Over the past few months I have been experimenting with different watercolour techniques on my cards.  I have used washes as backgrounds, colour gradations, watercolour pencils, splattering, two-step watercolour stamping, and many more!

I have one more technique to share that is perfect for holiday cards and this one is a quick, no brush technique for watercoloring smaller pieces of paper, like round Christmas ornaments!

To begin, ink was dabbed on a clear block using an ink pad from Stampin’ Up! until it was well coated with colour (I used Granny Apple Green).  Then the block was spritzed with water a few times.

With a piece of watercolour paper (shaped with the 1 3/4″ circle punch), smear the paper into the wet ink.

Once the colour has covered the paper to your liking, dry it with the heat tool.  At this point, the areas that are more wet will move around creating a watercolour look that will be unique.

If you are happy with the design on the ornament, then set it aside and do another one.  If it needs a bit more colour contrast, repeat but only dip one side of the paper into the colour.

I repeated this process and used a few different colours (Real Red and Dapper Denim).  Note: If making multiples of these ornaments like I did, your thumbs and fingers will get very inky so be careful not to transfer the ink to the next ornament!

To turn them into proper ornaments, a small piece of gold paper was punched from the tip of a flower punch and glued to the top.

A little gold twine bow finished it off perfectly.

The ornaments were then adhered to the front of cards (using the stronger Tear & Tape adhesive) that had already been stamped with letters from the Headline Alphabet.  (I bought that set a very long time ago and had not used it for years.  See… there is a reason to keep all those old stamp sets!)

This trio ended up being my favourite collection of holiday cards!

If you love them as much as I do, you are in luck because they will be available for sale this Saturday, November 17 at the Parkview Christmas Craft Sale from 10 am – 3 pm.

Hope to see you there!  (And if you can’t make it, just email me and I will send you a set!)

Leah – lfedynak@gmail.com