Beautiful You Birthday Card, No Line Watercolor Technique, 2017 Occasions Catalog

I have never tried the "No Line Watercolor" technique before and I've always wanted to.  While surfing the net someone's post referred to this technique, so I thought it was time to give it a try.  It does take a little time to do, but then again, when you work with watercolors, they always take time.  You can't work the whole piece at one time.  You work the wet area and then move on to let it dry and work another area. That is the real secret to watercoloring.

To do this technique with this image from the "Beautiful You" set, I stamped it using Smoky Slate stamped off once. You want the original lines to be very faint.  You will be blending these lines in with the brush and the color as you go. So if I would have used a darker ink, the flesh tones would have had more grey in them.  You need to slowly work the lines away while adding color to the area at the same time.

I started out by wetting the dress area.  I used Daffodil Delight to color it all in.  I worked the edges to get the lines to disappear.  I did that with each area I worked.  Once I got the Daffodil Delight on, I moved on to the hat and allowed the dress to dry some.  From the hat I moved to the arms and then the legs.  I came back to those areas several times adding a darker tone of the color I was working with.  On the dress I also added Pumpkin Pie, Tangerine Tango and then Cajun Craze.  

It's a fun technique but I'm not too sure I would do it again, it did take a lot of time.

Once it was dry I cut it using the circle dies and I also die cut a circle scallop.  The words are from the set and I used the oval dies on the layers.  

The decorative paper is from the Serene Scenery 6" x 6" paper stack.  The base of the card is Smoky Slate.  I added a strip of Delightful Dijon on the front.  The image and words were set in place using Dimensionals.  And that was it.  

Thank you SO much for visiting today,
Wanda