CAS410 New Blue Hello

Happy New Year, everyone!!!!!!!  Did you have fun ringing in the new year?  I tried, but unfortunately, I fell asleep around 11pm.  LOL!

This week's CAS challenge is to show us your new stuff.  It could be a stamp, new sequins, new ribbon, whatever you bought recently and haven't used yet.  So for CAS410, I pulled out this new stamp set from Concord and 9th called Hello Lovely.  I bought it during a fabulous Christmas sale over at Ellen Hutson along with some new Daniel Smith watercolor paints.

The flower was stamped with SU Archival Black ink onto some cold press watercolor paper.  You can tell the difference between hot press and cold press by looking at the paper.  If the paper is smooth, it is most likely hot press, whereas cold press is bumpy and uneven.  I knew I wanted to watercolor this image, so I wanted to see how it stamped on the bumpy cold press watercolor paper.

I used my MISTI tool to help me stamp this a couple of times.  Love that MISTI!  I let this sit for a few minutes so it was totally dry before I colored it.  While this was drying, I pulled out my Daniel Smith watercolor paints and decided on the colors I wanted to use.  I used a couple of blues, a couple of greens, and a pale pale yellow.

I started by painting around the flowers and leaves with the pale yellow paint.  I just wanted that soft wash for a hint of yellow around the bouquet.  Once that was dry, I painted the flowers with the two blue paints.  I went slow and let some flowers dry before I colored the next one.  I repeated this process with the leaves.  I went for a loose watercolor on this, so I left some areas white.  If you know me, that's really hard for me because I always "colored inside the lines."  I'm experimenting with other ways to color, and this actually turned out to be more fun than I thought.  :-)

After this piece dried overnight, I put it back into my MISTI and stamped the sentiment.  I adhered this to an olive green card base for that extra pop of color.  Because this is a CAS - Clean And Simple - challenge, I did not add anything else to this card.  I'm keeping it embellishment free so it adheres to the CAS rules.  :-)

Come play along in our CAS410 challenge and show off your new stamping toys with us!  Here's to a wonderful 2017!!