Hello stampers and happy Thursday to you. Today I want to share with you a very simple colouring technique, colour washing with aqua painters. I used this technique yesterday on one of my Tropical Oasis cards and I will share with you a few valuable tips and tricks to enhance this technique.

Tips and Tricks for Colour Washing with Aqua Painters

Totally by accident I found a very important tip for colour washing with aqua painters, but I will share a few more here with you as well.

1. Use thick whisper white cardstock instead of regular cardstock. The thickness of the cardstock will allow deeper grooves from the embossing with the dies and this allows for lovely variation of colour.
2. Use an acrylic block pressed into your ink pad of choice as your “ink pad” for picking up the colour for your aqua painter.
3. Hold the aqua painter on a bit of an angle as you brush the colour on to get better and more consistent colour coverage.
4. Play with different colours or even use more than one colour on your die cut cardstock. You might be surprised that the colour you first chose is not the best one. That is what happened to me with my pineapple topper. Originally I used granny apple green because I loved the pop of fresh colour. Turns out that garden green looked a LOT better.
5. If you are colour washing a background then your best choice is either shimmery white cardstock or Fluid 100 Watercolour paper.

Compare the Difference

Last night during my Facebook Live I didn’t have the pineapple topper that I needed on hand, so I had to improvise. Caroline had accidentally cut a white topper in the morning at coffee ad a card so I used that and did a colour wash with it using garden green. It looked fabulous, so I thought I would share it with you here.

Do you see how the granny apple green topper now seems to lack depth and reality when you compare it to the garden green colour washed one? Great things happen when you are forced to improvise and experiment. This is also a great trick to remember when you are all out of a certain colour of cardstock.

Palm Trees and Tropical Prints

These last two cards really don’t have anything to do with colour washing but I wanted to share them with you anyways. Again, it is interesting to see the change in the card that happens simply by switching up the patterned paper. It is the same sheet of paper, just turned over!

You would choose which paper to use based on your recipient. Does he or she wear subdued, classic Hawaiian shirts or vibrant and boisterous ones?

Clean Vintage Card

There were lot of improvising opportunities last night! I was missing a pineapple topper in garden green that was supposed to be the bush under my palm trees so this is the card that ended up being created! I loved the clean and simple vintage look and it also shows you how to use a partial label die with the woodie. This was also the only sentiment that I had not yet used in the Tropical Oasis stamp set.

Answering Your Questions

I just wanted to address something here since I know that many of my readers are fellow demonstrators. As most of you know, I love to share what I do freely, however I do have only so many hours in a day. So please don’t be offended if I cannot take the time to explain to you how I run my classes or events. About a year ago I started a private Facebook group just to address those needs. It is available to anyone in the world and it is super affordable, only $5 a month in your own currency payable through PayPal or etransfer. I do weekly live videos and also share other files and great information there. We have a wonderful tribe of people on this group and that is where you can go if you want to learn business tips and training from me. Thanks for understanding!

Looking Back

Do you ever look back on your work from the past? I love to go back to some of my old blog posts to see what I made a year or two ago. If you are like me, your cards are kind of like your babies. You really, really get attached to them and they hold special memories. Check out this blog post for some lovely cards and a heartwarming story too. Don’t let the attachment and affection you have for your cards prevent you from giving them away! Just take a picture of them and know that they will be going to a very good home and spreading love around the world.

Facebook Live

Every Tuesday I do a Facebook live video showing the three cards that we made at coffee and a card that morning. If you missed the one from yesterday you can see it here.  If you like it, please share so your friends can see it too. Thanks so much for joining me today and have a super day.

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