Winter Birthday

I have a serious addiction to watercoloring and wanted to make a winter birthday card using one of Inspired By Stamping's beautiful sets called Winter Birds and watercolor it using a no line technique. 

I first stamped my sweet little Titmouse bird onto watercolor paper using a light dye based ink. The Antique Linen Distress ink is perfect for this. I then watercolored it using some new watercolors that come in tubes I just picked up. The brand is Reeves and I am quite pleased with the high pigmentation of these and the cost was very affordable as well. I started with the branch and had looked at several photographs online to get the coloring of the bird correct and one photo had the bird sitting on a branch with some red berries, so I hand painted those in.

I think one of the most challenging parts of watercoloring is that you if you want white you must not paint the paper in that spot! Watercoloring is somewhat forgiving in that you can go back in with a very wet clean brush and add the water to the parts you want to lighten by wetting and then drying your brush and soaking up the water in that spot. Most if not all the color will be removed. After watercoloring I trimmed out my bird and mounted it on foam tape to the frame from A Lovely Birthday. I stamped the sentiment directly onto the frame.

The beautiful pattern paper is from the Spring Lilacs paper pad. For my little banner I stamped just the bottom portion of the banner included in the A Lovely Birthday and trimmed it out. Some stitching and some tiny rhinestones finished my card. I hope you give watercoloring a try if you haven't already! Have a blessed day :)

A Lovely Birthday

Winter Birds

Spring Lilacs Paper Pad