EVERYTHING WATERCOLOUR

It's been a while since we've used watercolours and in this class, we'll be creating both the background as well as the die-cuts with watercolour paper and either palette or liquid watercolours.  Each time I have a play with watercolours I remember how much fun it is to watch the colours bleed and blend into the next colour and the wet on wet technique is so good for this.  It means starting with a wet background (just wet with water) and then adding watercolour to the wet areas to get it to blend and spread.  Of course, you can use watercolours on a dry background and paint with them, then spritz if you like and this will create a different effect.  I certainly don't profess to be a watercolourist at all, but this medium's very nature means it can be a very loose style of colouring. 

"Planet B"

"Negative"

"Load Aim Fire"

"Fly High"

"Chaos"

"Bombdiggity"

WATERLESS WRINKLE BACKGROUND

Wrinkle techniques are a simple way to create a quick background that can be used just as a backing piece, or used to die-cut a shape from.  Normally with wrinkle backgrounds, you would scrunch a piece of plastic wrap (like Glad Wrap) onto a very wet surface that has inks, watercolours or alcohol inks onto it and then letting it sit until the underneath substrate totally dries.  This technique however is very quick and mess-free as it uses no water whatsoever.  We'll still be using the plastic wrap but we will also be using a Gelli Plate as well.  You can do this with just one colour of ink (I used Distress Oxide Ink Pads), or a couple of colours.  I even sprayed one of my pieces with the Distress Mica Spray first before doing the wrinkle technique (Grim outside) so it has a gorgeous bronze-coloured shimmer to the background.

"Organically grown" 

"Grim outside"

"Nothing changes"

"Let it hurt"

"Wander"

"Pray prey"
(I cut the trees from a piece of the wrinkle
background and placed over a Gelli Printed
background from a previous class.)