Watercolor trials

As I mentioned recently I have been working on another Altenew Academy class in my AECP assignments. I finished Level 1 a while back and am hoping to wrap up Levels 2 and 3 before we move back to Europe in the summer.

The latest assignment involved watercolor which is not my forte but practice makes better and I will keep on practicing for sure! Creative Watercolor Media is taught by Jen Rzasa, Laura Bassen and Debby Hughes, with such a line up of teachers you can imagine the quality of the class!

I made four cards for this lesson, for the first one I used an old Altenew favorite; Sketchy Cities America. I stamped the New York skyline at the bottom of a piece of bristol card stock which was then masked off with blue Molotow masking fluid from a pen - very easy to use, no mess using brushes and even though the tip isn't tiny it easily goes on to even the smaller sections of the image.

Once the masking fluid was completely dry I put down a variety of Altenew inks on to some cellophane, then sprayed with water and smooshed on to the paper. I wanted it to look like the sky was lighting up with fireworks but I also did not want the sky to be black so I used pinks, yellows and blues.

Once the card was thoroughly dry I removed the masking fluid using a glue eraser.

I then painted the buildings in different shades of grey, heat embossed the fireworks - from the aptly named mini set called Fireworks - in silver sparkle powder, matted the image on a piece of black paper and mounted the card on to a square card.

My second and third cards really takes me way out of my comfort zone - I am again using ink smooshing, watercolor but also sequins - a shock to my system! This makes for very girly cards using the lovely Cake Love set:

First I stamped an image and a greeting using black (waterproof) Versafine ink on to two pieces of watercolor card stock that I had cut into squares.

After masking the images using the Molotow masking pen I smeared three Altenew inks on to a craft mat, sprayed them with water, picked up the wet ink using some plastic packaging and transferred onto the card stock.

I then added splatters using a paint brush, below you see the masked image, it's covered in the blue Molotow masking fluid.

I  removed the masking using a glue eraser, some of the smooshed color had seeped through where my masking wasn't thick enough but that was OK, I could just paint over.

I used several shades of pink, green and brown Altenew ink to watercolor my images.

To remedy the warping that occurs when you add water and heat to card stock I glued the final image to a grey card base and left to flatten under a large acrylic block. Then to finish off I added some clear sequins.

You may have seen the fourth card I made for this class on Monday's post. Here I used leaves from Build-a-Flower Rose, Beautiful Day and Majestic Bloom and a sentiment from Floral Frame.

It's different from the other two as it does not use masking, instead I stamped the leaves directly onto watercolor card stock using orange, brown and green Altenew inks. I then went over the images with a wet paint brush to add the watercolor effect and I love how this came out, especially after I added the drops of orange inks to the panel. The color became super soft but still vibrant.

The sentiment was stamped in dark green ink, over stamped in Versamark and heat embossed in clear to finish off this last card:

As mentioned above this completes a lesson in the AECP, level 2 you should try Creative Watercolor Media, it's a great class and all you need are your Altenew ink pads and re-inkers.

That's it for today, I hope you like my watercolor trials and I also hope to see you back here soon!