Latest Obsession – Faux Watercolour

I have a new technique that I’ve been using a lot lately. Nothing groundbreaking or new, actually it’s quite similar to the technique I was demonstrating at our last papershakers event at Scrappindipity. This is even more simple though, and much less messy.

You’ll need:

paper, a few inkpads (dye based, my favourite brand is ‘Impress’) and some water.

Instructions:

• Swoosh your inkpads directly onto the paper. You don’t need to cover every area, but lay down a reasonable amount of colour.
• Then wet the paper and let the water do the work. You can spritz, flick or even just run it under a tap. I find that I’ll flick large droplets more than anything else because I want quite a lot of water without the run-off of colour that happens when you hold the paper under a tap.
• Wait for it to dry. The natural curling of the paper and uneven drying will make the colours blend nicely and create those ‘blooming’ sections that I love the most about watercolour effects.

Notes:

I’ve had really really nice results using this technique on prisma cardstock, which has a felty sort of texture that resembles watercolour paper.  But my absolute favourite has been using pre-printed black and white papers.

Shown in the example is the new Kaisercraft paper ‘Florentine’ from the Argentella collection.
The ink pads I used were all Impress – Chartreuse, Cerulean Blue and Olive Green.

I’ll be playing with a few different papers and colour combinations today, and will post some more examples later on.

Don’t forget that today is the last day to enter my giveaway to win a collage pendant of your choice. Hop to it.