Faux Watercolor Thank You

One of the things I love about die cuts is you can use both the negative and positive pieces. It makes fast, easy cards. 

Here is the negative from the card I made the other day (in the last post...just scroll baby!)

I love that you just pop the little bits back into the letters and its easy to read.

This background paper was made using Crayola washable markers. Can you believe it?! They run and bleed so well when you add water, its just like painting with water colours. I told you I would share with you the tutorial, but you really don't need one, its a very simple and hopefully I will explain it below well enough.

So, say you are dying to try this whole water-colour technique that's all the rage right now, but you don't want to invest in the product just yet. There is the perfect solution... Pull out your kids markers and go crazy! Just be sure you use WASHABLE markers and you will be fine.
Use nice water-colour paper and draw a design of your choice with as many colours as you'd like.  Remember its going to bleed so you don't need a ton of detail. I like to use big strokes and run them around each other.

After you have your paper marker-ed up, add some water with a paintbrush. I love colours blending, but not too much. I think it's nice to have a vibrant variety to look at. Of course everyone is different, so just create away!

Now once you are done "painting" and your paper has dried, go back in with a black pen and draw around the different shades of pooled ink. Even if there is a dark drop in a larger pool of light ink, draw around the little drop and then around the bigger one too. Basically outline every different shade you see. As you go, you will start to see how many different shades you really do get when colours blend! What happens as you do it is you get this marbled look on your paper from the added pen that's really fun to look at. It adds some dimension to your colours that you may not have noticed before.  (Click on the picture to see a close-up. That might help you see what I mean better)

I have one more to show you. This was one of the first ones I did. I just wanted a little bit of colour so I drew three circles in marker. Then added water:

See how they bled together and created more shades? Then I took a pen and outlined the shades. I love how it looks. What do you think? (Uh, don't mind the crap-tastic photo, I tried to crop the chaos out but, you know...)

I would love to hear your reaction and if you have time to try it out, be sure to send me the link. I would love to check it out!

Thanks for stopping by today. Hope you have a good one, wherever you are.
I'm just shutting down for the night. It's almost Friday here which is a big deal in our house! That means we survived another week of Singapore Maths and Malay Language classes at school! That's no small feat for my little boys (and the momma that loves them!)


loves to you and yours,
k