embossing powder is a lovely, soft alternative to the traditional gold or black stamping! Next, I used my Holbein watercolors to do some watercoloring on this huge image. I wanted to create a more muted, vintage color scheme, so I chose some of the brightest shades of fuchsia and hot pink in my watercolor palette and mixed them with a deep, plummy chocolate brown. Mixing the bright colors with the very dark neutral brown helped to tone down the colors without making them lose their vibrancy.

Once I had finished watercoloring, I felt like the top corner was a bit too open and starkly white to match the soft, muted color palette of the flowers, so I very lightly blended some Soft Lilac ink in the corner opposite the flowers, muting the cool lilac by lightly blending some Warm Buff ink over the top of it. Pairing the two unlikely ink shades is such a fun way to create a wider color palette using the inks and watercolors that you already have!

Once I had finished my card base, I die cut a beautiful Ornate Circle die cut from some coordinating metallic peach foil cardstock. I created a greeting by simultaneously die cutting both pieces of the Lots of Love die set from some coordinating deep plum cardstock. I made sure to keep the interiors of the letters safe (such as on the “o” and “e”), then adhered them in the center of the die cut. I love how the negative space in the greeting still allows you to see the watercoloring without feeling clunky or overbearing on the watercolored panel! The final touch was to add a few Sparkling Champagne pearls to finish it off.

Well, that’s all for my project today! I hope that you enjoyed that project. I encourage you to try mixing in some neutrals to your bright watercolors or ink blending… it’s such fun to see how the colors can be manipulated to create totally new color palettes from the colors that you already have! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!