Watercoloured Thistles

My goodness, January is flying by!  It's already time to remind you about the current CAS Watercolour challenge.

I was inspired to make this card for a friend who does lovely botanical watercolours and she's particularly fond of thistles.

I put the thistle stamp in my MISTI and used Distress markers to colour it - I did each colour separately, applying the marker directly to the stamp, then spritzing lightly with water (the mini mister is best for this as you don't get too much water) and stamping.  When I was happy with the result, I let it air dry.

My fellow Design Team member, Karen Dunbrook (of the Snippets blog), always inspires me with her use of drywall tape for a stencil - I found a scrap of drywall tape on the ground of a new house being built next door so grabbed it!

In keeping with the watercolour challenge, I smooshed a bit of Distress Chipped Sapphire on my craft mat and spritzed it with water to get it paler and thinner.  I laid the dry wall tape over the thistle, and used a narrow flat paintbrush to go over bits of it - it was easy to see where the thistle was so could avoid stenciling on it.  I really like the result as it has a definite watercolour feel to it - as opposed to sponging over a stencil.

I stamped a small vertical sentiment in Memento Plum Berry, trimmed the panel down, bordered it with navy blue cs, and used a cream card base.

It's great to have a birthday card done for a friend a few months ahead of the birthday!!

Please join us with your watercolour birthday cards - you have until January 24th to link up at CAS Watercolour.

Supplies:

Stamps - Hero Arts Elegant Weeds, Rosie's Roadshow sentiment

Ink - Distress Chipped Sapphire, Memento Plum Berry

Paper - watercolour paper, navy cs, PTI Vintage Cream cs

Size - A2

Accessories - various purple and green Distress markers, drywall tape