Good morning, friends!

Welcome to week 8 of challenges with Pile It On! This week we are playing with water coloring and I hope you all will head on over to check out the wonderful creations from the rest of the design team. I have never actually worked with water colors… I think I may have cheated a little, hehe… but I just recently purchased my very first set of CIAO  Copic Markers and I have been wanting to play with them, along with the blending pen. So here was my opportunity to try out some water coloring with the markers and blending pen!

OH OH! AND I just got my package in the mail Friday filled with this month’s Papertrey Ink goodies! So yes, that is pretty much what inspired this card. I used the large & small flowers from In Bloom, as well as one of the background stamps from Text Style. It has been quite awhile since I have aged my projects by sponging or swiping ink around the edges but this card pretty much called for it once I was done laying it all together. I think it ties it all together nicely.

As for my simple watercoloring technique, using my CIAO markers, here is a quickie step by step:

1. Swipe the Blending Pen across the tip of your CIAO marker of choice.
2. Gently sweep the color onto your image (usually starting from the outside inward, so it lightens up toward the center)
3. After filling in the image, sweep the clean Blending Pen over the image until you have your desired water coloring effect. The more you go over it the more “watery” it will look.

A couple of TIPS:

• Stamp your image in a permanent ink such as a Versa ink pad, so that it will not blend with the rest of your color.
• If you do not have a Versa ink pad, consider stamping in a similar ink color as your marker so that it blends well.
• Beware that you do not need a lot of ink on the Blending Pen for this technique to work, you may want to do a quick swipe on the image and then turn the Blending Pen to a clean side to help blend it in lighter.

I did want this one to be a bit darker and since the flower had stripes, I felt the need to make it all a bit more random. Love how it turned out with the dark shades up to the light shades. This could be a new technique that you might be seeing more often around here :)

Now for all the challenges that were used to create this card:

• Pile It On! – Water colors
• Stamps and Smiles — Sketch
• Color Throwdown — Celery Green, Plum and Chocolate
• Three Covers — Bling (Rhinestones)
• 365 Cards — Wednesday’s “You Raise Me Up” – Dimension

Don’t forget to play along this week! I promise that you will get more than you could have ever asked for by trying out challenges (not to mention “Piling” them on)… you will create in ways you have never created before! I can’t wait to see what you all come up with this week!

Happy creating!