Simple Watercolored Flowers

Hi Everyone!  Happy Wednesday!
Wet and rainy here in Washington!  After such a gorgeous week it's hard to see the rain...but it wouldn't be the Pacific Northwest without it :)

As you know, I love watercolors.  My brain automatically goes to them whenever I start to think of a card idea.  It's just natural...I'm addicted.  But sometimes I want it to be quick and simple without too much fuss.  That's hard for me because I want to control it all and have it look exactly the way I want, but that's also the beauty of watercolor.  You can keep it simple and quick, or mess with it till it's perfect.  It just takes the willpower to leave it alone!

So I tested myself with this card, and let it be simple.  It was tough!  I wanted to fuss with it!  But I controlled myself this time instead of the watercolor.

The very first thing I did with this card was add a super light wash of blue and purple to the background.  I didn't want the flowers to be on stark white so the super light colors were perfect.  Once that was completely dry, I started stamping the outlines of my flowers and leaves from the Pretty Little Peonies set from WPlus9.  Those are heat set with clear embossing powder.

Embossing images that you plan to watercolor can be a great way to keep the water contained so it doesn't spill out of your image.  For this particular technique, it worked really well and was almost a necessity to keep everything within my flower lines.

To get the color into my flowers, I took the sold images from the same stamp set for each of my flowers and colored in little bits of detail with my Distress Markers.  I didn't color the whole flower, just around the centers.  Then I spritzed it with some water and stamped it down onto the embossed flower, rocking it a little to push the color into all the petals.  Once I lifted the stamp up, the color would move just a little bit within each petal giving the flowers nice variation.

Since I only colored in the centers of the flowers, the outsides faded off nicely leaving the centers bold.  I did the exact same thing for the leaves.

After everything was stamped, I felt I needed a little filler between the peonies.  So I grabbed the Fresh Cut Containers set from WPlus9 and used a cute little flower cluster and leaf set to fill in the gaps.  I did the same thing, colored the stamps with my markers, misted, and stamped.  Since these don't have an outline, they were just solid stamps and didn't have much variation in color, but misting them softened them up and gave them a watercolor type look to match the rest of the peonies.

For my sentiment, I created and cut out the large Happily word with my Silhouette a couple times and layered the pieces together.  Before adhering it down, I swirled some silver thread behind it for an elegant touch.  Once the word die was stuck down, I covered it in Wink of Stella clear glitter and glossy accents so it would shine.  After that dried, I added my little white embossed vellum strip and a few pearl dots to finish it all off.

I am in love with this card!  And this fun technique!  It was quick and simple and made a gorgeous card!

I'd love to enter this card into the following challenges:
    AAA Cards #49-Word Play
    Cas(e) This Sketch #143
   
    Craft Your Passion #282-Anything Goes
    Penny's Paper Crafty #248-Anything Goes
    Word Art Wednesday #204-Anything Goes

Thanks so much for stopping by! <3