Let’s create with the new Distress Watercolor Pencils

Hello friends! Hope you are doing well. I am back again with a new tutorial featuring the recently released conclusion of the Distress palette in Distress Watercolor Pencils. I shared a background that I created with them a couple weeks ago using them with a Layering stencil. Did you catch Tim on his youtube channel? He shared a bunch of ways to create with them. They are a wonderful tool and a real asset to have in your creativity back pocket. For this tutorial, I thought I’d share a way to use them in the traditional way, for watercoloring.

Being a person who loves florals, these watercolor pencils couldn’t be any better for coloring flowers, and creating a beautiful watercolored effect. I will be sharing all the steps at how a background, like the one below, was achieved with all the steps and tips that might help you along the way.

I started by cutting a 8.5″x11″ piece of Distress Watercolor in half. I like to work on larger areas so that if a certain area of the finished piece stands out, I have more space to work around and cut apart for various projects, whether that be a card, a vignette or tag.

I chose my stamp sets that included Floral Elements CMS445 and a Christmas set, Sketch Greenery CMS429, because greens aren’t necessarily only for Christmas 🙂 its a wonderful background filler set and coordinates very nicely with the Floral sets in Tim’s stamp line.

Next, using a variety of the flowers and greens, I stamped a pattern onto the paper using Scorched Timber in both Distress and oxide…I inked up the stamp with a combination of both, spritzed the stamp with a light mist of water, then stamped onto the paper. Using a paint brush, I drug some of the ink from the flowers over into the background and into a few of the flowers and leaves.

Next, I dried the ink using my heat tool.

I chose colors from each of the new sets that included forest moss, bundled sage, pumice stone, milled lavender, scattered straw and victorian velvet.

I started with the leaves. To activate the watercolor pencils, I dipped my first color (bundled sage) into the small pot of water for a few seconds, then, scribbled a little bit of it onto my glass media mat to create a color puddle. You might have to do this a couple times.

Then, using the color, color randomly into the stamped images. If you notice the color starts to dry up a little, dunk it back into the water, then scribble it off onto the mat. The trick is to get enough of a drip, but not too much so that you have a color puddle on the paper. But, even if you get a puddle on the paper, a dry towel or paper towel can easily fix that, just dab up the excess.

Next, I did the same process with the forest moss watercolor pencil, then added color into the previously drip colored leaves, this is where the colors begin to blend like a watercolor as seen in the next photo.

I used my paintbrush to pull and move the watercolor into the places that I wanted the green. At this point, you can dry those areas with a heat tool, or leave it to air dry…it just depends on the time you want to spend and the look that you’re going for.

I took the victorian velvet pencil and dunked and scribbled the color onto my mat, then began adding color within a few of the flowers.

Next up, the purple and gray (milled lavender and pumice stone) working in the same way, then drying with a heat tool. I pulled some of the colors into the flowers by using the paintbrush, sometimes it was just water, and sometimes I dipped into the leftover color puddles I had on my mat.

And finally, some Scattered Straw into the centers of the pink flowers, and dried with a heat tool.

Then, I dipped each of the colors one by one into the water and scribbled onto the coordinating flower, this time, I was looking to add the color that was more pigmented to add definition and interest to the flowers. I added the color randomly to the flowers and leaves and dried it with my heat tool, this time not washing out the color with a paintbrush.

So, this is what I had after all those colors were added.

Those Distress Watercolor Pencils are AMAZING!! I didn’t stop there…I wanted to fill in the white space too, but first, a handy tip!

Wet watercolor pencil tip… as you have been dunking your pencils, you’ll notice that if they are bumped into one another, the pigment will stay and create a little bit of a mess, at least until the pigments are dry, to combat that, I like to put a small piece of paper towel or a cotton towel onto my mat and set the pencils aside to dry. Once dry, they are fine to add into the tin and mix with their friends.

Now, let’s get back to filling in the white space. I decided to grab one of my Layering Stencils, choosing the Gradient Hex (THS117) because flowers and a honeycomb go so well together. I tested what I wanted to achieve on a scrap of paper I had sitting on my table. I held it to the watercolored background and decided to add it. Another good tip… try before committing! 😉

Using a Tiny Blending Tool and Lost Shadow Distress Ink, I blended the color into some of the white space of the background.

Then, using the stamp (found in the Stampers Anonymous Set) I stamped over top of the stencil to add the images into the hex pattern. This was stamped using Scorched Timber Distress Ink. Also, please ignore the chippy manicure…

Isn’t that stamp AWESOME used through a stencil…it is my new favorite for this technique …all those tiny numbers and portions of them are mixed media gold!

With that, my background was complete…I hope you enjoyed the step by step instructions and that you give the Distress Watercolor Pencils a try. They’re too good to dismiss! There are now six different sets available and a sku of just the black and white and a single of Scorched Timber. If I were to choose just one set to start, my favorite would be set 4 and the packaged combos of the black and white, and scorched timber.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and have a great day!

Creatively yours,

Stacy

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