"Watercolor" Detail Stamping Technique

Today I am sharing a technique that I've decided to call "Watercolor Detail Stamping".  In many other English Speaking Countries, color is spelled colour and whenever I see it spelled that way it makes me smile.  Anytime I correspond with someone from one of those countries I try to remember to use that spelling although it isn't second nature to me. I used to have a friend who lived in Manitoba, Canada and we had some lovely conversations about colour and colour combinations back in the late 90's early 2000's when I was a very devoted scrapbooker and she was the owner of a message board for scrapbookers I used to be on.  Donna had a particular talent for enhancing die cuts using colored pencils. She lost a very short battle with pancreatic cancer in August of 2004 but I think of her often and smile when I remember our many talks. I even have Two-Page Layout (complete with a photo of Penguins) devoted to her in an album I did entitled "Rite of Passage - Journey to the Heart of Me".

I saw this sketch Challenge #179 over at the CAS Colours and Sketches Blog and thought it would be fun to combine it with the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge which has a Tic-Tac-Toe theme this week.  I chose the top row, with Stamping, Sequins and Gold. When I started working on my card for these challenges, seeing the spelling made me think of Donna so in part this card was inspired by her.  The other part of the inspiration came from one of my sisters-in-law who loves pink and black together as much as I do.  One of the options at the CAS (Clean & Simple) Colour Challenge Blog is to make a rectangle card into a square or vice-versa.  I don't do too many square cards since they require extra postage if you use a square envelope.  I get around this by using a 5 x 7 envelope but it bugs me a little that the card doesn't fit snugly so I don't do it too often.  I also really love the combination of Pink & Gold together and decided it would make for a super elegant card to combine it with the black.

I started by stamping the bloom and leaves from Altenew's Beautiful Day using Versamark and heat setting them with Ranger Gold Tinsel Embossing Power.  I colored them with Lovely Lady and New Leaf Inks from Papertrey Ink by lightly misting my watercolor paper with a bit of water and then stamping one of the detail layers into the outline while the paper is wet.  This moves the ink around nicely and it is a super fast way to get a hand water colored look with much less time spent.  I love to watercolor but if I'm doing any kind of mass production, this is a great way to get the look without all the time. I found this method by experimenting with my stamps to see what it would look like and then really liked the results in the softer colors in particular.  I'm planning to make cards for all of my Sisters-In-Law again this year at Christmas and some of them really like the watercolor look.  This technique gives me the ability to do that for them. Once the paper was completely dry, I die cut the leaves and bloom using the coordinating Beautiful Day Dies.

My card base is a 5.5 x 5.5 square note card made from Papertrey Ink True Black Cardstock.  I cut a 5.25 x 5.25 white insert for the inside of the card.  My pink square is cut from Lovely Lady Cardstock using the My Favorite Things Stitched Squares Stax Dies.  For the gold square I cut a Spellbinders Labels 42 Decorative Elements in two sizes and then cut the small one from corner to corner to make the little tabs with a little creative cutting to help.  The "thanks" die is a favorite from Mama Elephant and the 5 mm Gold Sequins are from Darice.

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