Upsy Daisy Watercolor Crayon technique

I LOVE my Watercolor Wonder Crayons, they are probably my favourite method of colouring stamped images, because they are so versatile. (Well, I love my markers, blender pen and inkpad puddle methods too, but crayons are 'IT' at the moment!)

This card uses the "Upsy Daisy" set, from the main Idea Book and Catalogue. You can find it on page 75, and it's a bargain at just $33.95 (item code is 115898 for your wishlists)

It has been a very popular set, and there are loads and loads of examples you can find showing how it can be used, I think it is both because of the versatility of the sentiments, as well as the number of ways the large silhouette style flower stamp can be made to look.

Here I have used a watercolour painting effect, created with the water-soluble Watercolor Wonder Crayons (find those on page 127, go on, put them on that wishlist, they're FAB!). I have applied crayon directly to the surface of the rubber stamp, scribbling and blending. Because of the creamy texture of the crayon, you can build up layers of colour easily. I have used Summer Sun, Only Orange, Always Artichoke and Old Olive crayon colours.

The next step is to mist a piece of Confetti cardstock with a fine water spray, just enough to slightly dampen the surface. In this card I have used Confetti White, but you could also use Confetti Cream, Naturals Ivory or Watercolor Paper for this technique. In my water spray bottle (a Ranger Mini Mister) I added a few drops of reinker in Old Olive to give a light tint to the background of my image.

While the surface of the cardstock is still moist, take your crayon-coloured Upsy Daisy stamp and mist it very lightly with water, holding the spray some distance from the stamp. The aim is to dampen the surface enough to allow good transfer of colour to the paper, but without making it too wet, or else you will get the 'runs'.
Then stamp onto the moist Confetti cardstock piece and hold the stamp in contact with it for a few moments to get a good image. ta da! Your resulting piece should look somewhat like an abstract-style watercolour painted image of daisies. Purty, no?

To complete the rest of the card, I stamped the Sanded background in Always Artichoke onto a Mellow Moss card base. To pick up the bright colours in the stamped image, I used a mat of Summer Sun, but to avoid tooooo much brightness, I inked the edges with Always Artichoke and then overlaid this with a mat of Always Artichoke cardstock. I made it slightly asymmetric by using the Eyelet Border punch at one end, which allows the Summer Sun to peek through the holes.

The sentiment is stamped onto an oval punch (Whale of a Punch oval by EK success) which happens to co-ordinate with our new Wide Oval Stampin Up punch, made for us by EK. I'm hoping we get this size of oval punch, as it looks so much better than the Large Oval. I popped up the ovals on Stampin Dimensionals and it was all finished :) Hope it brightens your day just a little!

I'm off for a few days in Huskisson, on the South Coast of NSW, and I hope to create some more goodies to show you. Not sure about how I'll go with actually updating, but if I don't, perhaps you'll be inundated upon my return! Happy School Holidays to all my readers with kids in states starting winter hols this week, hope you can squeeze in some crafting time! Hint of the day - give the kids your scraps box, one stamp set and one (very important this bit) ONE!! ink colour, and challenge them to make a card or two. My 4 year old has been stamping now for a year or so, and it is quite interesting to see what she comes up with. My 8 year old makes quite an impressive card, I have a couple to show you next time. Ciao!