Dare 2B Artzy Relaxation Blog Hop

Welcome to Dare 2B Artzy‘s New Release Blog Hop!!

Yup, you read that right!

D2BA recently released 17 new stamp sets and 6 Dies!

We are so excited to share some fun projects with you, using some of the new stamps!!

Which is why we decided to have a blog hop!

Our theme:

Relaxation

You should have arrived here from Kendra‘s blog!  If you haven’t and would like to hop along with us, please go back to the Dare 2B Arty Blog to start at the beginning!

Be sure to follow each blog and leave comments along the way for your chance at winning!  We will randomly choose a winner from one of the blogs, so the more you comment, the more chances you have to win!!

Blog Hop will end Sunday evening at 7:00pm Central.  We will then post a winner!!

———

This is such a fun HOP we’re having with the Relaxation theme.  So sit back, RELAX and have a nice tall glass of iced tea! Hope you enjoy what I have to share today.

I decided to do something a bit different for the hop. I pulled out my Kuretake Zig Clean Color brush pens and did some watercoloring with the fun Flip Flops stamp set. I’m really loving all the cute images with this set and the sentiments are awesome and can really be used in a multitude of ways.

To start this card, I used a peice of watercolor paper that was approximately 4 1/2 by 6 inches. I pulled out 3 small acrylic stamp blocks so I’d have one for each of the flip flops, lemon round and glass with the straw. I started off by stamping the flip flops with some Versamark and sprinkled them with some white embossing powder and heat set them. I ended up with about 3 of the flip flops on my cardstock. Next, I did the same with the glass and the little lemon round making sure to get a pretty even spacing and distribution of images on my watercolor paper.

 I used some blue painters tape and masked around all four edges of my cardstock. I intentionally masked off about 1/4 inch of the stamped/embossed images on my paper which would create a border. Note, I did put the painters tape against my shirt to sort of reduce the amount of stickyness prior to applying it to my watercolor paper to avoid possible paper tears when removing it.

Finally, it was time to watercolor. For this, I used the Zig brush tip and carefully brushed around the inner edges of each image. Since these are watercolor brush markers,  you don’t color the whole image in as you would with an alcohol marker or pencil, you just need color along the edge an then you add water. Rather than using a regular water color brush to add water, I did just use an aqua brush to move my color around. The heat embossing helps to keep the watercolor inside the images so you don’t get much bleeding. On some images I went over them a couple of times, allowing the paper to dry in between. This allowed me to build a more vibrant color, although most of the Zig colors are pretty vibrant to begin with. For any areas that I had too much water or color, I simply blotted it carefully with a paper towel. Once my images were colored, I added a bit of a neutral brown color with another Zig brush to give it a bit more depth and also mimic some shadows. I added a touch of water to that as well to move the color some across the background.

Once everything was dry I was able to remove the painters tape carefully to reveal the white embossed border. My original plan was to actually paint the border as well, but I decided I like the white contrast against the soft watercolored stamped images. I cut my finished panel down to 5 inches x 3 3/4 inches and then added to some complimentary colored cardstock.

For the sentiment, I stamped it with some Versamark and heat embossed with some orange embossing powder. Next, I die cut it with a small flag die and added a little brass starfish to it.

I don’t consider myself a watercolorist (yet) because it’s a new medium for me, but I love to play and try new things (much of which never get’s shared). However, I have to say that making this card was so relaxing due to the watercoloring. It’s so much more carefree than the precision required with other mediums and it creates this softness with the images that I just love.

Good luck to everyone on the hop! It would be fabulous to win one of the awesome new release stamp sets from Dare 2B Artzy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Your next stop in the hop is Chris blog!

We hope you are inspired all along the way!

Check out all D2BA’s products here!

Happy Hopping!

Tonya

———

Hop Order:

Cindy – Dare 2B Artzy

Karen

Kendra

Tonya

Chris

Kel

Cindy – Dare 2B Artzy