Watercolor Backgrounds

Watercoloring backgrounds around images can be stressful... you've watercolored the entire image and then often don't know what to do with the background, so we try watercoloring it and find we often mess it all up. I've done that! This image from Concord & 9th's Hello Lovely stamp set was heat embossed with white embossing powder on the smooth side of a piece of watercolor paper.

I used Zig's Clean Color watercolor brushes and a plain water brush to color the image and then used two of the same brushes to add color to the background by dragging and blending the ink out away from the image. Then it needed more in the background so I used those two colors of ink and added a green and scribbled them on an acrylic block and spritzed the block with water. I picked up each color on a brush and sprinkled the background for a splattered look.

The sentiment is from the same set and was embossed in white on black cardstock and raised up with a piece of foam. Then affixed the entire image to purple cardstock.

This stamp set comes with several "fills" for the flowers and leaves for a very simple "sloppy watercolor" look and that card is below as a single-layer very simple card. Again, the sentiment is from the same set. This card is entered in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge, "Make Your Own Background." Thanks for looking!

Single layer card: