Watercolor Resist--#tgifc264

It's a technique challenge this week at TGIF Challenges:  watercolor. I decided early on that I wanted to do a watercolor resist technique card for this challenge.  I had an idea of the direction I wanted to go but, of course, that went out the window as I started playing around with different stamps and colors.  I had a few fails, but then I turned one fail into a cool background piece with a double resist technique:

I started with a piece of Fluid 100 Watercolor paper (#149612).  Next I randomly stamped the diamond pattern image from Gallery Grunge (#146538) in VersaMark and heat embossed it with White Stampin' Emboss Powder.  Then I did a watercolor wash in Balmy Blue ink across the entire piece.  It was kind of boring at this point, so I set it aside and tried a few other things and colors.  None of them turned out, so I came back to this piece.  I stamped the dotted image randomly over the piece in Versamark and then embossed it with Clear Stampin' Emboss Powder.  Then I did another watercolor wash over the top with Highland Heather.  Definitely not boring!

Finally, I had to decide on a focal point for the card.  I chose this sentiment from Colorful Seasons stamp set (#143726).  It's one of my favorites and I thought the font was perfect with this offbeat background.  I stamped it in Highland Heather on Whisper White card stock, die cut it with a Stitched Shapes (#145372) circle, and layered it over the openwork circle die cut using Balmy Blue card stock and a die from the Painted Labels dies. (#151605).

A card base of Whisper White Thick card stock, a layer of Balmy Blue card stock, a double bow of Whisper White crinkled seam binding (#151326), and three Basic Pearls (#144219) complete the card.

Both the Gallery Grunge and Colorful Seasons stamp sets are retiring at the end of this month.  So, click on the link to my store now if you want to purchase one or both before they are gone forever.

You can do so many different things with watercolor, so be sure and check out the projects this week at the TGIF Challenges blog here. You will be inspired!

Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!  Things are opening up again.

--Sara Nell