Another "let's throw everything at the wall and see what looks good" card. I needed to make a graduation card and it only had 2 requirements: 1. It needed to says Congrats and 2. It needed to have a lot of burnt orange on it. If you're from Texas, you already know that means that the intended recipient is a very-soon-to-be University of Texas graduate (Go Horns!). Honestly, I don't know him well at all. His parents, however, are old friends of mine.
I wanted to use my Floating Leaves Stencil from Simon Says Stamp and incorporate some texture paste. There is a slimline card by Debby Hughes that I really love (and uses this stencil) and I was inspired by its design.
I started with a scrap piece of watercolor paper 3.25" wide and about 10" long. First, I inked up one of my favorite background stamps "Script" by Wendy Vecchi. Since I was going to put water on the paper, I chose the Gina K Amalgam ink in dark brown. I loosely inked up the stamp and stamped several times on the paper. I made sure the ink was dry and then I used Tim Holtz Distress Crackle Paste through the Floating Leaves stencil.
Then, I smooshed Distress Oxide inks in Crackling Campfire, Ground Espresso and Rusty Hinge onto my glass mat and spritzed them with water. I used a large paintbrush to paint the colors on and mix them a bit as I went. I dabbed up some of the wet ink but that made it too pale, so I went back with more ink and when I had the coverage I liked I dried it with my heat tool.
I love the splattered look a lot and I recently bought myself some Kuretake Gansai Tambi Starry colors 6 color palette from Amazon. The set has 6 shades of metallic gold watercolor - from white gold through to a deep red gold. At $15 this is a great set. However, if you are serious about calligraphy or watercolor painting, I recommend you watch this review of the Kuretake vs. the Colico gold watercolors by Jane-Beata on YouTube. She is an amazing watercolor artist. Sandy Allnock does one too, but it is a bit older...Anyhoo, I used the Tim Holtz Splatter brush to splatter on some gold watercolor and then some white gesso (often when I use a paintbrush to do my splattering it becomes a hot mess fast. That splatter brush is fantastic!) I trimmed my cardstock and the decorated portion was only about 7" or so long. I trimmed it and actually ended up splitting it in two to cover the extended distance with a sentiment. I matted this onto a piece of Stampin' Up! Early Espresso and then onto a Crumb Cake card base measuring 8.5 x 3.5".
I used my Cameo Silhouette and slightly altered the font Zilla Slab to make the congrats out of Early Espresso cardstock. I matted that onto a small piece of the watercolor paper to make sure the whites matched. I then got lucky enough to find a piece of gold vellum in my stash that matched the particular gold watercolor I used. I cut a tiny strip and put it at the bottom of my sentiment piece. I glued it down with foam adhesive.
Finally, I wanted some epoxy dots and it took me forever and a day to figure out how many, where and what colors. Finally went with all vanilla dots which - even though they were self-adhesive - I still used Bearly Arts glue as I needed them to stick to crackle paste. At the end, I actually went back and added a few more dots of gold watercolor as I liked the look.
Are you making graduation cards? Opting to use the school colors or not?
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