The Write Stuff

 
It’s my turn to host the Featured Stamper Challenge (FS559) on Splitcoast. So a big Congrats to Jeanette, the newest Featured Stamper. I spent oodles of time in her big, beautiful gallery & finally narrowed it down to THIS card. I kept the Christmas poinsettias & most of the layout, but I used different images, different colors & left off a few of the layers.

I also have a little mini tutorial to go along with this card. I knew immediately I wanted to water color it, but I wanted it to be loose, not necessarily contained by the lines. I love stamping on top of free flowing watercolor backgrounds so that was my plan for this. Instead of pan or tube watercolors, I used Brushos. I lightly wet part of the watercolor paper w/ a spritzer, then sprinkled on the reds, pink & orange colors, then spritzed it again. In areas where the color seemed too concentrated, I took a wet paintbrush & blended it out. I let this dry a little, then repeated it w/ the greens, trying not to go over the red areas.

I used a plastic sheet placed up against the corner inside my Misti & stamped the image. This allowed me to position the paper to stamp the image where I wanted. Since it was big enough, I stamped it twice to use on two different cards.

I decided to deepen the color just a bit inside the leaves/petals of the poinsettia & the easiest way to do this is w/ watercolor pencils.

Instead of using the pencil directly on the image, I used a waterbrush to pick up color from the pencil tip, then painted it onto the image.

Since this poinsettia image in on the large size, I trimmed away most of the background around the left side of the image in order to have more of the citron green show. A dk green layer was added behind the poinsettia & also behind the citron layer. The greeting was stamped off the to left to help balance the composition and keep the eye flowing across the card. The blank citron areas give the eye a place to rest & draw the eye to the bright reds of the image. I could have added just a few sequins & I may go back & do that, but I’m pretty satisfied w/ composition as it is w/ the odd number of items (2 flowers + 1 greeting). Odd numbers are just more pleasing to the eye. 

Here’s the inside:

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Supplies:

 

Poinsettia Lg 673K	Celebrate Each Day 153D	Celebrate the Magic 951E	Brushos Water Color Crystals
White Gelly Roll Pen	VersaFine Inkpads	MFT Diagonal Stitched Rectangle dies	Kaliedacolor ink pads
AC color card stock	Staples 110# White Card Stock	MISTI	Niji Waterbrush
Koh-i-noor Watercolor Pencils	Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics B S5-132