Fall Watercolor Wash - Stampin' Up! Totally Trees

  When I woke up this morning it was below 60 degrees!  What?  Fall might actually be arriving here in central Virginia.  We drove up through the Shenandoah valley over the weekend and we didn't see any fall color yet but it should be coming soon!

  When designing cards for my stamp club last week I wanted to do another fall inspired card and use the new Totally Trees stamp set from the Holiday Catalog.  Yesterday's card was pumpkins so I wanted something else besides an "orange" card.  I looked through my saved pins and inspiration websites and saw a technique that I had never tried before so I gave that a whirl as a possible class project.  Nope!  It was cute but too many steps and up and down from the table to be practical in a large group setting. But the card did end up giving me the colors I used for the class project. Not traditional fall colors but they make me think of fall anyway for some reason.

  We used Shimmery White cardstock to make a watercolor wash background.  I found that giving the Shimmery White cardstock a quick brush with plain water from the Aquapainter helped the colors blend better.  Since I had a big group doing the watercoloring I squeezed drops of re-inker into empty embellishment containers and added some water.  That was easier than having 3 ink pads open and watercoloring from the lids which is what I do when it's just me or even one color at a class.  I started with Delightful Dijon, then Bermuda Bay and finally Rich Razzleberry.  The colors blended nicely for a kind of jewel toned rainbow background.

  We dried the paper with the heat tool to move things along but you can leave it to air dry for a few hours or overnight.  Once it's dry the trees and falling leaves are stamped with Tip Top Taupe ink.  We layered a stamped tree that was die cut and layered with the Layering Ovals framelits.  We used shimmery white for this as well.

  The tree is popped up over a length of 5/8" Burlap ribbon and a punched banner with the Thoughtful banners set and coordinating punch finish this card off.  

  The shimmer is a nice and subtle in real life and and is a nice compliment to the rich color palette.

  Thanks for looking!  Did you stamp today?

Stamps: Totally Trees, Thoughtful Banners

Ink: Tip Top Taupe, Delightful Dijon, Bermuda Bay, Rich Razzleberry

Paper: Shimmery White, Tip Top Taupe, Rich Razzleberry

Accessories: Layering Ovals framelits, Banner punch, dimensionals, 5/8" burlap ribbon, aqua painter