Papertrey Ink Watercolor Challenge...

Once again Nichole has another challenge up on her blog, in honor of the Papertrey Ink anniversary celebration!  Today's challenge is all about watercolor and incorporating some form of it into a project.  I love to play around with different watercolor techniques, so I couldn't resist playing along.  

For my card, I started out by heat embossing some flowers and leaves from Dawn's new Cutting Garden set with white embossing powder.  Then I took a few drops of re-inker and created a couple of "palettes" on two pieces of acetate (I keep the acetate sheets that the stamps come on and use them for this sort of thing).  The first had drops of Summer Sunrise and Hibiscus Burst inks and the second had drops of Aqua Mist and Simply Chartreuse inks.  I then misted them with a spray bottle full of water and used the end of a paintbrush to swirl them together (don't mix too much...allow the colors to remain somewhat separate).  

Then I took the same stamps that I had already heat embossed onto the card, pressed them into the "palettes" of ink I had created and stamped over the embossed images, shifting the images slightly to allow more of the color to be visibile.  It's kind of messy, but that's the look I was going for.  The embossed portion gives it just enough definition so you can tell they are leaves and flowers, but the watercolor stamping gives the softness of a watercolor painting.  I also incorporated a few "brushstrokes" in the upper right corner by using an image from Maile's new Watercolor Wonder stamp set being released this month.  The sentiment is from a set you'll be seeing more of soon!  I also stamped some BB: Text style along the bottom edge - this was done by using my palette of Summer Sunrise and Hibiscus inks as well.

I had fun playing in the water today.  I hope you'll find some time to play along with the challenge as well.  You can see all the details on Nichole's blog!