An Experiment

Y'know how sometimes you just sit and look at the debris left on your scrap table, and some idea pops into your head and you actually say, out loud, "I wonder if you could….?"

That's what happened here.  I had the Prima stitched circle stamps out for another project, and there was a corner of some vellum paper peeking out and I just love messing with watercolor paints so there were two jars of water just waiting to be used, and I wondered if you could watercolor paint on vellum?

After I stamped and white heat embossed the circles, I gathered my Tim Holtz Distress markers for this endeavor, grouping them into color families of 3 or so.

Next, I colored patches on my craft mat, and using a wet brush daubed the color onto the circles.  I mixed the 3 colors and let it blend in some places.

After the first layer was dry, I spritzed the color puddles to re-hydrate them and then touched the circles down onto the paint so it could pick up color in a patchier way.

Here's where I noticed the one big fail of this idea.  The water makes the vellum curl.  And nothing I tried, not leaving overnight under a stack of heavy books, or reverse curling it around a brush handle, or blasting the backside with the heat gun, made the slightest difference.  But they were too pretty to throw away, so I decided to adhere the heck out of them.  I used a dot roller, thinking that if I have to see adhesive through the vellum, at least let it be kinda cool to look at.  

 Anyway…that's the result of an experiment.  

Can't say it's a raging success, but like I overheard in a store dressing room one time, a daughter helpfully telling her mom, "it's gross, but it's not horrible."  

 Lo, thanks for stopping by again today!  I hope you learned something!  

This card was posted recently at Love is in the Details.