Hi there! I am up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today, and I’m sharing a fun faux no-line watercolor using the new Festive Leaves stencils, two shades of ink, and a bit of watercoloring. Here’s the video:
Or you can watch the video HERE.
This technique is a super fun way to get more mileage out of your standalone stencils! The Festive Leaves stencils are a standalone stencil set, meaning that they do not have a coordinating stamp set. (There are dies though!) These layering stencils create beautiful, modern, graphic holiday foliage images, but I am a traditionalist, and I love figuring out new ways to tailor products to suit my own style. This standalone stencil set was perfect for this technique, because the simple layering stencils created full images without needing a stamp set to complete them, as some stencil sets do.
I began by blending Fresh Pear on the foliage stencils and Coral Reef Pinkfresh Studio inks on the berry stencils from the Festive Leaves stencil set onto some Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper. I blended very lightly on all of the layers, as the main purpose of this blending is to give us a basic outline for our watercoloring. You could also use no-line coloring ink, like Contour Ink from Hero Arts, but that might create a bit muddier watercoloring. The Pinkfresh Studio inks are water-based, so they work seamlessly with the Holbein watercolors that I used for this technique. I simply laid the watercolor over the top of the ink blended images. I used a bit looser watercoloring technique for these images; I wanted a bit more whimsical feel, rather than super controlled and detailed, to fit with the modern aesthetic of the images themselves. While the wet watercolor was still quite damp, I dropped in some darker green, allowing the color to “bloom” on the wet areas. Once the images were finished, I used the coordinating die to cut all of the images out in one fell swoop. That one-stop die cutting never ceases to amaze me with its cleverness!
For the background, I used the embossing mat from my Platinum 6 machine’s Universal Plate System with the Lush Vines Hot Foil Plate. This creates a lovely and subtle embossed background without having to go through all of the hot foiling process. I splattered some sparkly gold handmade watercolors on the background just to add a little extra interest. I also die cut a Nested Diamond frame from some white cardstock as a ground for my foliage and sentiment pieces.
Because I can’t keep my hot foil system out on my desk all the time, I like to foil bunches of stuff at once to have ready when I need it. I had foiled a Noel Hot Foil sentiment using Matte Gold foil, then die cut it with the coordinating die. I heat embossed a greeting from the Ornaments stamp set (this set has so many great sentiments, in addition to the beautiful ornament stamp!) using gold sparkle embossing powder. I also added a slightly wider strip of gold glitter cardstock behind to help the sentiment stand out a bit more. I adhered all of the components on the embossed background panel using double and single layers of foam tape. This card has lots of white space, so that extra foam tape helps to add lots of texture and interest to the card front. Finally, I added a few Matte Gold pearls for one last element of golden shine!
Well, that’s all for my project today. I encourage you to take a look at your standalone stencils to see which ones would work with this faux no-line watercoloring technique. Such a fun way to make your cards look even more unique and truly handmade! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
