Watercolor Wash Background for a Quick Elegant Card

Happy Friday!  Clean and simple cards are probably my favorite style.  I love cards that have an elegant and clean look.  This one has that look and is fairly simple to create.

I started with mixed media paper - it is heavy than cardstock and can withstand watercoloring, but it is not as heavy as watercolor paper.   I die cut the Believe in the Magic die and ran it back and forth through my die cutting machine a couple of times.  This ensured that the pieces cut nicely with the heavier paper.

You can see here that I did need to use my pokey tool to get some of the smaller pieces out of the die cut.  But it did cut very cleanly.

Next I taped a 6 x 4.75 inch piece of the mixed media paper to my watercolor board.  I use a masonite board.  This keeps the paper fairly straight and flat while I water color.

I placed my die cuts on top roughly where I intended to place them on the final card and then used the green washi tape to indicate the outside edges of the image.  This will be my "guide" when creating the background wash.

I used two blue inks, two blue green inks and lots of water when creating this wash.  I tried to keep somewhat within my taped boundaries.  Between colors I used my heat tool set on low to both move the wash and dry it.

When finished, I trimmed the panel to 5.5 x 4.25 inches and adhered it to an A2 card base.  I glued my die cut images on top.

As a final touch I added a few acrylic "drops" using Crystal Effects to glue them down.

A word of caution about cards like this - no two come out alike.  I find them fun to make and the next one I create is usually my favorite.  They are quick and look very elegant.  This is a great way to loosen up your artwork/card making.  (But if you're the type where each card has to be EXACTLY like the one before it - you may only want to make one of these!  LOL!)

Dies: Cottage Cutz Believe in the Magic

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