Two for the Price of One!

I normally only post one card at a time, but today I'm posting two cards, which will be the last ones I'll upload to the Online Watercolour for Cardmakers gallery. The first uses one of the background techniques from day one of the course:

The background uses a stencil I cut on my Sizzix Eclips and Cosmic Shimmer Iridescent Watercolour paint. The glasses were also cut on the Eclips, and the greeting was stamped in Memento Rhubarb Stalk. Here's a picture showing the background a little more closely, although you can't see the sheen of the paint, unfortunately.

The second card also uses the Cosmic Shimmer Iridescent paint, this time on a faux handpainted Hero Arts stamp:

The stems were painted in an olive green colour from my Whispers brush markers set, and I think I'll make this my final entry into the challenge over at Stamping Sensations, where "Anything Goes".

Handpainted Poppies

The theme over at Less is More this week is "Flowers" so I took the opportunity to practice watercolour painting again. I've also belatedly realised that I didn't enter this into this week's "Flower" challenge over at CASology as I'd intended to. The poppy stamps are by Inkylicious, one of my favourite stamp companies. I stamped & masked the images in Antique Linen Distress Ink.

Then I smooched Adirondack Terracotta ink onto an acrylic block, mixing it with water then using that to paint the main image. The black is Cosmic Shimmer Iridescent Watercolour paint. The greeting is a Lucy Cromwell for Papermania stamp, stamped in Hero Arts Charcoal ink. Although the card looked too plain without any embellishments I tried to keep them to a minimum, just using a few pearls to finish it off.

Watercolour Love

Among the many things I've learned whilst taking part in the online watercolouring card class over the last week or two is that it's an art form which needs patience. If my husband ever read my blog he'd be laughing hysterically by now as patience is not something I'm known for (I can almost hear him saying, somewhat ironically, "Really? I've never noticed . . . . ")

But another thing I've learned is that it's an art form I love, and that's also the theme of this card:

One of the class techniques was demonstrated using a flower stamp with large petals. Not having any similar floral stamps I searched my stash for an alternative & decided on this Docrafts bear.

He's coloured in Aquamarkers, and he took a couple of hours from start to finish - see what I mean about patience? The patterned background uses another of the techniques I learned, and the flag is cut from card which has been painted with a wash of the same colour as the heart. The embellishment is a wooden button which is floral on the other side but as that didn't match I chose the plain side. I've stamped the greeting onto a piece of vellum. This is my second entry for this month's challenge at Stamping Sensations where "Anything Goes", and I used the sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches. 

Here's the original sketch:

And here's a little close-up of the bear, I hope you like him -

Base cardstock: Lidl

Watercolour cardstock: Winsor & Newton

Stamps: Docrafts FFS 907117 "Best of British - Great Big Hugs"

Darkroom DoorDDBS003 Floral

Papermania greeting

Inks: Distress Antique Linen (main image), Memento Rich Cocoa (greeting)

Aquamarkers: Mocha, Raspberry, Eggshell

Embellishment: from stash