Altenew Build-A-Flower: Cattleya · No-line Watercolor

There have been 2 occasions where I finished a card and thought, “Wow, that’s magic!” This is one of those cards. All the stars aligned and the no-line watercolor and color pencil techniques played happily together to celebrate Altenew’s huge milestone!

Altenew Instagram Hop

This handmade card is part of the Altenew Instagram Hop to celebrate all 50K of you lovelies! The theme is “Say it with Flowers” and each of the 39 designers on the hop will showcase Altenew’s trademark elegant floral stamps on their handmade projects!

Be sure to join the hop for loads of inspiration and prizes!

Prep for No-Line Watercolor

I truly believe the paper I used for this handmade card is largely responsible for the great results. I know we hear it all the time in regard to stamping and painting if you’re not getting good results, change your paper. Seriously though, nothing could be truer.

Generally, I have to work really hard at watercolor, and I didn’t realize how easily this came together until I was editing the film for voiceover. Now, I totally understand the advice to “let the water do the work” and people, it’s magical!

The paper is Saunders Waterford High White Rough and I only purchased it because I was on the hunt for the whitest watercolor paper I could find. LOL, the excellent performance was a bonus!

Using the Altenew Build-A-Flower: Cattleya die, I cut a mask out of thick copy paper and used it to plan my arrangement and as a mask for stamping. I stamped the outline image with Limeade Crisp Dye Ink. All the colors I use for this project are from Altenew Spring Bouquet ink color family.

No-line Watercolor Tips

You really have to watch the video to see the watercolor in action. It’s magical to see how the Crisp Dye Ink pigments move. Here are a few no-line watercolor tips aside from using good quality paper.

Stamp with a light color ink that will blend into your finished project. In this case, Limeade was perfect. It’s light enough that I wasn’t concerned about it showing in the pink areas.

For wet on wet technique, lay down a thin coat of clean clear water. If you can see the water pool, there’s too much, and you need to blot that up with a dry brush or paper towel before painting. There is an example of this in the video.

Use gravity to assist the flow of pigment. Hold your paper at an angle, add your pigment, and watch it flow. You can even gently tap the paper to get it moving more.

Adding Dimension with Polychromos Pencils

I just purchased my first set of Polychromos and this was my first time using them. So far, I love them! Everything but the bottom flower and bloom are colored with watercolor only.

I started to add Polychromos pencil to the bottom flower and bloom and while that added some contrast, I wanted more, so I added tiny bits of black.

When adding black, exercise restraint. The goal isn’t to outline the image, only to add touches, otherwise you could have stamped the image in black ink from the start.

Polychromos Color Pencils

• Earth Green Yellowish
• Light Green
• Light Yellow Glaze
• Magenta
• Middle Purple Pink
• Rose Carmine
• Black & White

Final Touches

The script sentiment is from Lavender Bud mini stamp set. I covered the blooms with 3 masks and splattered watered down Fresh Leaf ink with a #6 round brush.

My go-to black splatter technique is to knock off the majority of the Jet Black Ink Spray from the nozzle and then flick the nozzle over the project to splatter. I consistently get great results with this technique!

The panel was trimmed with a deckle edge rectangle die and matted with lime green cardstock. And that’s a wrap!

As always supplies and giveaway information is below!

Supplies

Prizes

Altenew will choose 3 lucky winners of a $50 gift certificate and 39 winners of a $15 gift certificate from the comments left in each featured designer’s post. Giveaway ends on 6/6/2019. All winners will be announced on Altenew’s Instagram page on 6/12/2019. Have fun hopping along! ❤️

Click here to head on over to Instagram for more inspiration and to enter to win!

Thanks so much for visiting today!! I’d love to hear what you think of my watercolor card and video in the comments below, but be sure to enter the giveaway on Instagram. If you like my creations and you haven’t already subscribed to my YouTube channel and Instagram feed, I’d love it if you did!

Be creative everyday and Breathe · Ink · Inspire!