Watercolour Weekend: Mask It Up!

 It's Watercolour Weekend on the Art Impressions blog, and our theme is 'Mask it Up'!  I'm using one of the new die-only sets from the Fall release for this week's project.  Here is 5367 - WC Birdcage Dies:

I started by diecutting the larger birdcage die from some Masking Paper, then placed it onto my Canson XL Watercolor Paper.  Be sure to stick it down firmly, as you don't want paint or water seeping under the mask.  I began stamping with my flowers - using the small daisy bunch from 4052 - Flower Set in #993 Chrome Orange, then used the circle of V shaped flowers from 4868 - WC Flower Set 2 in both#533 Peacock Blue and #565 Deep Blue, stamping multiple times in a circle to create my clusters.

To add the foliage, I used the two trailing ivy stamps in 4867 - WC Foliage Set 2 New, in #249 Hunter Green, stamping in and around my flowers.  To fill in any empty spots, I used the tiny green in the set with #126 Light Olive - which gave my scene a nice bright punch of colour.  To finish, I picked up #565 from my palette and painted in the background - carefully making sure to paint right up against all of the birdcage bars, so that when the mask was removed, the white 'negative' of the cage remained.  With my fine #1 paintbrush, I painted thin lines around my birdcage to create shadows, and the suggestion that it is a 3D object. 

                           

I added a sentiment from the Exclusive Daisies Set available at Scrapbook.com in Versafine Onyx Black, then die cut my scene with a decorative die.

Birdcage for Watercolour Weekend

 I was so happy to finally pull out the new 5367 - WC Birdcage Set to create a card to kick off the Art Impressions Watercolor Weekends for 2021!

This set consists of dies only - no stamps, so I began by die cutting one of the birdcages in Masking Paper, peeled off the backing, and adhered it to my Canson XL Watercolor Paper.  Then I selected my colour palette of Tombow Dual Brush Markers, and pulled out several sets for flowers & foliage.  Using the tiny circle of v-shaped blossoms from 4868 - WC Flower Set 2, I coloured it up in #856 Chinese Red, #933 Orange and #993 Chrome Orange - stamping several times to create clusters of colourful blooms.  To add foliage, I chose the two trailing ivys in 4867 - WC Foliage Set 2 New, and stamped them in #249 Hunter Green several times, to have ivy trailing out of the birdcage in both directions.  There were still some white areas in the middle of my cage, and I wanted some darker flowers, so I used the tiny dotted flower image from 5074 - Bible Flower Set coloured in #565 Deep Blue in two spots, and then took the small green from the same set and stamped it in the brighter #126 Light Olive - which added some contrasting foliage.

I touched all the stamped images with my damp paintbrush, then picked up #533 Peacock Blue from my palette, and carefully painted the background sky in around all of the birdcage edges (*this is important! If you don't paint right up to the edges of the mask, the 'negative' image of the birdcage will not remain when you remove the mask).  With my painting done, I removed the mask, and using my thin #1 paintbrush, I picked up #565 from my palette, and painted a fine line along the edges of the cage to indicate a shadow.  It also cleans up any ragged edges that remain from your painting.  I decided that a couple of birds would finish things off nicely, so I stamped two of them from 4872 - WC Birds Set in #N55 Cool Grey 7, and used N55, 565 and 533 to add colour.  I went in with my Twintone  42 Navy fine point marker to darken the eyes, beak and legs.

I cut the image out with the 5063 - A2 Rectangle Double Stitched Dies, leaving enough space below to add the sentiment from the Hydrangea Exclusive set available through Scrapbook.com.  After matting it with red, I adhered it to my patterned base using 3D Foam Adhesive.