Faux Watercolor CAS Card

I've been wanting to try the faux watercolor technique I learned from Jennifer McGuire for a while, and today I just received my Copic colorless blender marker in the mail! So it seems like a good time to finally try out this technique. After countless hours of trial and error, this is what I came up with. It's kinda surprising that something this simple-looking can take so long to design and create! 

The colors used in this card were inspired by the photo in Sugar Pea Design's first mix it up challenge. (I took the coral colored flower, the green flower, and the blue leaf) Even though I have some general colors to use in mind, it still took me quite a while to get the right shades of colors since I didn't have a whole lot of Hero Arts Shadow Inks. 

For the larger flower, I ended up using Fresh Peach for the base color and then stamping the second layer with Pale Tomato twice. It looks really odd at first, but after blending them with the Copic blender, the colors smooth out and the edges soften to give this watercolor-y look. The stamp set I used is Stampin' Up's Stippled Blossoms. The stamps originally have a lot of details to them, but by using this technique they kind of just look like traditional layering stamp images. It's pretty cool. Back to the colors, so I think that using a soft tone of one color and layering it with a darker, more intense one really works with this technique. If you choose two colors that are only slightly lighter or darker than the other then after blending you'll get a big blob of color, no image. For the smaller flower I used Lemon Yellow and Lime Green, and for the blue leaf I used Soft Sky and Cornflower. 

The actual process of making this card isn't very long, but it took me AGES to settle down with a layout I like. I originally wanted to stick the heart die-cut to vellum and then adhered it to a floral background, but I felt like the background was too distracting and I wanted to keep it CAS for AAA card's second birthday challenge. (Congrats! I just recently discovered their blog. So glad I didn't miss the fun ;) ) After tossing out a few more designs I decided to simply mount this die cut to another piece of cardstock, but of course I didn't have the right matching color of paper! I ended up coloring a white base card with a blue Copic marker, haha. Also LOVE the cross-stitched edge of this Memory Box heart die. I think it adds so much more interest to this simple card!

Then I heat embossed the sentiment and added the banners. Every word of the sentiment is actually from a different stamp set, can you believe that?! The original "HELLO, Beautiful" sentiment from Sugar Pea is pretty large and I didn't want to cover up my images. So I searched through my stash and created this sentiment. Love the font of "Beautiful", it adds a nice, feminine touch to the card. Hope you enjoyed my second take at a CAS card. Thanks for visiting! 

Challenges Entered: 

  
SPDMIX1 / AAA Cards 2nd Birthday / CASology: CAS EDIT: I won the blog candy!

  

#196 Anything Goes / CAS Mix Up June (My Choice: heat embossing) / Memory Box #13

Penny Black and More Challenge June: Flower Power