Birdhouse for Watercolor Weekend

Hello Ai Watercolor fans!  Time for another Art Impressions Watercolour Weekend.

I've been wanting to try mixing an ink blended background with my watercolour stamps, and came up with a card design that I thought would work.

Using my #565 Deep Blue Tombow Dual Brush Marker, I coloured up one of the birdhouses from 5261 -WC Large Birdhouse Set, and then went over it with #969 Chocolate, before stamping it onto my Bristol Smooth cardstock.  I used a 3 1/4" circle die to create a mask using some printer paper, and taped it down, positioning it over the top of the birdhouse.  With my blender brushes, I used 4 colours of Distress Oxide inks to create the suggestion of a sky (Broken China and Faded Jeans) and a grassy hillside (Crushed Olive and Mowed Lawn).  I was careful to get fairly close to the birdhouse, but mainly avoided it with the inks. 

With the mask still in place, I used the two grasses from 4875 - Garden Wagon Mini Set inked in #076 Light Olive to stamp in the grass around the base of the birdhouse.  From 5008 - WC Flower Set 3, I chose one of the long stemmed flowers, and inked up the stems in #158 Dark Olive, and the blooms in #856 Chinese Red. *I didn't touch any of these with my damp brush, as their definition would've disappeared, but also the nature of the Distress Ink background is to turn a milky-white colour when it meets water, which I didn't want.

I did use my damp #4 paintbrush to soften the lines of the birdhouse, then I added in #969 Chocolate from my palette to paint streaks of brown on the post to create a woodgrain effect.  #856 was added to the roof, and #565 was painted on the house itself, and on the base.  I used a darker shade of #565 to add shadows under the eaves, in the holes, and down the post.  I used the two bird images from the 5261 - WC Large Birdhouse Set in #565/969 to stamp them on top of the inked background.  I painted in shades of #565 to give the birds colour, again being careful to keep my brush inside the images to avoid bleeding into the background.  Of course, being from Toronto, I had to make them into Blue Jays (you baseball fans will get that!).

The sentiment is from the Exclusive Daisy Set available through Scrapbook.com, stamped in Versafine Onyx Black ink.  The image was die cut with the 5063 A2 Rectangle Double Stitched Dies, mounted on some dark red cardstock, and adhered to the base with 3D foam tape.  Be sure to check out the Ai blog this Saturday to see what Dot & Tricia have to share, too.