Watercoloring with Stampin' Write Markers

I think most people know that I absolutely love my Stampin' Write markers, so you'd think that I could answer just about any question about them, but today I received an e-mail with a question that had me stumped. The question was whether Stampin' Write markers could be used for water coloring and shading.


Well, since I'm not much of a watercolor artist, I admit I have never used our markers for these purposes. I had heard that you can use a blender pen or an aqua painter with our markers on watercolor paper to achieve great blending and watercolor results, but I really didn't have any first hand knowledge. So tonight I tried it out and the rumors were right! the combination of our markers, watercolor paper and either a blender pen or an aqua painter makes it possible for even someone like me to get great watercolor results.

On this card I used an image form the Fruit Stand set. I used old olive and certainly celery markers for the leaves and stem. I used elegant eggplant, lavender lace and so saffron markers for the flower. For the berries I used elegant eggplant, lavender lace and bravo burgundy. I first added color using the markers and then blended the color using an aqua painter. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to blend the lighter and darker shades of colors. I may just be water coloring a lot more in the future.

While I was experimenting with markers and water coloring I thought I might as well incorporate this into my Marker Techniques 102 class, which was postponed to tonight from this weekend. With last week being as crazy as it was I simply was not ready to teach this class Saturday morning, so we postponed until tonight. To be completely honest, I was kind of winging it tonight as well. Not with the techniques (I have known which techniques I wanted to teach a long time ago) but definitely with the samples. This ended up being the class card for the water coloring with markers technique. Giuli used Regal Rose and Rose red to color the roses and blended the two shades with a blender pen. The stems and greeting were colored/stamped in always artichoke. An always artichoke mat was also used for the main image, which is mounted to the river rock card base with dimensionals. Two designer papers were also used on the card base: Rose Red prints double sided designer series paper and ginger blossoms double sided designer series paper.

I think Giuli did a lovely job with this card tonight and I had a fun time trying out and teaching a new technique! I'll post more marker technique cards later this week.