{Spotlight Project} Maria Watercolors with Easter Egg Dye

If you know me, you may have heard the word "frugal" cross my lips in describing myself. Today's idea just might take the cake for "frugalest" ever. But before you change the station, let me show you what I created with the Easter egg dye leftover after DD and I dyed two dozen eggs. Or maybe we should have dyed 25 dozen instead??? You be the judge!

I'm calling it a new and different way to watercolor! Oh and before I forget, you can see what happened to the missing rectangle of the panel in this post.

STEP 1

Gathered my supplies - leftover Easter egg dye (for cold water, with a shot of vinegar in it even!) smooth surface paper (don't know if this is watercolor paper or not, but it held up to all the water just fine), some brushes and some stamps (Born to Roam and Strong Women)

STEP 2

Painted horizontal stripes of yellow followed by vertical stripes...

STEP 3

... then added just horizontal blue stripes between the yellow stripes, just slightly overlapping the bottom edge of the still-wet yellow stripes. Don't know if it's the egg dye concoction or the smooth paper, but these colors moved and blended like melted butter! 

 STEP 4

 Helped the magic happen a little by twisting and turning the panel.

STEP 5

And because it was so addicting, I made a couple more panels ;)
The toughest part was waiting for them to dry. I didn't want to use my heat gun.

STEP 6

The hardest part was deciding which panel to work with. I chose a sentiment from Strong Women, so went with one of the panels in feminine colors, created the same way, just using yellow and red instead of yellow and blue. Die cut a window from the panel, some yellow craft foam to back it with, stamped the sentiment onto my cardbase and - prepare for frugal overload - added some strips of envelope liner to frame the window!

Doesn't it make you wish it was nearly Easter again, so you could try this with your leftovers?!? I have since dumped my leftover leftovers down the drain, but not before I created some paper with mega splats and splatters...

... dyed some crepe paper ...

... and an old cotton dish towel cut into panels! Notice that coral strip in the upper right corner of the photo? I dipped the panel into orange and then into the red color to get coral. I laid them all onto stacks of scrap paper to absorb some of the moisture.

 And have a looksee at what emerged when I picked up the dried coral panel. How cool is this? Scrap paper, maybe, but (surprise, surprise) it ain't gettin' thrown away! Now I've just got to use all this stuff on cards!

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Remember if you try out any of the techniques from our Spotlight posts and hook your project up at our Spotlight Project Showcase  you have a chance to win a $15 gift certificate (random drawing) OR your choice of 5x7 stamp set + a Spotlight Project guest designer spot (randomly drawn from the Top 3 picks).

Tschüss,

Maria