Spread Your Wings + Watercolor Effects

Hello! Have you picked up the January Box from The Hedgehog Hollow yet? It’s probably my favorite one so far… ok, I say that about all the boxes, but this one really strikes my fancy. I love geometric designs. I also love making backgrounds. Especially watercolor effects; this one is done with salt. Read on!

For today’s card, I enlisted the help of a Deckle Edge Square Die from Honey Bee Stamps. I turned it and cut a diamond shaped window to showcase one of the gorgeous chipboard elements from the box!

To start, I cut the diamond shape from a piece of A2 sized Royal Sundance Felt Cardstock. Royal Sundance is one of my favorite papers because of its fancy-looking texture. It looks like watercolor paper 🙂

Next, I added foam tape to the back and adhered a piece of black cardstock, so I had somewhere to attach my soon-to-be watercolored piece.

I used the same die to cut a piece of watercolor paper and spritzed it wet with a mister. Then, I carefully squeezed two of my Aqua Flow Pens (Fresh Green and Aqua Splash) to add a few drops of color into the water.

After that, I picked up the square and gently swirled it until the colors just started to blend, then set it down and added a few grains of salt.

I love the look that salt creates in watercolor paint. It makes all kinds of variations and blooms, and it doesn’t matter what kind you use (I just pinched a bit of sea salt from the kitchen).

If you want to see the salt in action, I saved a tiny time-lapse in Card Bits on my Instagram. 🙂

Once the watercolor paper was dry, I dusted off any extra salt grains and adhered it back in place on my card front.

The chipboard butterfly was my favorite, so I inked it up with Memento in Tuxedo Black and laid it aside to dry.

Meanwhile, I heat embossed the sentiment in white on the edge of a piece of black cardstock and trimmed off the strip.

Then, I attached the sentiment flush to my card front with some glue tape and used Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive to adhere the butterfly over the recessed area.

And finally, I added the card front to an A2 base.

Thanks for reading today! I hope you liked today’s card and the neat watercolor effect I did with the salt. Is there a trick you like to use or want to see me use with paints? Let me know below in the comments!