Loving my new Antique Rose stamp lately and wanted to try some watercolor effects with it. I stamped all of these flowers with the Archival black ink so the water wouldn’t affect the lines, and used watercolor paper (just the pad from the kid’s section at Target) and Neenah white cardstock, which isn’t technically watercolor paper, but it’s smooth and thick.

Here are the results. These use the same Distress inks colored onto an acrylic block and then painted onto the stamped image with a brush. These are both watercolor paper. I didn’t think the yellow was vibrant enough on the second one, so I just applied the ink pad directly to the paper.

For this flower, using the same inks, I used the Neenah white cardstock, not watercolor paper at all. I love how strong the colors are here. I feel that the first flower on the watercolor paper gave more of a painted feel, but that the colors really did well on the smooth cardstock and didn’t seem to sink into the paper.

These next two flowers use different colors of Distress Inks and are stamped on the watercolor paper. I don’t think it blended as well on this paper, the inks seem to grab hold of the surface of the paper and not blend as when using a smoother cardstock.

I would’ve preferred the purple and blue combo to more blended, but it just wasn’t happening.

And just for fun, I’ll show you how Distress Inks can also watercolor on wood. This is the same stamp, burned into the wood with a Hotmarks Tool and then painted (with very little water). I used a blender tool for the blue and I used a Tombow marker to add color straight to the flower and words as well. There’s more on this project on my blog if you’re interested.

If you’re like me and love to see how the same material reacts with different media, this stamp is a good one to try, because it has a lot of open area for color, but it’s also shaded a bit so you don’t have to spend forever to get a dimensional look.

Hop over to the store if you want your own stamp and don’t forget, if it’s sold out (there’s only one in there right now), just use the Custom Order button and get exactly what you want at no extra cost!

Hope you’ll join in the Watercoloring Challenge  this month to try to win $25 to the store! Just break out your Hero Arts stamps, digi stamps, stencils and dies and paint away!

Happy Sunday!

Antique Rose Stamp

Distress Inks (Abandoned Coral, Barn Door, Picked Raspberry, Squeezed Lemonade, Peacock Feathers, Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon, Mowed Lawn)

Creative Hotmarks Tool

Neenah Solar White Cardstock

Archival Black Ink