Watercolor Stamping

Deb with you today. There are so many possibilities when it comes to making the most of our rubber stamps that it just boggles the mind. I recently came across the watercolor stamping technique, and thought it would make a good topic for this week's Eureka and QKR Technique and Tutorial post. This project features QKR's Rose stamp. Besides a stamp, all you need is:

• Watercolor paper - I prefer a smooth finish to watercolor paper that I intend to stamp on. Some papers have a noticeable grain, and it makes it more difficult to get a good imprint
• Distress Ink in Frayed Burlap and, if you have them, Re-inkers in Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Bundled Sage and Faded Jeans. If you don't have the re-inkers, just use your stamp pads.
• Water brush or fine paint brush
• Small Palette or a stamping acrylic block

Here's how it comes together:

Stamp your image with Distress Ink's Frayed Burlap.

Immediately after stamping, begin going over your lines with a damp brush. You can see (above) where I started going over the lines in the top, left corner. Squeeze your waterbrush to get the water flowing, or dip your paint brush in some water. Blot on paper towel because you don't want too much water on your image. Then allow your image to dry, or speed it along with a heat gun.

Put very small drops of re-inker in your pallet compartments. Dip just the very tip of your brush in re-inker.

Begin adding color to your image by going over an area with your lightest color, and then adding a bit of the darker color where it would be appropriate to have deeper color or shade. If you get too much color or too much water in an area, just blot it with a tissue. Don't worry if you go over the lines - that just adds to the watercolor look.

Float a little bit of Faded Jeans around the flower. Be very careful here - Faded Jeans is a pretty strong color - you might want to blot your brush on paper towel before applying to the watercolor paper. Encourage the ink to move to the outsides of the paper, away from the image, with your wet brush. You can see the completed look at the top of this post.

Here's a card I made with my rose. I'm not really happy with the completed project. I love the card design, and I love the rose, but somehow the two don't seem to belong together. Does anyone have any advice for what I might do next time? Maybe use a beige/brown or green tone rather than the blue around the flower?

And that's it for this time. Do give this a try - I think you'll love it too! And please come visit my personal blog when you have looked all around the QKR blog.