Fun with Ink and Faux Watercolor

I love watercolor in all its many forms.

In an early post here I talked about a technique I learned years ago using die inks to “drag” in color to your stamped images.

Here’s one of the first samples I made using this technique, which I learned from Art Impressions:

The idea is simple — color your stamps with a water-based ink or marker (in this early one I used mostly Marvy and Tombow markers). Then use a slightly wet paint brush to “drag” the color into the design.

I hadn’t played with this technique for a while until I found some Art Impressions stamps I bought way back in January!

(I love how the stamps come with complete instructions. If you’ve never created scenes before, the instructions give you confidence to build a scene. Also, there is lots of great information and inspiration on the Art Impressions YouTube channel.)

For the first impression, I stamped the girl using Tim Holtz/Ranger Distress Pumice ink on the smooth side of Ranger’s Tim Holtz watercolor paper (I do love this paper — the smooth side takes stamped images well while still holding up to water.)

Then I started playing with coloring, using a variety of Marvy (yes, my OLD Marvy markers that were still nice and juicy!), Tombow and Distress markers.

Here is the finished card:

(You can’t really see it here, but I added some clear Wink of Stella to her dress and hat for subtle shimmer. Man, do I love Wink of Stella!)

The set also comes with this adorable bridge:

The only thing stamped here is the bridge itself, stamped with Distress Vintage Photo. For the rest, I just added watercolor shapes, just blobbing on where I thought trees and grass and flowers should be.

I dried that, then added details, stamping some shrubs and flowers and softly blending them with my water brush. Here is the finished card:

And here is a shot of my messy desk with all the materials scattered around:

How can anyone work that way???? Grin.

My next post will have a few more samples. Thanks for stopping in!