Hello crafty friends.

I’m in a strange limbo at the moment. Stuck in quarantine between two countries. Sitting in a temperature controlled hotel room, while friends and family complain about the weather which is variously super hot, or hailing, depending on whether they live where we come from, or where we’re headed. We’re also stuck in a Groundhog Day of inactivity between all of the busyness of packing up and leaving Japan, and the busyness that we know awaits us as soon as we can get home to Victoria, Australia. And in all of this, family life continues in our little room, as we eat, exercise and work in our tiny space.

But I’m here to tell you about some cards! These are Spring themed, as I’m not sure where I am really!

The main die that I’ve used to create this card is from Paper Rose Studio, and it’s called Cherry Blossom Branch dies. I cut the die first from white paper, and coloured the petals and branches by ink blending them in a range of colours. The supplies I used are listed below.

Next, I made the background. I experimented with two different watercolour papers. I’ve often heard that the quality of the paper you use for watercolour is far more important than the brushes or even the paints! This proved to be true as the papers made the paints behave in completely different ways. I took a video of the making process, which you can see on Paper Rose’s YouTube Channel. The more expensive Arches watercolour paper let the paints run beautifully, and I used this as a nighttime background for my first card. The sentiment for this card comes from the Really Rainbow Paper Pack from Paper Rose Studio.

The cheaper paper wasn’t really suitable to used for a background, so I used the paper to cut the elements for the Cherry blossoms for a second card. I chose a white sentiment from the Big Black and White Sentiments pack, and ink blended this in pink to have it match the flowers. I cut the sentiment with a banner die from the Polaroid Frames dies from Paper Rose, cutting it twice to make a fishtail at both ends.

Getting back to the issue of the watercolour paper. I don’t think there’s any paper that’s unusable, but some papers are so much more pleasant to work with, and really do give very different results. If you’re wanting to do no line watercolour painting, I suggest going for a higher quality paper. It doesn’t need to be Arches, which is very expensive but it’s probably looking in your local art store for paper, rather than the local big box craft store. I have linked a few different papers below that I use on a regular basis.

Until next time, stay safe.

Blessings,

Donna