DIY Watercoloring with Reinkers

Hello friends,

Happy Monday! I am back today with another DIY "Saturday" post... a bit late... I am not entirely sure how that happened except that there might have been some cold medicine involved. :)  I came down with the mother of all colds towards the end of last week and have been in a bit of a fog over the past couple days.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you some photos of how I created my hombre watercolor background featured in this card last week.   I have just begun to explore watercoloring over the past month, and I was looking for a way to play around with the look without investing money and craft room space on a technique that I may not like.  As I was experimenting, I recalled a workshop many years ago, where the teacher taught us how to watercolor with our ink pads.  So if ink pads would work- why not reinkers?

Here is what you will need:

• Watercolor paper
• 2-3 DYE ink reinkers- I used my very old Stampin' Up shades: Barely Banana, Blush Blossom, and Pink Pirouette

TIP: Alcohol ink reinkers will not work for this technique.  Don't ask me how I know it, except for saying that my fingers were so red that it looked like I was interning at Sweeney Todd's barbershop....

• Water brush- I kept mine empty, just a preference
• Water- duh

First I brushed the watercolor paper with a bit of water.  I find that having the paper a bit moist helps the ink blend from the get-go. 

Then I places a few drops of each color of reinker on the paper. 

Then using a bit more water, I blended the colors with the brush using loose strokes and moving down the paper from lightest to darkest.  If you want to go over the light areas again, don't forget to rinse your brush.  

Now let it dry, this is the hard part, but a heat gun will speed up the process.  Take care if you decide to move the paper.  Depending on how wet it is, it may drip and run. 

Then I decided to heat emboss a sentiment from Mama Elephant's Make a Wish set.  Watercolor paper is pretty porous, so you may want to use a foam pad under your project, along with lots of pressure on the stamp impression. 

And here is the finished project!  I attached the watercolor panel with foam tape to a yellow card stock base. 

I love finding new uses for supplies that are already in my stash!  I also used a reinker to achieve a watercolor look in this card for the latest Avery Elle I {heart} U challenge. I used only one color of reinker for that card- so it was even more simple. 

Well I hope this how-to has been helpful and I would love to see your watercolor masterpieces with reinkers. Link me up in the comments section and I will pop by to take a look!  

Thanks so much for stopping by!!! 

Katie