Watercolor Christmas with Technique Tuesday

Technique Tuesday is doing a "Watercolor Christmas" feature today, and I am happy to be joining along.  I am certainly at the beginner level for watercoloring, but hopefully this project will help inspire you to pick up a paintbrush and just go for it.  

One thing I've learned is that embossing helps me a lot when I watercolor.  I don't execute the loose feel very well yet, so embossing my images really helps me.  Bounds are set, and I simply have to work within them.   I embossed this beautiful Joyous Juniper Stamp Set from Technique Tuesday in silver several times to cover my cardfront and frame a sentiment from their Classic Christmas Sentiments stamp set. 

Then, I got to work watercoloring.  I have just basic supplies, so I mixed a few colors to create the shades I wanted.  Although I was tempted to do this card in bright reds and greens, I'm a lover of blue, so I embraced juniper's natural colors.  

The Greenhouse Society line of stamps from Technique Tuesday has beautiful images and the packaging comes with a colored image of the stamps.  This is really helpful to show where shading and highlights go when you are still learning this skill.  When I started watercoloring, I put a light layer of color down on the images, and then I went back in with deeper shades of the blues and greens.  I added and added until I was content.  And when it was dry, I went back in and added a little more. ;) Obviously I was going for a bit more dramatic look here and not subtle shading.  I loved the contrast of the deep colors against the shiny silver embossing.  

Thanks for stopping by today!  You can find lots more wonderful stamps in the Technique Tuesday Christmas Collection here. I hope you'll check it out and give watercoloring a go this week.  Whether you are experienced or not, it's a lot of fun!