Blended Seasons with Watercolor Pencils

Well, I've been working on a video for these and for some reason it's not working! So, I will keep working on it but thought I'd show you step-by-step how to use Stampin' Up's watercolor pencils on Crumb Cake cardstock. Here's the cards I made to share for today that use the new "Blended Seasons" stamp set and matching dies that became available August 1st. Mine arrived yesterday and so I had to play with them!

The stamp set also includes a bell for a wedding card (or another Christmas one) but I haven't used that yet. Following is a step-by-step for how I made the floral card. First, the materials I used were: Crumb Cake and Bermuda Bay cardstock, Versafine Onyx Black ink, Wink of Stella clear, and watercolor pencils in the colors shown plus the Daffodil Delight and Pumpkin Pie. Each photo will show where I added each individual color.

First I applied the Pacific Point Pencil to the flower centers and any part of the petals that are covered by another petal and the flower buds:

Next Bermuda Bay was blended from the Pacific Point out and in, leaving the highlights with no color:

Then the white was added to the highlight areas of the flower petals:

The centers of the flowers were first colored with Daffodil delight and then Pumpkin Pie was added around the edges.

All the leaves and stems were done with Old Olive:

The open ares of the leaves were where I wanted highlights so I added Daffodil Delight in those areas to blend with the olive and make a lighter yellow-green:

Once I had all the color on the card with the pencils I used a Silver Black Velvet Brush (4 Round) and added water to blend. Note that I used a slightly damp brush and I did not let any pooling of water on the paper. I used light stroking motions, moving from the outer edge of each petal or leaf and dragged the color down into the dark areas where the shadows would be. I also blotted the brush off every time on a paper towel before using it and cleaned off excess color from the brush so as not to put too much pigment on the highlighted areas.

Finally, to give the card a little sparkle, I went over the painted areas with the Wink of Stella. Then I affixed this to a 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" Bermuda Bay cardstock piece and then to the front of the card base.

Using the watercolor pencils is fast and easy and might be the best way to introduce you into watercolor painting, as it is very forgiving. Notice that I colored the entire image before I added the water to blend. This means you can stamp multiple images and have them ready to go and are able to "color on the go," and blend with the water later. Another advantage to this method is that mistakes are easily corrected as you can erase any color that might stray out of the lines before adding the water. 
Hopefully if I can get the movie to work I'll be able to post the fall Thank You card! Thanks for reading all this and leave a comment if you like as I do read them.