2018 #3 Watercolours: Tag: you're it with EDY {by Carol Fox}

2018 Topic 3: Watercolour

This is not only the first post of the new topic. But it is also a sneaky new product announcement! Darcy has created some fun new stamps for us! If you have been following her, you will know she is in year 2 of her illustration degree at university. At the end of her first year she did a series of drawings of funky little people for her first assignment. They had all the features that I had always envisioned Darcy would one day do as stamps. Naturally I emailed her and said 'those need to be stamps!', and now... here they are for you to enjoy!

Back in the day when I first saw Darcy's creativity, she had posted some amazing fabric dolls she made; long striped legs, and interesting characters, and a hint of that style is exactly what I saw in these character stamps too! So here we are, many years later, and we finally have the stamps I imagined Darcy would do so wonderfully! I cannot wait to use them and come March, you will be able to buy them from your PaperArtsy stockist! They are officially being released today to our retailers at Stitches! Congratulations Darcy! ~ Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Carol with you today, and I'd like to share with you a background I made using Fresco Finish Paints on watercolour paper. I did a similar technique using distress ink but I thought it would be fun to try it with Fresco Paints and the Colours in Tracy's latest set were so bright and loud they seemed to just call my name. As I wanted to get drippage and bleed I had to really water the paints down and this is why I used watercolour paper as I knew it could withstand the amount of water I would be using without curling up and looking like it wanted to die. I had great fun creating my backgound, it was very freeing and childlike to flick the paint and let it do its own thing on the page.

I decided to make a couple of tag sets for my project, a double tag card and a set of 3 using a watercolour background which gave a lovely dreamy feel to the projects.

I worked on the smoother side of the paper and just splatted lots of watered down Cerise Fresco Finish paint onto a very wet sheet of paper (I spritzed it madly) I got lovely bleed with the paint.

More spritzing and other colours from Tracy's paint set added, as I let the paper dry between layers there was no colour seepage, just clean bright layers. You can see from the shiny bits where it's still wet how much water this got thrown at it.

Going in to add interest with Stencil PS092, Such a nice basic stencil pattern for backgrounds, I think this one will become a favorite for me.

Finally using a sponge and bottle cap to break it all up with another layer of colour before cutting it all up for my cards. The great thing about a background like this is that when you cut it up, you can turn it to get the individual pieces to suit what you are making.

Once I had cut my background, I added stamping using the background elements from Darcy's new stamp sets EDY20 and EDY21. (These stamps will be available from PaperArtsy Stockists from March 2018) I used Fresco Finish Pea Coat Paint from Tracy's set neat from the bottle to stamp with and then used Stencil PS001 and Snowflake paint to knock the whole thing back a little bit.

I now stamped the images from the above sets, took them downstairs and had a lovely evening colouring and watch TV. I was pleased with the matches I got from my colouring pencils as these tied all the colours together nicely.

My large tag card is actually what I made my husband for Valentines day. The hearts  from EDY20 stamped and popped with a red colouring pencil directly over the watercolour background added a lovely touch. Little Black Dress Fresco paint and a stitched border stopped it all looking too pretty and gave it just the touch of grunge that I like.

I thought my little set of tags would make a nice housewarming card using the stamps from EDY21 again adding grungy edging and stitching hanging them all from a big jump ring to give the impression of a big jangley key ring.

I did experiment with a few different weight watercolour papers and I came to the conclusion that from this technique the cheaper ones were better, as these also tended to have a smoother reverse which was the side I used as I thought this would be easier to rubber stamp onto, and also they were thinner and therefore easier to cut out and stick to my tags. I used about a 230gsm as opposed to my "posh" pad that is 400gsm. I was happy that the Fresco Paints kept all the colour intensity when thinned down with water, I was worried I would get weak colours, but all I got was translucency which for this worked great. I assume they are so heavily pigmented that this is why, But Leandra is the brains in that department, I am just like "ohhhhh pretty colour" not at all savvy when it comes to pigment etc.
I loved my play with this technique and it's defiantly one I will be using again.

Carol Xx

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