Make it Monday #153 - Watercoloured Backgrounds with Heat Embossed Sentiments

I love watercolouring, and was glad of the chance to practice! I would love to be able to watercolour better, and one of these days, I'll take a class... Dawn did a wonderful, clean and simple example of the watercolour process on this weeks MIM, but I have a hard time keeping my cards this clean, so I jazzed it up a bit. I used PTI's Year of Flowers: Violets for the flowers, and the sentiment (which was stamped in Versamark Black Onyx and embossed with clear powder) is from Bigger Blooms (or is it Mini Blooms??), also PTI. I used a variety of Ranger Distress Inks smooshed on my craft sheet, and a paintbrush to pick up the colour and fill in the stamps. I used watercolour paper, which was first dampened with a large brush, then just dropped on the colours of ink, letting it bleed and blend where it would. The panel was adhered to PTI's Plum cardstock. Thanks for looking!

I added Wink of Stella onto the flower petals, because if you've ever looked closely at African Violet petals, they do have a real shimmer to them. I added some Buttercup Liquid Pearls to the centers of the flowers.

And here is a close up, showing the shimmer of the flowers (hopefully--the light isn't good right now!)