Technique Tuesday: Watercolor Misting with Markers

For today’s Stampin’ Up! Technique Tuesday, I thought I’d take a look at another technique that generates a watercolored look.  It’s a technique I tried well over a year ago (and I’m sorry, I can’t remember where it was that I originally learned this technique) called Watercolor Misting with Markers.  Although I’m sure any type of marker designed for rubber stamps would work, I used Stampin’ Up! ‘s Stampin’ Write markers.

Stamps: Inspired by Nature
Ink: Summer Sun, More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Really Rust, Close to Cocoa, Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, Always Artichoke Stampin’ Write Markers, Chocolate Chip Classic ink.
Paper: Whisper White, Chocolate Chip CS
Accessories: empty Stampin’ Spray Mist bottle filled with water

Step 1: Take your Summer Sun marker and roughly color the centers of the petals, leaving the outer edge of the petals uncolored, and just underneath the center portions uncolored (see picture below).

Step 2: Take your Pumpkin Pie marker and color in the outer edges of the petals and a bit of the area underneath the flower centers (it’s a bit difficult to see in the picture).

Step 3: Take your Really Rust marker and color right underneath the flower centers, and draw "streaks" in the centers of the petals (as shown in the picture below).

Step 4: Take your More Mustard marker and color along the outer edges of the flower centers.

Step 5: Take your Close to Cocoa Marker and color just underneath the More Mustard marker, but do not fill in the flower center completely as you need to leave room for the Chocolate Chip marker.

Step 6: Take your Chocolate Chip marker and color in the remainder of the flower centers.

Step 7: Take your Old Olive marker and color in the stems and the bottom half of the leaves and then take your Always Artichoke marker and color in the top half of the leaves.

Step 8:  Take a small spray bottle – I used an empty Stampin’ Mist bottle – and fill it with water.  Lightly spray over your image several times.  To do this, I held the stamp in my left hand and held the spray bottle around 2 feet away from the stamp and sprayed about 3 or 4 times.  You need to experiment with this.  The mist has to be a fine mist, so how many times you need to spray depends on your spray bottle and how wet the stamp gets with each spray.  As you can see from the picture below, you want the image to be moistened as this blends the colors together, but you don’t want it dripping wet.

Step 9: Stamp  your image onto your Whisper White CS mat (my mat was 3 3/4" x 5").  You can experiment with different types of paper as well.  Stamping on watercolor paper for example will give you a different look. 

Decorate your card as desired.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!