Video: Watercoloring with Pinkfresh Studio Dye Inks!

Hi there! I’m over on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today with this video featuring an unusual-for-me technique: watercoloring with Pinkfresh Studio dye inks! I normally like to stick to my trusty pan watercolors for my watercolor projects, but I wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to get a lovely watercolored look with supplies that you already have on hand. I pulled out one of the first stamp sets that I illustrated for Pinkfresh Studio: Best of Everything. You can watch the video below:

Or you can watch it HERE on YouTube.

I began by heat embossing the Best of Everything stamp set using gold embossing powder onto some Distress Watercolor cardstock. The amount of detail in the Best of Everything stamp set makes it super easy to create a pretty background with minimal effort because the stamp set itself is so super detailed! Once I’d finished heat embossing, I used blending brushes to blend Ballet Slipper, Peach Fuzz, and Warm Buff inks on the background to create a soft background with these muted feminine colors.

Next, I did some watercoloring using several more of the inks from the Pinkfresh Studio line. I simply tapped the different shades out onto my glass mat, picked up the color with my damp paintbrush, and added them to the different flowers, keeping the technique simple and adding very subtle shadows. The end result looks very similar to the results that can be achieved with the layering stencils! The base layer of ink blending helps to add some subtle color variation and interest to the images. I did find that the dye ink color moved more successfully when I first wet the area that I intended to watercolor with clean water, then added in my concentrated ink and maneuvered the color until I was satisfied with the flowers. The damp watercolor paper allowed the ink to “bloom” naturally and not sink into the paper.

After I’d finished watercoloring, the paper was very warped from the volume of liquid that was added to it, so I placed it beneath my watercoloring board and heavy die cut machine overnight to flatten it. The next day, the panel was quite flat, but I added a bit of extra stability with a gold foil frame, cut using the Pretty Frames 2 dies. I added a hot foiled greeting using the Sentiment Suite: Hello Hot Foil and Coordinating Dies, on which I lightly blended some more of the Ballet Slipper, Peach Fuzz, and Warm Buff inks to coordinate with the background. I added a greeting from Best of Everything, then popped everything up with foam adhesive, and added a few matte gold pearls for one last metallic gold element.

Well, that’s all for me today! If you aren’t a watercolorist, I hope this video and technique gives you a little nudge to show you that it’s super easy to do, and you only need a few supplies that I’d bet you already have on hand! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!