Happy New Year!!! .........

Happy New Year's Day! ......

Well here we are again, the start of another brand new year ...... it's 2022!!!  

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and that you enjoyed some New Year celebrations. It was pretty quiet here ....... good food, nice wine and a bottle, or two, of bubbly to see out the old and ring in the new.

So, it's the first of January ......... and after our festive break, the CAS Mix Up Challenge is back ...... whoo hoo!!

We're starting this year off with a Watercolour Challenge, hosted by Jenny.

The theme is ......... Loose Watercolouring

Now, if you're like me, you might be thinking ........ what is loose watercolouring?  Well, if you are,  check out the CAS Mix Up Blog where you can find an introduction to this technique from Jenny, lots of ideas and inspiration from the Design Team and, links to some great videos showing different ways of using this fun technique.

It's all about making watercolouring easy ......... here's my take on the challenge

I used a pretty new stamp set which arrived in my craft room just before Christmas ...... Blooming Branch from Pinkfresh Studio.  It's such a pretty stamp, and there's some nice words in the set too. I can see me using this one a lot.

I stamped the image onto a piece of white cardstock, using a black Versafine Clair ink pad.  You can see in the picture above, I also stamped part of the image on the inside of my card (something I'm trying to do with all of my cards this year ...... complete the insides too!!)

For the watercolouring I used a mix of ZIG Clean Colour Brush Markers (leaves and centres of the flowers) and a Picked Raspberry Distress re-inker (for the flowers) 

To create the loose, sort of sketchy look to the colouring I painted the images with clean water first, one flower/leaf at a time.  I then put a drop of re-inker, and scribbled a little ink from the pens onto a craft sheet and then used a waterbrush to pick up the ink and drop it onto the wet petals and leaves, allowing the colour to move with the water.  To create the shading, I let the first layer of ink dry then repeated the technique again ....... easy!

I love the imperfect, sort of arty look ...... it also means that you don't have to be that careful, it doens't matter if the colour comes out of the lines!

I stamped my sentiments in gold, and then a few ink splatters onto the background using the same colours I did for the main image

I'm so looking forward to seeing the gallery for this challenge.

We have a fabulous Guest Designer this month too ....... Karen (Ransdom Reflections) is joining in the fun, so be sure to pop by and say hello!

Thanks for stopping by ......... enjoy the rest of your New Year's Day, and here's to a fun filled, crafty 2022!

Cheerio until next time ........

Supplies:

Stamps: Blooming Branch (Pinkfresh Studio)

Inks: Versafine Clair - Nocturne; Picked Raspberry Distress Ink Re-inker; Delicata - Golden Glitz

Other: ZIG Clean Colour Brush Markers; Waterbrush; Ink-Me cardstock (Hunkydory)