Technique Tuesday, BA Inspiration using Remembrance

Good morning and welcome, Julie here with a little bit of watercolour inspiration using the newly released Remembrance stamp set.

I was so happy when Bev said that she was launching a poppy stamp as it's one of my favourite flowers and they are also my best buddy's too. So when it came to making her a birthday card for the other Sunday, I had to use them to create this card.

Do you remember my card from the introductions a month ago here? Well, this is how that one was supposed to work out but for some reason the watercolour gods were not behaving, so I ended up just using a portion of the finished panel. I was happy with the flowers but the leaves and stems not so much. I made it using the masking fluid technique, I've used this particular method a few times now so wont bore you with another full blown explanation, check here and here for a detailed photo explanation. 

Here's a quick run down on my method. First I stamped one of the poppies with Altenew Misty Moss and then carefully added masking fluid over the image. When dry I repeated the technique with a further 2 poppy outlines. To fill the lower part of my panel, I drew some poppy heads in free hand and then again towards the top, adding masking fluid to these too. 

When fully dry, I added some water over the whole panel and dropped in a mix of greens, along with some red watercolour. I tried to keep the center of the panel as dark as I could but it doesn't matter you can always go back afterwards. Before it was dry, I placed a piece of cling film over the wet panel and left it over night to dry. 

The cling film was removed to reveal the textured background and then the masking was removed carefully so as not to rip the paper. Using watercolour, I then painted each petal individually with a wet into wet technique. Don't do two adjacent petals at a time as the paint may run together. The foliage was done the same way and any white areas where the masking was not accurate, I coloured with matching paint to neat it up. I used some neat Payne's Grey for the flower centers or you could use a fine liner if you don't feel up to the fine detail!

Finally when my panel was completely dry, I trimmed it down and added it to an A5 base card to which I'd stamped the sentiment from Spring Botanicals - Crocus in black.

Go on, have a go, just let the watercolour do it's thing and don't worry about the end result, you'll be surprised when you come back to it after a night's sleep!! You can always cut it down like I did if things go a bit pear shaped and it's only paper at the end of the day!

So thanks for visiting and happy crafting!