Hello, hi! Today is the Altenew Paint-A-Flower: Sunflower release blog hop for October, and we’re showcasing this lovely monthly subscription stamp set along with something very cool that you’re going to like – Woodless Watercolor Pencils!!
You should be arriving here from Emily’s blog, and if not, you can click back to the beginning of the hop at the Altenew Card Blog and not miss anything!
Watercolor Pencils have long been a favorite medium of mine and Sunflowers are such cheerful flowers, so today’s project is a beautiful meeting of the two! The coloring set that Altenew is releasing today includes 24 favorite Altenew colors and they come in a beautifully designed kraft cardboard tube.
I began this card by stamping with Obsidian Pigment ink onto Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock because it’s a cardstock that allows you to color smoothly, then introduce water to it in a way that allows for the colors to mix without soaking in too quickly to achieve a beautiful blend.
Why wouldn’t I simply use watercolor paper then? Well, this stamp set has a lot of detail and sometimes that detail can be lost, or at least challenging to preserve on textured paper such as watercolor paper.
My favorite aspect of using watercolor pencils to “paint” is that you can be more relaxed about applying color. Sometimes watercoloring can be “time sensitive” and just knowing that can add a layer of stress that watercolor pencils removes. You can take your time and casually color the entire stamped image, layering different shades of pencil overtop others until the picture is complete, then finally begin to apply a wet paint brush in small areas, activating the pigment and allowing the colors to blend.
Perhaps the trickiest areas to color/paint are the background, where you have a large open space and multiple colors. In that case, I color the areas lightly, crosshatching pencil strokes and layering shades on top of each other, then I come in with a larger wet brush moving the color around more freely. Because of the larger spaces in the background, the amount of water needed in your brush can create dry-lines and pigment edges, but I just embrace that as part of the overall beauty of watercolor painting.
In areas where I want a deeper or different shade, I simply brush the tip of the paint brush over the tip of the pencil, picking up pigment directly. And the marvelous thing about woodless watercolor pencils is that they are more than a thin core of color. In fact these woodless pencils are pigment right through to the outside edge.
Once my image was entirely colored and painted, I added some paint speckles by brushing a fairly wet, fine tipped brush over the tip of the pencil and tapping it against my finger to release splatters. I stamped the greeting at the bottom, combining two of 10 different sentiment builders in the Sunflower stamp set, then adding two coordinating patterned paper strips at the bottom.
This wonderful new painting product is going to be very popular and due to some unfortunate shipping issues, will quickly go out of stock, so I urge you, if you want some of your own, to click the notification button on the shopping page for this item, to let you know as soon as they’re back in stock!
Your next stop on the hop is Mindy’s blog. If you get lost along the way or encounter a broken link, you can refer to the complete blog hop list at the end of this post.
To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $30 gift certificate to 2 lucky winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog by 10/28/2020 for a chance to win. Altenew will also draw a winner to receive a $15 gift certificate from the comments left on each designer’s blog on the blog hop list below. All winners will be announced on the Altenew Winners Page on 10/30/2020.
Complete Hop List:
Norine Borys – You are here.
Thank you for stopping by today and enjoy the rest of the hop!
