 Hello everyone and welcome back, it's Vicky here and today I'm showcasing the new watercolor brushes by Altenew. This set is called Tropical Fiesta, it comes with 10 colors, it has a good range of colors all the way through the rainbow colors and I'm going to show you here a swatch where you can see how nice and vibrant all those colors are, hence the name Tropical Fiesta. These colors are a great addition to the other two sets that Altenew already has but if you don't have any sets you will see that with these colors you have a lovely palette to start with. Oh and this one is called Desert Night, it does look like black but depending on how much water you use you can get all shades of blue. I like walking with these watercolor brushes and I did make videos with the previous sets which I'm going to link at the end of this video if you want to get more ideas. There are many ways to use those brushes, the typical one is to stamp your image and color it in but today I'm going to show you three examples on how you can use these brushes to get the perfect watercolor look without effort at all. So I have my misty here and inside I have a piece of watercolor paper, I am working on the flat side of the watercolor paper and I'm going to lay on top some of the flowers and the leaves from this stamp set. The stamp set that I'm using is called Bolt Bunch and it comes with lots of flowers and leaves that are all solid which is really important for this technique. Now if you haven't used solid stamps before it's always nice to prep them just by rubbing them with your finger or with an eraser. Now I'm going over the leaves with the watercolor brush, the one that I'm using here is the lime and I'm going to spray it lightly once with water. Now I'm going to press those images on my paper and you will see that I get a lovely watercolor look, nothing is perfect so it looks as I did it with my brush. Now I'm going back on those leaves and I'm going to add a little bit of the darker green and this is called Sweet Leaf and I'm going to stamp that again. Always I spray a little bit of water before I go and do the stamping, this helps those colors blend together easily. Now I'm going to clean up those stamps and I will move on to the flowers. Again I will repeat the same technique, first I'm going to apply the lighter color which is fresh lemon and I'm going to apply the color, spray a little bit of water, stamp the images and then I will go back and add a little bit of the darker shade which is Sun Kissed, only at the center or at the base of a flower just to add some variation on the color. Also keep in mind that all the watercolor brushes that I'm using today come from this Tropical Fiesta set of brush markers, I'm not using any other colors from the previous sets that have been released, although I do have them, just because I wanted you to see that with that color palette you get enough colors to start with and you can do lots and lots of different variations and I will continue laying down the flowers and the leaves in different positions until I'm happy with the outcome. I will not introduce any new colors, I will just use those four colors that I started with, all the flowers are going to be identical in terms of color, as well as the leaves. And you can see the technique one more time here, just laying the color all over the leaves, spray with water, stamp and then go back and add my shading. This technique will stain your clear stumps just a little bit, they will end up having a tint like you see here but that doesn't affect the stamping at all and I really don't mind if I have stained clear stumps, it means that they were well loved and used. So this is the pattern paper that I have created, I used a green card base to stick that down, I cut out the word hugs as a sentiment and I end up having a lovely card with watercolor look and no effort at all anyone can do this technique. Now let's move on to the second card, here I'm working on a small stamping block and I'm working with two brushes, this one is turquoise and I'm also going to use lime at the bottom. Now I'm going to spray water on top of this stamping block and I didn't spray enough so you will see the mistake here, so as I lay it down those colors are not going to mix together and blend but this is easily fixed, I'm working on watercolor paper so I'm just going to remove the block, add more water on top of it, I spread three times or even more so that I can place it on top and now the water is going to help all that color that I have on my page to mix. If you leave the stamping block there for an hour or so it is going to look nice and vibrant, if you remove it like I did here you will end up with a more subtle look which is exactly what I'm going for for this card just because I want this to be my background and this I didn't let enough time for all that water to soak into the paper, I'm just removing the extra with a cloth and I end up having a lovely watercolor background. Now as the focal point I'm going to use this tiny little stamp, this is called lavender bud and we usually underestimate those tiny little stamps but they are great to work with plus they are inexpensive and you can get lovely cuts out of them. So here I'm just using the flower and I'm going on top of it with purple wine, spray a little bit of water I'm going to stamp that again I'm working on watercolor paper of course and I'm going to add the darker shade again with the same color so you don't really need to have extra shades you can build up color with extra layers of the same brush and of course you can add some touches here and there directly with your brush. Now I need to stamp the stem and the stem is there are many ways where you can place it and since I want to use the die on top I must stamp it in a different position and it's not going too much so my work around here is to just cut it out without stamping the green part and now I have the negative which I'm going to place back into my misty I am going to place the stem and it's going to fall inside those cutouts and now I can place back my cutout and stamp directly on top this is guaranteed that you will get everything nicely aligned so again I'm using the same technique going first with a lighter color spraying stamping and then I will go back and add a darker shade of green and again you can go directly on the stamped image with that brush or just do it like I am. Now the same tiny little stamp set comes with a sentiment that says thanks which I'm going to stamp on the background as I created earlier with black ink. I have already added foam tape at the back of my flower I'm going to stick that on top of my background and then just to add a little bit of bling I'm going to add a few gems and for my card base I looked through my stash to find a cardstock that matches perfectly the color of the flower so I'm going to add this panel that I have created with foam tape at the back directly on top and I have a lovely card. Now I'm going to show you a really fun technique that ends up into a very artistic looking card for that I will be using these circles this come from the trendy circles stamp set they have different polka dot designs but I'm going to use them on the reverse so when I'm going to stamp them you will not see any design only the solid back. With my watercolor brushes I'm going to apply color and I'm using desert night, tirquoise and lime. I love this color combination for boys cards and I think this is a great card for teenagers because you will see it's going to end up looking very modern and fun. Now for this technique it's very important to spray lots of water and then close the door of the misty very fast. This way you don't get the perfect stamping but you will get splashes all around which gives that lovely artistic look. The more water you add and the more force you put on the door of the misty as you close it the more splashes you will end up having and of course if you didn't get enough splashes you can always go back and add more color and more water and do it one more time and of course I can go back again and again until I'm happy with the amount of circles that I have on my page. Any solid stamps that you have will work with this technique. The result is really artistic looking and it's so much fun to create. And again the secret for this technique to work is to add enough water and force the door of the misty as you close it down. In the same stamp set the 20 circles there is one sentiment that says happy birthday which I'm going to stamp with black ink in different areas. In total I'm going to stamp the sentiment three times some of those are offset a little bit so they are coming outside of the page and this type of imperfection really adds on to the whole look of the card. And again remember I'm working on watercolor paper which is quite textured so I have to stamp the sentiment a couple of times to get a good impression. For completing my card I have cut out a four and a quarter by five and a half panel. This comes from a paper pad by Altenew which is called essential black and white paper pack and I have foam tape at the back of my panel and I'm going to stick that down making sure that is not perfectly aligned. And here is the finished look and I think that this card would work great for teenagers and both for men and women. And here are some close-up photos on all the cards that I made for today. This is part of a blog hope so head over to my blog for all the details and the giveaways. I hope you had fun today and that you got inspired to use your watercolor brushes in other ways than just coloring inside the lines. Thank you all so much for joining me today and I'll see you all next time.