Hello Everyone!
I hope you're all having a great week so far!
This is my very first try using watercolor crayons and I would have to say, I really liked playing with them! For this layout, I used a 6pc., tropical scented, watercolor crayon set from Recollections and a piece of watercolor paper from Close to My Heart. I used Gesso to prep the page before I started and that helped minimize the warping. It also helped the color not soak into the paper, which gave me more vibrant colors.
After I dried the watercolors with my heat tool, I used my new, CTMH stitch guide to create the patterns for the hearts. I could have drawn them, but I have a hard time making my hearts symmetrical lol and it drives me nuts! lol So, this stitching guide is wonderful for that! I then went through my stash of embroidery thread to match the colors on the background. Thankfully, my grandma gave me her collection. It took about 30 minutes to stitch all of the hearts and swirls.
After that, I worked on the photo mat. I pulled out some bright green and fuchsia/lavender-ish cardstock that I thought might go with the background, and I knew I wanted to add in some black and white to balance out all the color. I generally don't go for green, but it ended up looking great on the layout, and muuuch better than the fuchsia color.
I pulled the striped and polka dotted papers from the Live Beautifully papers I have in my stash. I cut down the watercolored paper so that I could get a good sized border of black and white stripe. And yes, I did distress around the edge of the watercolored paper! lol I just can't help myself!
After I got the photo mat down, I went through my little hoard of embellishments and pulled out the Good Life Compliments. The blue glitter words worked perfect for this layout. Why did she choose purple? you may be asking lol because there was originally purple between the orange and pink watercolors! I just blended it a bit much and forgot to add more on there lol It did end up being the exact purple that I used in the crayon, so even though it got blended, it still fit right in.
Can you believe it?!?!? I didn't add any bitty sparkles to this project! :D
If you'd like to get your hands on the stitching guide, tonight is the last night! It'll be retired tomorrow. The link for the stitching guide is in the layout recipe below.
Layout Recipe
Recollections Watercolor Crayons (from stash)
Clear Gesso (from stash)
Embroidery thread (from stash)
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I have a video up on my Youtube channel (hellotarina) if you'd like to watch my process. It's a bit of a long one, but I wanted to show and explain my thought process in real time. If you do watch, I hope you gain a bit of inspiration and/or bravery to try your hand at something new.
I hope you have a lovely week, and thanks for stopping by!
~Tarina
@hellotarina
