{Spotlight Project} Shirley Goes For The Iridescent Look

Hi peeps! I wanted to try and capture the iridescent look of crystals, so I had a little trawl round Pinterest and found me a couple of pins to help with getting the colours right. I used Distress Inks (of course!) as my watercolours.

  

I always use an acrylic block as my watercolour palette, and usually a good quality No.5 round brush.

I like to have puddles of clean water, puddles of colour, and spare ink to pick up if I need to intensify the colour. I stamped the images in Peacock Feathers, and drew some of the colour into the image with a wet brush, then dropped the other colours in. I used a No.1 brush to add deeper colour along some of the edges, and sloshed a bit of colour under the crystals on each panel to help ground them.

For one card base, I splattered the colours with a No.4 brush (I always get the best splatter results with a No.4 brush), making sure most of the splatter was around the outside margins of the card. I slipped scrap paper into the fold of the card before starting - if I don't I always get a stray splat on the inside of the card!

For the other card base I sponged the colours around the margins of the card, then spritzed with water and blotted it.

I stamped the text up the side of the panels, which were then mounted onto the card bases.

Here's a close-up of the images.

If you google 'crystals in watercolour' you'll get endless inspiration on how to colour crystals, includingYouTube tutorials.

Sparkly

Don't forget, you can get 20% off this set (and any other stamps, stencils and dies in the store) when you use my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY. Happy stamping!