no line watercolor

Hi there! Today is a special day for the Colorado Craft Company. They have released a brand new line of absolutely darling stamps created by Anita Jeram, the illustrator for the popular Guess How Much I Love You children’s book. I personally adore this illustrative style: kinda sketchy, whimsical, but still an element of elegance! I’m not the best scene-builder in the world, and the majority of these new stamps have the scenes already built for you. All you have to do is stamp and color! You can view the entire release here at Simon Says Stamp and here at Ellen Hutson. The entire release is full of gorgeous images, from cats to deer to birthday bunnies. My little guys are going through a cognitive leap this week, making them extra clingy and unusually cranky, but I managed to make two cards with some of my favorite sets from this release: Kittens and Mittens (EH|SSS) and Snow Happy (EH|SSS). Let’s get started with the details!

If you’ve ever read the Guess How Much I Love You book, you’ll have noticed the beautiful, detailed illustrations straight away. I tried to maintain this whimsical watercolored style with both of my projects today by stamping the main images on Arches Cold Press watercolor paper using Ink On 3 Fadeout Ink (my favorite for no-line watercoloring), then watercoloring with my Daniel Smith watercolor palette.

For me, the key to no-line watercolor is to work in segments, keeping the wet sections away from each other so that you can maintain crisp lines and avoid different colors bleeding into each other. Once I had stamped the images onto the watercolor paper, I maintained a cool color palette for both projects, adding in lavenders and blues to the snow on the Snow Happy (EH|SSS) card. I just love holiday cards featuring deer. Something about a deer in the snow conjures peace for me, reminding me of a crisp, cold Christmas Day.

Once it had dried, I trimmed down the watercolored panel and adhered it to a light gray A2 card base. I also added a charcoal gray foil frame, cut from the Essentials by Ellen Essential Rectangle dies and some dark gray foil. (I’ll link both below.) The final step was to add a simple greeting from the Christmas Tree Cat set using some black pigment ink to make it nice and crisp. I just love the simplicity of this project, and it will be super easy to place in an envelope and pop in the mailbox!

For my second project, I focused on the darling Kittens and Mittens (EH|SSS) stamp set. Not only does this set have a sweet little trio of felines, but it also features some wonderful sentiments, such as “Like mittens in winter you warm my heart!” I’m not huge on schmaltzy sentiments on my projects; I feel like it’s more of a challenge to pair with just the right recipient, therefore making them more difficult to send. These sentiments, however, are so sweet that I think anybody would love to receive them!

I began by stamping the image from Kittens and Mittens (EH|SSS) again on a panel of Arches Cold Press watercolor paper using Ink on 3 Fadeout Ink, but this time I used a wide brush to create a wintry sky before adding details to my kittens. I wanted to pull the lavender down behind the kitties, but still maintain that super light fade into white, so I laid down my blue to purple ombre, pulling the super diluted color down even over the top of the kitty images. I allowed background to dry completely before moving on to adding paint to the kitties. Ensuring the panel is completely dry before adding the details will help to avoid feathering and bleeding when adding color to the stamped images.

After I’d finished watercoloring all of the felines, I used some white gouache to add snowflakes, first by flicking my paint-loaded paintbrush at my panel, then adding individual dots of white so that we got different sized snowflakes. I also added a few white pearls for extra dimension. I white embossed a greeting on some light gray yardstick, then added it to the watercolored panel with foam tape. Finally, I matted the watercolor panel to a slightly larger piece of charcoal gray cardstock, then mounted it on a cornflower blue A2 card base.

To celebrate their new release illustrated by Anita Jeram, Colorado Craft Company is generously giving away a $35 gift certificate to their store for each blogger participating in the reveal! To enter the giveaway, simply leave me a comment telling me which of the new sets is your favorite. I will leave the contest open until the end of the day on October 7, 2020.

Here are all of the links of everyone participating in the release:

Thank you so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous weekend!