Bee Happy!

I'm totally digging watercoloring these days so I've been working on stamps that I can add a lot of color to. This is not totally watercoloring as I do not have a big space to have a cup of water and lay out colors and stuff, but I'll get there soon. For now, I'm using Tim Holtz Distress Markers and a waterbrush to do my coloring.

I used paper from Free To Be Me paper collection as my card base, you can't see clearly from the picture but it's the one with a glossy background to it, the design resembled a hive so I thought it would be appropriate for this theme. The stamp set I used is from Jeanette's Archive, it's called Happy Hive. I pretty much used the whole set. I wanted to create sort of like a theme with all these bees swirling around.

I used watercolor paper (140lb), stamped the images using Memento black ink. This is the only ink I know where the color doesn't bleed. I used Tim Holtz Walnut Stain to stamp the hive, Black Soot for the bee stripe, Mustard Seed for the rest of the bee body. The flowers are a mix of Peacock Feathers, Spun Sugar, Dusty Concord, Fired Brick, Barn Door, Picked Raspberry and the leaves are Mowed Lawn and Peeled Paint. The sentiment "Bee Happy" I used Ripe Persimmon and Faded Jeans.  I used a Pentel Arts Waterbrush to do the watercoloring.

It's a shame that CTMH does not have Distress Inks. I love these distress inks and markers. And the colors are so vibrant! I am however going to purchase CTMH's watercolor pencils. They just got it back in stock and it's the first thing I will order tomorrow. I can't wait to play with those!

Here's what the stamp set looks like.

B1445 Happy Hive