Picket Fence Rosa Eden Roses

I recently picked up this Rosa Eden Roses stamp set from Picket Fence Studios.  I love the size of the main floral cluster and wanted to go with some very bold and vivid watercoloring.

When I want very vivid colors, I'll use my Dylusions Ink Sprays to watercolor.  I find the ink sprays work best when you are going for a more loosely watercolored look.  They are so saturated, that you really need to work quickly and keep your paper pretty wet.  Once these dry, it's very hard to blend out as they are much less forgiving that normal watercolors.  

For this image that worked for me.  I really wanted bold colors to match those bold flowers, and was hoping to get a bit of the color bleed to make the background more dynamic.  

For my card I used six colors:  Postbox Red and Cherry Pie for the flowers, Cut Grass and Fresh Lime for the leaves, and After Midnight and London Blue for the background.

I started by adding a wash of water to my entire panel, then painted all of the roses with Cherry Pie.  While they were still wet, I added some Postbox Red to the center of each of the roses.  

Similarly, I started painting the leaves with Fresh Lime, and then added touches of Cut Grass, and with the background I started with the After Midnight and then dropped in some London Blue.  

Once the. panel was entirely painted, while it was still wet, I went back and added some bits of color here and there as needed, encouraged a bit of bleed in some areas, and used a dry paper towel to soak up some excess colors in others.  It's kind of an organic process, the trick is to not overdo it and stop before the colors start to muddy.

The sentiment is from Concord and 9th's Pretty Poppy set and was popped up with foam tape.  Normally I like to add a mat when I used a popped up/floating sentiment like this.  I feel like it gives it a bit of definition, but because the panel was so bold, I didn't think it needed it.

That's all for me today.  Thanks for visiting!