Thoughtful Flowers Watercolor Garden Tutorial

Hello friends! The postman came with a fun surprise yesterday. The new Simon Says Stamp Send Happiness release is here! With the current international shipping delays, I was happy to see it in the mailbox. 

Send Happiness is a fantastic and very versatile release. You can see the whole release here. It is extra special to me, since it contains the very first stamp set I have designed. So you can imagine that I was waiting for that parcel. I love stamps. It was so fun to start stamping with these images that I worked with so much. I decided to create a wildflower garden in my art journal. If you would rather make a card, just pick a section of the page and use fewer flowers. 

Another fun parcel that arrived this week contained Tim Holtz new Distress color Speckled Egg, and I decided to use the Distress Spray Stain for the background as a blue sky. I love this light shade of blue. I used Bundled Sage for the grass. The art journal page is a cotton-rag page in Dina Wakley's Media Journal.

Here you can see the Thoughtful Flowers stamp set. It is a 5x8 in set and contains a lot of flowers, butterflies, grass, a quote by HC Andersen and words that work for many different occasions and themes.

I started by stamping the four larger, or main flowers.



Next, I stamped three of them on SSS masking paper and cut them out partially. Place on top of the stamped images.

Stamp smaller flowers here and there and then remove the masks. It is a little tricky to stamp on the textured cotton-rag paper and I also had the company of a five-year old at my elbow, so I messed up a few of the stamped impressions a little, such as the buttercup. Don't worry if this happens, it won't be so visible in the end and you can add back some of the lines with a pen. The fainter impressions also makes it look like those flowers are further into the background.

Mix up watercolor paint and start coloring. You can also use Distress Inks by smearing them on a non-stick craft sheet and mist with water.

Continue coloring the flowers. Drop in darker shades before the first layer is dry.

Stamp the quote, butterflies and butterfly trails.

Paint the butterflies and add green paint to the grass area.



Stamp various grass stamps with Leaf Green ink and some with black ink. Stamp some of the small words here and there with black ink, restamping without reinking.

Add some highlights with a white gel pen and add back some lines with a black pen.

This is one of my favorite quotes and I remember using it on the first wall-hanger I made and gave away as a gift to a very good friend, probably about fifteen years ago.



I splattered a tiny bit of blue watercolor paint on the background, especially in the sky, for just a little texture.

Masking is a great technique for adding life and depth to a garden scene, since some of the flowers look like they are behind the others.

The snowdrops normally don't grow at the same time as buttercups, but in a stamped wildflower garden, anything can grow.

Grass stamps are very useful, both when it comes to adding texture to a grassy area, and to grounding the other flowers to the page. The grass makes it look like the flowers grow out of the grass, rather than on top of it.

Add some sentiment stamps to the grass area too. I also doodled a border around the page.

Finally, I added three rub-ons from Tim Holtz Specimen Remnant Rubs.

The white gel pen might pick up some of the watercolor pigment, making it blend nicely into the background in some areas.

Restamp small words without reinking for a fun effect.

The dots in the butterfly trails were painted purple, but I later added white gel pen dots to them, so that they stand out better.

The soft mists of Distress Spray Stains in the background, gives a tint to the page which unifies the different watercolor shades. I had such fun building this scene using quite many of the stamps from Thoughtful Flowers.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that it inspired you to stamp and watercolor some flowers. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

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