Season Of Joy

Hi my friends, I've been itching to have more playtime with my Tim Holtz/Ranger Distress Watercolor Pencils. The weather has turned very chilly in my neck of the woods and the boffins at the Met Office are forecasting snow soon - seriously it's still September so I decided to embrace the weather and the Christmas vibes and try out some water colouring with Season Of Joy, a favourite 2021 Christmas stamp set from Simon Says Stamp. There are amazing watercolour artists out there and I'm not one of them but hey I found the Distress Watercolor Pencils easy to use, had great fun and was very happy with the results.

Before I began this adventure I decided to create a Distress Watercolor Pencils palette and as luck would have it,  I just happened to have an empty Ranger Distress/Alcohol Ink palette. I removed the sharpener from it's holder, sharpened each pencil in to a Simon Says Triangle Tray, carefully tipped the sharpenings into the individual wells, added 3 or 4 drops of water using a glass dropper dispenser and mixed using a small brush

The wet medium will dry in the palette but can be re-activated with drops of water or a wet brush.

I trimmed Distress Watercolor card to 3" square, marked off with a ruler and pencil to create 9 squares and created swatches for the lid. I'm not going to lie, it did take a bit of time but was well worth it and a little tip, brush out your sharpener after each pencil to prevent contamination of the next colour and no prizes for guessing why I'm sharing those words of wisdom.

I stamped the large poinsettia image from Simon Says Season Of Joy on to an A2 panel of Distress Watercolor card, inked with Simon Says Intense Black and heat embossed with Simon Says Clear Embossing Powder. I began by applying a layer of water, picked up the colour from the well and dropped on to sections of the image, letting the water work it's magic. Once I had completed the first layer of colour on the flowers, I dried them and began to add more layers of colour, drying between layers. I repeated the process on the leaves and dried thoroughly. I used a large brush to apply a wash of Antique Linen to the background and the heat embossing provided a barrier preventing the colours of the image mixing with the background.

I separated the words on the stamp set with masking tape and stamped with Candied Apple on the top and Black Soot Distress Archival on the bottom. I placed the snowflake stamp from the set on a small Tim Holtz Grid Block, dipped the Antique Linen Distress Watercolor Pencil in to water, applied to the stamp and stamped repeatedly over the background.

I inked up the same stamp with Hickory Smoke Distress Archival and stamped on top of the original images.

I added splatters of Distress Resist Spray, sprinkled with Simon Says White Embossing Powder, tapped off the excess and heat set.

I inked around the edge of the panels with Hickory Smoke Distress Ink using a mini round blending tool, fixed the panel to Simon Says Fog Gray cardstock and fixed to a white card blank.

Have lots of fun if you've got your Distress Watercolor Pencils

Hugs Kath xxx