Friday, June 1, 2012

Tutorial-Using Pre-made Flowers for a Watercolor Technique

I love happy accidents and A-HA! moments. I have a huge stash of pre-made flowers sitting around and this technique is a great use for them!

 Here's the story:
 I had a few boxes of these bright Prima flowers and I usually don't use them a lot on my pages. Charlotte saw them and asked if she could play with them. I stuck a few glue dots on the back of some and she had fun sticking them to her stuffed animals and to some paper. She also decided to decorate mommy, too.

 Later that night I was doing dishes and one of the large flowers fell off (yes I was still wearing them) and got into the water. I took it out and placed it on a paper towel to dry. When I went to remove it, there was a beautiful orange watercolor flower design on the paper towel (and the flower itself was still good, too). I decided I wanted to try this technique as a background for a layout!

1. I used white cardstock and an old glimmer mist bottle that is just filled with water plus an assortment of flowers. I used Prima's, but I am sure other brands would work as well. It is also handy if you have a splat mat.




2. I sprayed a flower liberally with water until it was pretty drenched, but not dripping.  I sprayed on my mat, but you can spray it directly on your paper as well.



3. Take the wet flower and lay it on your cardstock where you want it.  Then press it in place so that the water can seep into the cardstock.  Let it sit for a few minutes to get a really saturated colored flower. Here you can see I already did the large yellow on and added a few more small ones.  You can use the same flower about 3 times before the color really starts to fade.


4. I also noticed that when I sprayed the flower on my mat, the resulting water droplets from where I picked up the flower were colored, and I actually used them to paint a little bit on my page!


5.  If you really soak the flower, you can hold the paper upright and gently tap it on the table to make the water drip down the page.  If you don't like the look of the drips, keep the paper flat.




After my paper dried, I tried to be a little artsy and doodle some of the flower shapes with a black pen.  It came out OK, but I am not quite sure I want to use it like it is for a background.  It's a bit too much..



After my first attempt, I tried it again with less flowers and drips and didn't add the doodling yet. I also added a few splatters of paint, too.  This page seems more useable to me.



A close up showing the blending of the colors, which I love!



Charlotte had so much fun playing around with me, and I gave her some scrap paper to do some "flower painting" on.  Some of her prints came out better than mine!!






Finally, here are a few more projects that I did with the Amy Tan Sketchbook collection!

A page for a challenge at Cocoa Daisy to show "movement".  Don't you love those blurry photos of Charlotte spinning?




The "she" phrases are from the She Art paper line by Pink Paislee.  I added some machine stitched swirls and swirled twine as well.





This page is a simple page, but I still love it.  I played with some of the frames papers for title and journaling blocks and then covered them a bit with some Dear Lizzy Crepe paper layered papers.




The flowers are again from the She Art line and I popped them with pop dots.

I stitched through the foam letters, which you have to be careful with because the machine foot can cause them to pull a bit.  A zig zag stitch works better I found.


And lastly a bright, monochromatic card with bits of black and white.




All supplies are from the May Birds of a Feather kit!!!  Check it out HERE!

5 comments:

antenucci said...

Totally love your technique! I found the Prima flowers run too, but never tried it on paper, can't wait! Your page looks like a sketchbook line of Amy Tan!

Cathy said...

wow! love this technique, what a great discovery!

Andrea said...

VERY COOL!

glorygirl said...

Wow, Audrey! Love the happy accident! And how your style is transforming a little. It's fun to watch that process!

Diana Waite said...

TRULY amazing tutorial! LOVE your layouts as well!