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.