 Hi there, it's Sandy Alnok and today I'm going to show you some super easy watercolor. I'm going to make two cards, Mother's Day and Father's Day, do them both at the same time and get them both done quick. The new release from Colorado Craft Company has these two stamp sets and I've stamped the image from both of them onto watercolor paper, Arches Cold Press, using VersaFine Onyx Black, which doesn't run with watercolor, and I've glued them down using my regular adhesive onto a board so that everything is nice and straight, and I'm using a T-square to make sure it's nice and straight. Using artist tape, I'm going to create the masks for all the areas that I want to paint. First the horizon line, which if it's right at the bottom of the images, then they look like they're up against the wall. If it's a little higher up, the wall looks a little further back. I'll turn the T-square the other way and start putting down tape for the stripes themselves. I'm going to have a stripe that is as wide as my T-square and then one skinnier, the width of the tape, and then the T-square and then the tape. The fact that they're uneven is going to make this look even more whimsical and make it more forgiving because it's obviously and intentionally not even. The watercolors I'm using are from Daniel Smith, and you could use other things too. You could use distress inks, et cetera. Just mix up a really thin puddle of the color to fill in the area. I'm using a really big brush. It's number 12. You could do this with a smaller brush, but look how quick it happens and evenly with one big old brush. I always say try to use a bigger brush than you think you need because it's going to help to keep you looser and that sort of thing. You won't end up with a ton of tiny brush strokes. You can get nice big areas. The only area you have to paint around in each one of these is wherever this stamp interacts with that stripe. It's way easier to do stripes than it is a full background because you don't have to worry about trying to get the whole background. Even you're only worried about that one striped area. And each area you could just heat set each one of those stripes as you go. I'm not going to do that, and I'm doing it specifically so I can show you how to repair things if they don't go quite well. The paint on the left is still wet while I'm working on the one on the right, but I'm keeping an eyeball on the card on the left just to see how the water color dries. Things will move as it starts to just sit there. And I've noticed there's a place where some of the paint that was on the tape moved into the painted stripe. It took a clean brush and just went over it and all of that went away. So if you end up getting little areas like that, then go ahead and paint right over top of it. If you're using really pale colors like this, that's a real easy repair to make. If you're using heavier colors or if you get worried about trying to make every stripe exactly match every other stripe, then you're going to end up in trouble. This tape now, when I peel it off, look how perfectly it comes off. Like those stripes are really perfect. It does pick up a little of the ink. I think because I didn't wait for that ink to dry at all. I just stamped them and then got started. You might be able to heat set that and make it make it not do that. So the second stripes, when I put the tape down, I'm using new tape because the other tape had the black ink on it, remember? I'm going to place the piece of tape down at the edge and then move it over just a little bit because I wanted to create a white line in between these. Well, why would I want to create a white line? Because if you kiss the two of these edges together, if I were to put the the brown and the blue right next to each other and touching each other, there's going to be a little overlap, most likely. You're going to end up with a darker line in between them. If you leave a white space in between there, just a tiny little white space, it's going to keep each one of those stripes nice and pure. It's going to lighten the background and just make it look fresher. So anything to make watercolor easy is a good thing. And this is going to make your watercolor more successful in keeping the colors from mixing with each other. Just remember, when you put the second piece of tape down, that first stripe has to be really, really dry. This artist's tape is just a wonder. I am very sad that I spent many years using the yellow tape and the frog tape and the blue tape and the green tape. This artist's tape might be more expensive, but look what a nice job it does. It actually does a better job than so many of those other products. So I can highly recommend it. So peel off that horizontal one and the painting is done. How quick is that? You could go through and paint the image as well if you're watercolors, but if you're not, guess what? It looks really cute just like it is. I'm putting them on some dimensional adhesive onto a black card base because that's going to give me some nice contrast. And leaving just a stripe of the card base showing on the left, making a banner is super easy. Just take a little cut with your scissors in the center and then meet that cut from two corners in order to make a banner. And that's a one inch banner. I cut the black card stock at one and a quarter inch. And then all I had to do was finish off the banner with my little detail scissors. And voila, I have a banner. Well, one of them, the Father's Day one has a big empty gap here. So I found a piece of epoxy sticker from like 10 years ago to put a heart there. And then I continued working on the card. I wanted to make them a little special since I felt like I cheated on the front and making that so easy. So I made the inside extra special by painting the same background. I made the horizontal portion of it the same height as the front. So it feels like a continuation from the outside of the card to the inside. And then I have room for a message at the bottom. If you're interested in more on just getting started on watercolor without taking a whole class and everything, go check out my watercolor basics page because that has like a gajillion videos on it that'll give you lots of information. You could also go to the blog hop because Colorado Craft Company has a ton of designers sharing this particular new release. They don't do that each time. So this one is special. If you liked this video, hit the subscribe button and the little bell beside it so that you can get notified when my videos go live. I usually am here, typically Monday, Wednesday and Friday, except on special weeks like this. All right, I'll see you guys again soon. Take care and have a great day. Bye bye.