No-Line Watercolor Coffee Cup

I grabbed my crafty package and jumped into the car. We were rushing to my daughter’s soccer game. I was in need of a large cup of coffee, and sadly it was cooling on my kitchen counter.

I opened up the stamp set and my eyes landed on, “God knew my heart needed you”. It was then, that I knew I had to create a coffee card with this sentiment.

After a day of soccer, it was time to get crafty. I have several coffee sets, but none of the coffee cups were large enough. I envisioned a top view, with the sentiment stamped inside the cup, atop a layer of heart shaped cream.

So I pulled out my distress inks, made some masks with dies and got to work. I completed the card, including heat embossing the sentiment over the cream.

People…this was not the way to go, it was too structured, the edges were too sharp, and it was downright ugly. I promptly tossed it and movedon.org. I made 6 other cards, but I was still compelled to come back to this design.

So, round 2 called for watercolor and I choose my Zig Clean Color Real Brush pens. Colors used: Dark Brown, Beige, Oatmeal, Flesh, and Mid Grey. I tried Mid Brown, but it had a green cast I didn’t care for in this application.

Be sure to watch the video. This is truly one of those watercolor projects that looks like a train wreck before it gets good. The trick is to keep adding colors and layers.

I traced the inside and outside of a circle die to create the coffee cup rim and penciled in a handle. Very simple sketching. I erased a bit of the lines to make sure they wouldn’t show through the watercolor and got to painting.

For the most part I used a wet on dry technique with the Zigs. I mapped out my heart in the center with Flesh color and then lined the inside of the rim with Dark Brown and continued from there.

Once the coffee was complete I used Mid Grey to add shadow to the outside of the cup and on the rim and handle. I stamped and clear heat embossed the sentiment on Bazzil 40lb vellum.

Next I added some black splatter with Altenew Jet Black Ink Spray. I tapped off as much of the ink from the applicator as possible and tapped it on my project. I find I get consistent results this way.

I wrapped the vellum around the card front, adhered it with washi tape, covered the back of the card panel with sticky back fun foam, mounted it on an A2 sized card base and called it done.

I just love how it turned out and am thrilled to find success with something new for me! I hope you give drawing and watercolor a try. Thanks for stopping by! Get creative and Breathe · Ink · Inspire.