Watercolor Butterflies Tutorial

Hello friends! I hope you are well and getting lots of time to craft. I have a stamped and watercolored butterfly tutorial to share today, using mainly watercolor paint, but also some pens and acrylic spray. I made an art journal page, but you can of course do the techniques on a card or in your scrapbook too.

I was looking at the pretty SSS Outline Butterflies background stamp and wanted to make it the star of a page. Butterflies always makes me happy and ever since I was a child I have loved to spot butterflies out in nature. I did no-line watercoloring here, although not completely, since I wanted some faint lines too, especially for the smaller butterflies. I worked on one of the cream burlap pages in Dina Wakley's Blue Edition Media journal. I like the light color of this burlap.

Start by stamping the Outline Butterflies on watercolor paper with Pumice Stone Distress Ink. If you want fainter lines, use Antique Linen instead, but I like the somewhat darker Pumice Stone for this, since it also gives a shadow effect.

Mix up watercolor paint and start coloring. I used a butterfly book as inspiration.

Continue watercoloring until you are happy with the look.

Leave the background white, or watercolor it with a light brown shade.

Add details with a black pen, a yellow Tombow marker and a white gel pen.

Splatter the panel with a little white Gloss Acrylic Spray. Take the sprayer out and tap the end of the sprayer (the part that is inside the bottle) to create splatters.

I added shadows to the larger butterflies, which is why they look more dimensional. The small butterflies were colored more loosely. Use the black pen to bring in a pen and ink look, and the white pen for highlights.

I distressed the edges and stitched around the panel before adhering it to the background. There's a piece of old book paper behind the panel.

A few Clippings Stickers served as sentiments.

I also used one of the lovely quotes on the Travels and Journeys set by Paper Artsy, designed by Alison Bomber.

The title was die cut with Tim Holtz Shadow Script 3 and painted with the same brown paint used for the butterflies. I die cut the matte from old book paper.

The white splatters picked up less of the watercolor paint than I expected, which I liked.

I love the blue and purple shades on this butterfly.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today! Have a lovely weekend!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.