~ Friends of Unity March Blog Hop ~

Hello there! It's time for another fabulous hop with Friends of Unity!! Our cue for this month's hop is Creativity... at first I thought I would make a card focusing on one of the cute crafty stamps that Unity carries, but I decided to go another direction for this hop. 

For last month's hop, I tried out some new watercolor markers and mentioned that I wanted to use them in different ways to see how well they work. Well, that's exactly what I did for this hop! So let's get to it!

So these are my cards using the Staedtler Marsgraphic Duo Double-ended watercolor markers -

two ways! I just had to ink up the gorgeous and surprisingly huge Blooming Peonies! I love these beautiful flowers!

For my first card, I used the watercolor markers directly on the Canson XL watercolor paper. I started with the darkest color near the bottom of the petals and then using a lighter color I tried to blend the colors out. This didn't work very well... and the paper ended up pilling! Not cool! Once I realized this was going to be an issue, I didn't try to blend the colors out as much. I went over the areas just twice with two colors and it seemed to be working okay. I continued with this method throughout my coloring and then decided that I would only do two colors for the leaves so they would blend easily and I wouldn't have the same issue. That actually worked out really well. So, I'm thinking blending two colors is okay as long as you don't go over the same area more than a couple times.

For my second card, I used the same method I used on my card last month. I scribbled the markers onto my acrylic block and then picked up the color using my watercolor pen and painted away. With this technique the colors painted beautifully and blended well. I did notice the color was much lighter and took more applications to achieve a darker color... But I didn't have any pilling of the paper. So... what have I learned? Well, first of all... the tips on these are really like a marker, not at all like the brush tip on the ZIGs. That is a huge difference in the direct to paper watercoloring in these two products. Secondly, they watercolor beautifully when applied with a watercolor pen and I do really love the assortment of colors in the pack of markers. So, if you are looking for watercolor markers that are reasonably priced, these are great when applied with a watercolor pen or brush.

I couldn't help but stamp this gorgeous bloom again inside the cards. I colored the inside with Prismacolor pencils. I blended the colors with the pencils and the colorless blender pencil. I tried to use similar colors to the front of the card... and I think I did pretty well. I love how it brings some of the pretty on the front of the card to the inside of the card!

One more look here with both cards... the direct-to-paper watercolor on the left and the watercolor pen watercolor on the right. The sentiment for these cards is found in one of my favorite sentiment kits called Abundant Blessings. I hope you found this post inspiring, informative, 

and, of course, creative!

Now, let's get to the hop!

A few of my friends are having giveaways so be sure to hop and comment on each stop for your chance to win a fabulous prize! 

Crystal <--- you're here

up next ---> Joyce

Eileen

Jeanie

Bobbie Sue

Kim

Robyn

Dawn

Thank you friends for checking out my blog post!

See ya next time.

Inky Hugs!

Crystal