Columbine - Clean and Simple Cards + Snowdrop Disaster

Afternoon to everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend with plenty of crafting time. Unfortunately, my weekend was a bit of a non-starter as I had a lot of leg pain which prevented me sleeping and left me pretty wrung out by Sunday. However, all crafting was not lost because on Friday I had printed out a couple of digital stamps and stamped a couple of others on to watercolour paper all ready to be coloured so I was able to spend yesterday just quietly sitting colouring in with my Aquamarkers.

Spring

The theme for the Less is More challenge this week is Spring and for me it is the Aquilegia or, as it is more commonly known, the Columbine that epitomises Spring. I have several varieties in my garden. There are two favourites, one a red and yellow beauty that grows in my wildflower border and the other an alpine plant with a striking blue and white flower that grows in a trough just by the garden gate.   

 

The stamp I used is Columbine from A Passion for Stamps - thanks to Kerry of a Load of Old Pickle ,whose Honeysuckle card I so admired -for leading me to this lovely site.The stamp is a digital stamp so I decided to use my graphic programme and put it together with some lines from Shelley that I thought was particularly appropriate to the Spring theme.

And Spring arose in the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;

The font used is Ancestory SF size 16. Once happy with the positioning of both the flower and the lines, they were printed out on Reeves watercolour paper (12" x 9" pad). I discovered that at 190gsm this paper is ideal for putting through my printer but unfortunately Daler & Rowney at 300gsm  is far too thick.  Once I'd coloured in the columbines I punched the edge with my only Martha Stewart punch as the finishing touch.

I couldn't decide which was my favourite flower colour so did both.

AquaMarkers used: Flame Red, Straw Yellow, Celery, Bamboo, Sepia, Aquamarine, Twilight Blue

Now for the disaster!
My first thought for the theme was kind of predictable - snowdrops - easy, especially as I already had the the lovely Sheena Douglass Spring stamp set. I stamped the snowdrops stamp and my favourite sentiment about Spring on to a pre-made base card. I then coloured the snowdrops using ProMarkers and this was the result:

The card was the wrong type for using ProMarkers on, it just soaked up the colour and became really smudgy looking. Lesson learned - the right card is needed for the job, especially if making a one layer card.

An Old Tip but A Good One
I'm sure many of you know this one but for those new to watercolouring - and it isn't so long ago that I was a total beginner, and I'm still no expert - this may be worth knowing and  it is that a white tile makes an ideal palette when working with AquaMarkers. Here's a photo of mine after my watercolour session. I've not washed the paint daubs off because a wet paintbrush makes the paint usable again - no waste!

Hope this helps some of you,