Happy Saturday! It’s the middle of August…which means it’s almost time for one of my favorite things – STAMPTEMBER! Yeah! Just a couple more weeks until we roll out the biggest release of the year here at Simon Says Stamp! I love it – and I’m ready for Autumn! The light is changing in the mornings – have you noticed it too? Today I’m sharing the latest edition of Weekender with Wanda, and I have a cool technique to share with you. I truly do hope that you try this because it is so nice to sit and color/paint and the results are so rewarding. I’m talking about No Line Watercoloring! Today’s post features beautiful stamps from one of our favorite member companies – Altenew. I used the gorgeous “Beautiful You” Stamp set for my card.

Doesn’t it look like I painted this? I actually fooled my husband when I showed it to him! Hee hee. I started with a sheet of watercolor paper and taped it to my hardboard to keep it nice and flat. (See photos and supplies below) No Line Watercoloring is simple! I took my Antique Linen Distress Ink pad and randomly stamped the strawberries, leaves and flowers onto the paper. This ink color is so light that you can barely see it. And, that’s the trick. After stamping in light ink, you color over it with watercolor paints! If you look closely you can barely make out the stamped images.

The pretty sentiment is stamped onto vellum paper because I wanted the color to show through it!

Here is what the center panel looked like when I started. Later, I die cut out my card layer by using the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles Dies.

I used Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolor paints. These are the most beautiful paints! I use mine all the time. The colors are very rich and creamy and they paint like a dream. In this photo you can see that I started with the strawberries and colored them in. I let each color dry before using a new color. This kept the paint colors from running together.

Next I used green watercolor paint and did the leaves and stems.

Here is the whole panel before I cut it out with the Stitched Rectangles Die. One tip for coloring white items – use a soft grey. Strawberry flowers are white with yellow centers and I wanted my project to have those colors too. The grey tricks your eye into seeing this as a white object.

I ended up splattering a bit of brown paint over my finished panel. I always like paint splatters! I wanted a tiny pop of a bright color, so I layered a thin layer of aqua around my center panel before mounting it onto a kraft card base. The finishing touch was a twine bow.

Thank you for spending part of your weekend with me! I hope this technique will inspire you – and hope you try it yourself! See you soon!

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