Pretty Peacock Watercolour Background - CAS(E) This Sketch 387

Today I'm playing along with a sketch challenge from CAS(E) This Sketch 387!

I've actually followed the sketch pretty closely - with the stars and with the colours of the graphic. Neither was intentional!

The stars are not compulsory but instead indicate that there should be some detail on the card in those locations. Carry on reading to find out how this choice came around.....

I started by playing with watercolouring - I'm still working on this technique and I am thoroughly enjoying the learning curve.

I decided to use the colour Pretty Peacock for the watercolouring - it's such a beautiful rich colour.

I used my Water Painter to add quite a bit of water to the cardstock - leaving a rough border around the edge. I picked up lots of ink from my ink pad with my Water Painter brush and added it at the top and then tilted the card to let the ink run down. I kept doing this from different directions, adding more ink to get the different depths of colour. It was important it was not perfect, the imperfections make it unique.

Once the paper had dried, I started thinking about what I was going to do next. I didn't have a clue!

A fellow demo and friend - Kate Bolt - started up a conversation a few days ago in the Pinkies Facebook group. She asked how do we store our left over die cuts, stamped images etc?

I have LOADS of die cut pieces that I haven't used (have I mentioned - I am a bit of a hoarder) - so I reached for my box and started pulling out various die cut pieces and layered them onto my background to see what did or didn't work. To my luck, I found these stars that I'd die cut last Christmas from Black Glitter Paper. As soon as I placed these onto the watercolour background I knew they'd found their home!

Continuing with the sketch, I decided to use a sentiment from the Tasteful Textures stamp set and die from the coordinating Tasteful Labels dies.

I stamped the sentiment in Versamark onto Basic Black cardstock and added White Embossing Powder, which I set with my heat tool.

I positioned the sentiment and Black Glitter Paper stars on the background but I felt it needed something more... so I added three different types of gold elements, to bring everything together. 

I placed a gold Gilded Gem in the centre of each Black Glitter Paper star. I then die cut another two stars (also from the Stitched Stars dies) from Gold Foil. 

Then I did something I NEVER do - I added more stamping! Adding more stamping to an almost finished card, directly onto the watercolour background is very risky for me as I often make mistakes - but it was absolutely fine - phew!

I used the splatter / dotty stamp from the Forever Fern stamp set. I stamped the image in Versamark and added Gold Embossing Powder. 

The gold elements add some much needed light to this card - silver would also work well with these colours.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my project today -  I'm so happy with the end result and it was really fun to create! 

If you live in the UK, France, The Netherlands, Germany or Austria and you would like to place an order of Stampin' Up! products for your papercraft projects - please visit my online shop!

If you'd like to know my product recommendations for this card, please leave a comment - I'd be more than happy to help you!