Watercolor Pencils

The watercolor pencils are another way to take a card from nice to wow. I hadn’t used the water color pencils myself until recently. My daughter loves to draw and color in her spare time and play around with different mediums so I ordered her the Water Color Pencils. Since they were out I decided to play around with them one day myself. I need a birthday card for my Uncle and the Rustic Retreat Stamp set seemed like the perfect place to start. I also pulled out the Woodland Embossing Folder. I knew I could create a mascaline card that would fit my uncle.

I started with Old Olive Card Stock for my base cut to 5 1/2″ by 8 1/2″ which when folded in half gives me a card with final measurements of 4 1/4″ by 5 1/2″. Then I used a piece of Crumb Cake Card Stock cut 4″ x 5 1/4″ and ran it through my big Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine using the Woodland Embossing Folder. I just love how this folder reminds me of Birch trees. The image is from the Rustic Retreat Stamp set and is stamped using Early Espresso Classic Stampin’ Pad on Basic White Card stock. I again used my Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine and a retired die to cut the stamped image out into this shape. The sentiment is also from the Rustic Retreat Stamp set and again uses the Early Espresso Classic Stampin Pad. I used the retired Decorative Label punch to cut out the sentiment. The embellishment on the card is the retired Old Olive/Whisper White Baker Twine. I also used an old wood block set called Congrats to stamp the sentiment inside again using Early Espresso. I like the card but since I had an extra card base already cut I decided to play a little more.

This time I did get out the water color pencils and color the stamped image of the cabin using Old Olive for the trees and window trim, Basic Grey for the smoke, Early Espresso for the cabin. The roof and rocks are a combination of all those colors along with a little Pumpkin Pie and Basic Black. To finish off the colored image I used the Blender Pen to go over everything and smooth out all of my pencil marks and blend the colors in the roof and rocks together to give them a more natural appearance. If you look closely at the picture I also used the Whisper White pencil to color the indentions from the Woodland embossing folder to help pop the embossed image on the Crumb Cake layer. The image and sentiment are popped up using Stampin’ Dimensionals. I also amped up the inside by using the branch image and stamping it on the inside using Old Olive Classic Stampin’ Pad.

The video below shows exactly how I colored the cabin.

I also created a few more variations as I can’t leave good stamped images unused. I would love to hear which of the cards was your favorite. I wanted to make a few examples that required less tools. I also used Very Vanilla and linen thread instead of the bakers twine just to change it up.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the different cards. Do you have a favorite?

Remember if you are interested in the any of the items I used today. Now is a great time to add to your supplies or to get started because during Sale-a-Bration you can select free items for every order of $50 or more. If you place any online orders with Stampin’ UP! please use the January Hostess Code SEFKD7DG. Anyone using the code and placing an order of $25 or move will receive a thank you gift from me.

Jenny