Easy No - Line Watercolor | Distress Oxide Ink Embossed

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Hello Everyone. I've been loving the look of the no - line watercoloring technique but wanted to try something a little different and quick for this easy no - line watercolor card. 

Watch the video here.

So beware if you don't like embossing powder. I've been slightly obsessed with it. But who doesn't latch on to something for short periods of time then move on to something else that they enjoy? The video had to be cut down a lot, due to the fact that every element on this card is heat embossed. I started with the green plant and stamped it using my stamp platform. I'm stamping these on to Arches cold press watercolor paper. This specific paper has a very textured  surface so I do end up stamping each image multiple times with Distress Oxide inks.

I'm not sure if it's necessary and I didn't test it but after stamping 2 - 3 images I stopped and covered those with the clear embossing powder then heat set it. The Distress Oxide ink is partly a pigment ink so it does take longer for this ink to dry but eventually it will. That was my thought behind stamping a few then embossing them then stamping more. Plus that gave me time to plot where I was going to place all my plants and animals. By using the distress oxide ink and stamping each image with a coordinating color (green for turtles, brown for the treasure chest) and then using those same distress oxide ink to watercolor the images this creates the Easy No-Line watercolor. This is just a quick and easy way to get a similar look. I love the look of no line watercoloring and I am practicing, it's really pretty but this is a fun way to not have to think about it. It's like painting by numbers but you have more options. 

Once I was about mid point with stamping my scene I switched to embossing the sentiment so that I wouldn't loose my space I was trying to save for it. I used the SSS embossing powder (Mermaid linked below). These glitter mixed embossing powders are really pretty and sparkly, but if used with a sentiment they are still very easy to read even the smaller font, like the punny sentiment that came with the Beautiful Mermaids, September's monthly card kit stamp set. 

If I had known that I was going to emboss the Neenah Solar White lb card base with this embossing powder I would have done it at the same time. But I normally only have a general idea on a card design and I sometimes those ideas just don't pan out and I end up going a completely different direction. 

To get the sparkly Mermaid embossing powder edge I took a blank Neenah card base and used the Simon Says Stamp clear/watermark embossing ink pad that came in the September card kit, which I am super excited about since I have only used the Versamark ink pad. Which there is nothing wrong with that one but I wanted to see if there was a difference. Honestly they both do the same thing but I did get a little more coverage on the edges then I normally do when using heat embossing technique. It however always could be because the ink pad is brand new. I also cut down the watercolored Arches panel to 4in by 5.25in. 

The watercoloring is pretty simple like I explained earlier. It's just easy easy no line watercolor technique. But I really like the results. For the sand I did use Fossilized amber. I was going to use a micron pen to draw the sand line but I couldn't find my brown one and all the others are black. But I do have a couple colors of the Mildliner highlighters. These are a more toned down version of regular highlighters and come in all kinds of colors. So I used the point of the chisel tip to draw the sand line and then also used it to gently add dots for texture to the sand. The ink in these Mildliners is water salable, I've used them in my Travel Journal to create quick watercolor pages. So I was able to spread the ink out with a waterbrush just like the distress oxide inks. I also added some dots to the fins, feet, paddles (?) of the turtles and to some of the seaweed and the treasure chest. The coins of the treasure chest are watercolored using a gold chalk pigment ink. At this point I'm just trying to not use traditional watercolors for this easy no - line watercolor card.😁 The Sea Treasure card kit also came with 2 Distress Oxide inks, one in the color Tumbled Glass and the other Stormy Sky. Tim Holtz said himself that this is quite a number of people who were wanting the Tumbled Glass color to be a distress oxide ink and I can definitely see why. I really liked using it for the "water" of this card and it's such a light but bright blue and fades very nicely. 

For the inside I used a few of the stamp images that I used on the front of the card and stamped those with various colors of distress oxide inks again. I did not heat emboss these since I was only utilizing the outline of each stamp. This ink will dry and not smudge even though they are partly a pigment ink, so versatile. 

This card has been entered into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge
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