A Taste of Spring & an Honest Review

Good Afternoon Everyone!

I hope you have had a fantastic weekend!  Here in The Northeast (US) we have been experiencing spring-like temps for the past several weeks.  Not exactly warm, but not really cold either.  Until this afternoon, as I am sitting here in my studio watching it snow...a lot! ☃  Winter is definitely not over!  So, today, I will show you how you can make this beautiful SPRING card!  I will also give you my honest review of Arteza watercolor brush markers.

Supplies I used:

• A White A2 card base
• A Piece of green cardstock for the front
• A panel of Strathmore Bristol Vellum cut to 5 x 3.75
• Clear embossing ink
• White embossing powder (I used Hero Arts)
• Heat tool
• Stamp from Lil Inker Designs:  Corner Adorner
• Sentiment stamp from Honey Bee Stamps: Smile
• Arteza Watercolor brush markers: Light green, Dark green, Moss green, Peach, Pale Yellow, Purple, Hot pink, Dark Yellow (looks like light orange) Dark blue (I have the set of 48)
• Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers: Haze Blue
• Water brush
• Corner Rounder
• Sequins (these multi-colored flower sequins came from AliExpress)
• Distress Oxide Ink in Twisted Citron
• Foam Sheet
• Double-sided tape
• Scissors
• Glue
• Tweezers (to pick up the sequins)

I started out by stamping my image with clear embossing ink and heat embossing it with the white embossing powder.  Then I took some time and swatched out my markers, experimenting with blends.  I was mainly deciding which colors I wanted to use for the biggest flowers.  This really helped me to see how the colors were going to react with each other.

I did make a short video explaining how I painted this image, but couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to get it on here so it worked!  Sometimes, I am technologically challenged! I'll get there...some day.  So I started out by painting the biggest flowers and I used the yellow marker and the hot pink.  I laid a line of yellow towards the top of each petal and the pink on the line closest to the center of the flower.  Then I gently began blending the 2 colors together with my water brush.  Sometimes I got too much water on the paper and I gently dabbed at it with a facial tissue.  Other times I felt I didn't have enough color and I added more in.   Here is a close-up of one of the leaves that I did using the 3 greens...light green on top, moss green in middle and dark green on bottom:

I used varying combinations of these greens to paint all of the leaves.  On a few of them I used the pale yellow as well.  With every color combination I put down, I painted them the same way...whether it was 1 or 2 or even 3 colors.  Laying down a little bit and blending it into each other.  On the little blue flowers I used straight blue.  On the pink flowers I used pink and purple and on the purple flowers I used purple as the lighter color shaded with the blue at the bottom.  The little berry springs I painted in with the light peach color. 

 When I was done, I used the Haze Blue Zig to put in a faint background, laying in the color close to the design and pulling it out with water until it pretty much disappeared.  I then stamped my sentiment with the Honey Bee Smile stamp set and Distress Oxide ink in Twisted Citron.  I wanted the sentiment to be in a light color that would really show up.  I did use my MISTI for this and I probably stamped it about 3 or 4 times to get it as dark as I wanted.

I then glued on the patterned paper to the cardbase, after rounding the corners.  Then, I rounded the corners of the painted panel and put foam on the back of it and adhered it to the base.  I also rounded the corners of the base.  When that was done I glued on the sequins and that finished my card!

I promised a review of the Arteza Watercolor brush pens.  There are pros and a few cons.  The pros are: inks react well with water, they blend with other markers (such as Zigs), the colors are vibrant, and best of all the price.  They are considerably less than Zigs.  The cons are: the tips aren't quite as good quality as the zigs and the bristles are longer (takes getting used to), they don't react well on all types of paper.  I tried to use them on another Bristol board type paper and they didn't work well at all.  So, it's important to test out your paper before moving on with your project.  All in all I think they are definitely worth purchasing as it gives you even more color options when using this technique on this paper.

So, here's my finished card.  I think it looks very Spring-y!  I may just send this card to my mom.

Hope you all learned something here that you can use on your next project and you found the review of the Arteza Watercolor brush pens helpful!

Have a great week

and remember....

it's only paper!

Betsy