Blog: weekly challenge | Gayatri Murali & Gillian

This week, Gayatri and Gillian are teaming up to challenge you to break out your watercolors and use them in your paper crafting!

From Gillian Nelson : While I've always considered myself a "crafty" person, I am not confident whatsoever with the "artsy" stuff. Drawing, painting...stuff like that. I'm so much more comfortable with paper and scissors than I am with paper and paintbrushes. But I looooove the look of watercolors and how it's been making such a beautiful splash in the world of scrapbooking. I wanted to experiment with using water colors on a layout, but I wasn't willing to ruin an entire sheet of paper by painting directly on the background. The compromise I came up with was to paint smaller portions of paper that I would then add to my layout afterwards. I started by cutting watercolor paper into strips that were 1.75 inches wide, and then hand cut triangles from the strips. I painted each individual triangle with a wash of color (most of them pink, with a few yellow triangles thrown in for visual interest). Once the paint dried, I outlined each triangle with a thin black line and also inked the edges. Then I adhered the triangles onto another block of watercolor paper, so that the painted color could really pop against more white. I used adhesive foam under the yellow triangles for more...say it with me...visual interest.

Then I layered the remaining patterned papers, found places to live for the assorted embellishments, and stuck the photo up there at the top. Done!

(Supplies -- patterned papers, acetate diecuts: Roundabout Scrapbook Kit; gold washi tape, "enjoy" banner sticker, gold triangle sequins: Coconut Grove Add-On Kit; letter stickers: Outer Banks Add-On Kit; Studio Calico Hello Today Banner; pen: Precision Pen 0.3-Black; ink: StazOn Ink Pad-Jet Black; foam adhesive: This to That Foam Tab Squares; glue: Martha Stewart Glue Pen; other: sequins, staples)

The watercolors were truly a lot of fun, and while I'm not brave enough yet to paint myself a background like some of the gals on our SC team are so adept at doing, I'm really happy with how my watercolor baby steps turned out. :)

From Gayatri : Watercolour background is currently trendy. I love the soft blend of colour using the water colours. They make great background and easy to stamp on it. For my project which is a card, I have decided to use this technique both in the background as free flowing colours as well as in a defined space.

While the card front is drying, I masked and stamped the balloons from Coconut Grove June Add-On Card Kit stamp set. There is well defined space in each of the balloons to paint the colours. For this I used wet on wet technique here. For each of the balloon, I first wet the area and while still wet, I added colours from one end to give the gradation of colours. I let it dry on its own. This give beautiful shading to the balloons.

While the balloons are drying, I stamped the large sentiment also from the Coconut Grove June Add-on Card kit stamp set on the bottom of the card front. I then cut of the balloons and adhere them to the card front using foam adhesive.

Neon My Little Pony, Trapper Keeper & Windbreak Seafoam Coconut Grove June Add-on Card Kit watercolour brush

We can't wait to see you give watercolors a try!! Make a project for this challenge, then share it in the Studio Calico gallery. Leave us a link to your project by June 3rd in the comments here to be entered to win a $5 GC to the Studio Calico Shop.