Snowy Holiday Wishes by Carol Hintermeier

Hello Ai friends!  Today I have a watercolored card using the adorable WC Winter Kids Set.

It has been quite a while since I pulled out any of Art Impressions' watercolor stamp sets, and goodness me, I sure struggled.  LOL!  It's so true about continuing to practice in order to improve and  and not struggle so much!  This card is my "take five"!  Yep, I have four other attempts in the trash can.  The thing that really helps is going to Art Impressions' YouTube channel to see the videos that Bonnie does for all the watercolor sets.  These videos are a great way to refresh, or learn, the watercoloring technique.  Another awesome source of inspiration is the so talented Ai Watercolor design team--talk about beautiful cards!  You can see their cards in the Watercolor board on Pinterest.

After my initial struggles, I pulled out my MISTI, laid out the stamps for my scene, and inked them up--success!  The little bird is from the WC Bird Bath set.  Before I did more, I used a pencil and ruler and drew a square approximately 3-5/8"  around the images and put Post-It Tape around the outside of the square.  Here are the steps for creating this card.

• Ink the snowman image in first in Deep Blue-565, then Brown-879 on all parts except the snowman body, and stamp onto watercolor paper.
• Ink the bird and lamppost in 879 first, then 565, and stamp.
• I'm still limited with the Tombow marker colors I have, so I combined some colors to get the shade I wanted.  For the red, I combined Wine Red-837 and Warm Red-885.
• The snowman, snow, and sky is a combination of Deep Blue-565 and Imperial Purple-636.
• The scarf, bird, and pants are Navy Blue-528.
• The hat, snowman arm, and lamppost are Chocolate-969.
• The light is a combination of Process Yellow-055 and Orange-933.

Once my watercoloring was finished I added some sparkle with a clear Wink of Stella pen.  I decided to add some details to the scarfs, hat and boots using a Micron .005 black pen.  I used a white gel pen to add snow all over.  (I was going to use a Molotow masking pen before I started painting but found it not usable.  I guess that's what happens when you have something for a long time and don't use it much.)  I used my t-square ruler and a Tombow Twin Tone Navy pen to draw a frame around the image and to sign it.

This close-up shows some of the sparkle that is so hard to capture in photos.

The sentiment is from the Snow Friend set and I stamped it in a blue ink.  I added foam tape to the back and adhered it onto a blue layer (from my stash).  These were then added to a top-folding A2 card base.

Thank you so much for stopping by!  Have a fabulous, crafty week!