Sweet Fades Challenge on the Emerald Creek Dares Blog

It's time for a brand new challenge on the Emerald Creek Dares blog, featuring "Sweet Fades", focusing on quick ombre techniques.  For my project I decided that I would create a Happy Birthday card using some of the wonderful scenery stamps and combining them with watercolouring. You'll want to make sure to read through the entire post as there is a bonus card at the bottom of the post. Let's get started so that I can share with you how to create a quick scene card.

Before stamping, the ink you will need to use is either Archival Ink or StazOn. These two inks will make it so that the marker colours and ink won't muddy together. For the stamping on my card I used Ranger Ink - Jet Black Archival Ink.

To start building your scene on the watercolour paper, you'll need to first cut a piece of watercolour paper to 3 3/4" x 5". Once the paper has been cut, apply Jet Black Archival Ink to the Wired stamp and stamp  on the left hand side of the paper, make sure to leave some room for the sky at the top of the paper. 

Once the wired stamp has been stamped, apply Jet Black Archival Ink to the Take 1 stamp and stamp to the right of the wired stamp.

With the trees stamped, apply Jet Black Archival Ink to Stumpy and stamp in between the wired image and the take 1 image.

With stumpy stamped, apply Jet Black Archival Ink to the Grass stamp and stamp at the bottom of the watercolour paper. Continue to apply ink to the grass stamp, until you've created a row of grass at the bottom.

With the stamping done, now it's time to move on to the watercolouring. To start, take your Rusty Hinge Distress Marker and apply some strokes to each mountain. Once the colour has been laid down, use your water brush to move the colour so that you create dark and light areas on the mountain.

After the mountains have been coloured, add some Gathered Twigs Distress Marker strokes to the logs on the fence. After the colour has been laid down, use your water brush to move the colour so that you create dark and light areas on the logs.

Once the fence has been coloured, now it's time to add strokes of Peeled Paint Distress Marker to the grass. Start in one section with the strokes and then use your water brush to move the colour so that you create dark and light areas in the grass. Continue this step until the grass area has been covered with shades of Peeled Paint Distress Marker.

Once the water has dried on the grass, mountains and fence, you can always add in a bit more colour and move it around with your water brush if you want certain areas darker.

For the stump, apply strokes of Gathered Twigs Distress Marker and then use your water brush to move the colour so that you create dark and light areas on the stump. Once the water has dried from colouring the stump the first time, you can always go back in and add more colour and then move the colour out with your water brush. 

For the Trees, you'll need to apply strokes of Gathered Twigs Distress Marker to the base of the bushy tree and to the entire branch looking tree. Once the colour has been laid down, use your water brush to move the colour throughout the tree base and branchy tree so that you create dark and light areas. For the top of the bushy tree, add strokes of Mowed Lawn and Peeled Paint. Use your water brush to move the colour throughout the top of the bushy tree to create light and dark areas.

For the grass, add strokes of Mowed Lawn and Peeled Paint Distress Marker through out the grass. With your water brush, move and combine the colours so that you create dark and light areas throughout the grass.

For the sky, start by adding strokes of Dried Marigold Distress Marker and use your water brush to move the colour so that you create dark and light areas in the sky. With the Dried Marigold laid down, add a few strokes of Tattered Rose Distress marker throughout and use your water brush to move the colour so that you continue to create dark and light areas in the sky. The last colour strokes you'll need to add to the sky is Fossilized Amber. Once the strokes of Fossilized Amber have been laid down, use your water brush to move the colour so that you create dark and light areas in the sky.

Here's what the card looks like finished with all the colours together.

Since I didn't have room on the outside for a sentiment, I applied Jet Black Archival ink to the Happy Birthday stamp and stamped in the middle of the inside of the card.

Products Used From Emerald Creek:

- Happy Birthday

- Stumpy

- Wired

- Grass

- Take 1

- 100lb White Cardstock

Other Products Used:

- Ranger Ink: Jet Black Archival Ink

- Ranger Ink/Tim Holtz: Distress Markers - Fossilized Amber, Tattered Rose, Dried Marigold, Mowed Lawn, Rusty Hinge, Gathered Twigs and Peeled Paint, Distress Ink - Vintage Photo Distress Ink and Water Brush

- Tim Holtz Kraft Core: Nostalgic Collection - #13

- Crafters Companion: Watercolour Paper

Since I had so much fun making the first scene card, I decided that I would play with the Gone Fishin' stamp and use the watercolour technique as I had done with the previous card. The steps are the same for this card as they are for the first card, the only difference is there are a few extra colours added in which you'll find in the supplies used list.

Products Used from Emerald Creek: 

- Gone Fishin' 

- Happy Birthday

- 100lb White Cardstock

Other Products Used:

- Ranger Ink: Jet Black Archival Ink

- Ranger Ink/Tim Holtz: Distress Markers - Fossilized Amber, Tattered Rose, Dried Marigold, Mowed Lawn, Rusty Hinge, Gathered Twigs, Black Soot, Scattered Straw, Tea Dye, Forest Moss, Faded Jeans and Peeled Paint, Distress Ink - Vintage Photo Distress Ink and Water Brush

- Tim Holtz Kraft Core: Nostalgic Collection - #17

- Crafters Companion: Watercolour Paper

Make sure that you go and check out the rest of the Emerald Creek Dares Design Team as they have all created fantastic pieces for this weeks challenge:

Deb

Pam

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my water colour card. Don't forget to enter your project into our Emerald Creek Dares Challenge for your chance to win a $25.00 gift certificate for the Emerald Creek Store!

-Katelyn