AECP Level 3 - Modern Watercolor

For the past few nights, I have been watching the videos in Altenew's Modern Watercolor.  I am intrigued by watercolor and thought this would be a perfect Level 3 course for me.  It was a fun and interesting course.   Preeti Chandran has a very soft soothing voice and is a good instructor.  I learned a lot from both instructors, but I really do love Laurel Beard.  She is funny and I love the way she approaches the classes she teaches.

For my first card the method I used was using Altenew's Woodless Watercolor Pencils to color on a stamp, spritz with water and then stamp it onto the watercolor cardstock.   (All products I use are from Altenew unless otherwise stated.) The stamp set I used is Mini Delight Plants and Vases.  This set has 4 images that are different branches or twigs of leaves.  I wet the watercolor pencil in a jar of water and then colored onto the stamp.  After I got the image where I thought I wanted it I spritzed it with water and then stamped it on the cardstock.  The second method I used on this card was to use a template and watercoloring.  I used the vase dies in this set to deboss into the cardstock and then colored in the debossed images.  The last thing I did for this card was to add a light wash of color around the vases and branches before stamping a sentiment in Black Obsidian Pigment ink.

For the second card I used a different method which involved using watercolors to color embossing paste and then using that in a stencil.  I also used the previous method of using the watercolor pencils to color the stamp image.  For this card, I used the single floral image in Vintage Garden   I used greens on the leaves and then from the center of the flower out I used reds, oranges and then yellow.  I spritzed the stamp with water and stamped this onto white cardstock (for this card I did not use watercolor cardstock).  I reapplied color to the stamp in the same order and again spritzed with water before stamping on cardstock.  For this step, it is important to use a stamp positioner of some sort so that you can stamp over the image in the same place each time.  Once this watercolored image dried, I then used the stencil for this image and spread my previously colored embossing paste onto the flower.  I had colored my embossing paste with a red, yellow and green.  I applied these pastes over the similarly colored areas of the flower.  Then I removed the stencil and set this aside to dry.  

For the background, I used the Sketched Lines stencil and applied the paste through the stencil onto white cardstock.  Before I cleaned the stencil I spritzed it with water and then used the stencil to stamp onto white cardstock. As the next step to coloring the background I used Ruby Red, Warm Sunshine and Frayed Leaf shimmer sprays over the background over the similarly colored embossing paste.  Once the floral image was dried I die cut it and added used foam tape to mount it to a black piece of cardstock which I then foam mounted to the background I created.  I added a sentiment from my stash - this is from the One Go Sentiment set.  And all was mounted onto a black card base.

The last card I created was inspired by the Galaxy watercoloring class which involves using Metallic watercolors on dark cardstock.  Instead of creating a galaxy type of background I used the method to watercolor through the stencils of the Stencil Art Watercolor Garden set.  This stencil set creates a large floral image.  I used Altenew's Metallic Watercolor pan set and painted through each stencil to create my floral spray.  I absolutely love how this card turned out.  I used regular black cardstock and just used a light hand with the water.  I layered several colors and let them mix and blend a bit. I let the panel dry between each time before adding the next stencil layer.  Once I had finished with all the stencil layers I add a bit of water to a few of the colors and made a thick mix that was splattered onto the cardstock.  I added sentiments from my stash - One Go Birthday Sentiments and Essential Sentiments.

Please head to Altenew to check out their products.  So many awesome items to chose from - stamps, stencils, inks and more.  

Let me know what you think about my projects!