Thinking of You

Hi everyone!  This is Julissa of Paper Gems by Jules with a super simple watercolor background for you to try with your next purchase.

This card features Penny Black's "Gentle Thoughts" stamps set, illustrated by Mo Manning.  This delicate and detailed stamp shows the love of this little girl and her dog.  And if you didn't know already, I LOVE DOGS!  So for this card, I wanted to keep the scene soft by using Distress Inks to watercolor the background (as seen below).  

Using a wide flat angled paint brush, I wet the paper with soft strokes going across the watercolor paper.  Once the paper is wet, it's time to get inky! I stamp the distress ink onto my glass mat (you can use any non-absorbant platform to add the ink to).  Using my web brush, I add the color to the wet watercolor paper in the same long strokes from left to right.  Adding most of the color on top and slowing dragging it down and adding a little more water to create an ombre effect.  Turn the paper around to do the same process with the brown distress ink to create a ground up to 1/4 of the page and then gently blend with water into the blue.  You can let it air dry or put your heat gun to the paper to dry it faster.

Once it's dry, you can stamp on this background to add more dimension or add your sentiment directly on to the water color paper.  I highly recommend using your Misti or other stamping tool to repeat stamping as water color paper is not smooth and you may need to restamp to get a solid image.

Once your background is complete, you can add your fussy cut, colored image.  I used dimensionals to give the image a little depth.  The soft tones on this card make this special moment come to life.

Thank you so much for checking out my blog post for Crafty Doodle Chick and I encourage you to check out some of the other amazing members of the CDC Design Team for their creative crafts.

Until next week... Happy Crafting!

Penny Black - Gentle Thoughts