A Summer Card using New Nuvo Aqua Flow Watercolor Pens

Hello there!  I thought I would pop in with a non-design team project for once and share a card I made for fun using a challenge kit from my local scrapbook store.  

For the challenge we were each given a 4x3 piece of double sided patterned paper, an 8" piece of pineapple washi tape, the happy die-cut word and a piece of 6x6 navy cardstock.  The rules are we must use a little bit of everything they provide so here's what I came up with...

I have been dying to play with my new Nuvo Aqua Flow watercolor pens and Aqua Shimmer pens by Tonic all summer long and I was so happy I finally found a little downtime to enjoy them.  

I started by stamping the images from my Sunny Studio Tropical Paradise stamps with VersaMark ink onto Bristol paper and then heat embossed them with white embossing powder (On a side note, I tried them on standard cardstock, but they didn't move with water well that way and they are really designed to work best with watercolor paper or the smooth Bristol paper that is heavy enough to take the extra water).

I then added a small line of color using the pens and softened the colors with a paintbrush and water.  Sometimes, I reversed the order and added water and then brushed in some color and allowed the color to move with the water.  I'm not the best at watercoloring so I love that the raised embossing lines gave the color a boundary making it so much easier to stay in the lines.  

Even though I currently only have three of the four sets, I was able to achieve a lot of different colors by mixing my colors.  Here's a little chart to see how the colors look straight out of the pen and then blended with water.

When they were dry, I then went back with the clear Aqua Shimmer pens to add some sparkle to my flowers, leaves and pineapple.  I really like how the shimmer pens are completely clear and didn't alter the colors of my flowers.  I found they also didn't really move around the color of my previous layers by much so I think they aqua flow pens color is set once it dries.  

Here's a comparison on how they look on white vs. black cardstock:

For the inside of my card I used the piece of washi tape mounted on a piece of white cardstock and used an extra flower to carry my theme throughout.

I would really recommend taking a closer look at these.  They are a very affordable option to coloring in stamped images, blended beautifully and were super fun to play with!

Interested in the products I used to create my projects today?  To make supplies easier for you to find, I have listed them below (affiliate links included). 

Supplies Used (available at Scrapbook.com)

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