Inspiration: Colors, Patterns, and Textures

With millions of paper choices to choose from it's hard to believe that there comes a time when you just can't find the perfect pattern or color. But lets be real, we have the same problem when trying to pick out the perfect WHITE to paint our walls! Whether its to make a project our own, something that no one else has, or to simply satisfy our vision, there will come those times when we need to create our own color, pattern, or textured paper.

This week I've been playing around with distress inks, water colors, and Gelatos, to create a variety of eye popping backgrounds. Here's a little look at what I've been creating and some tips I learned from my trial and errors!

Are you feeling like a mermaid just by looking at this pattern? I was completely inspired by the ocean, summer, and mermaids for this background. The diamond pattern reminds me of the scales on a mermaid or fish, and the pink color brings it to life. I’m still fairly new to watercolors with so much more to learn, but I love playing with them. I came across this pattern stencil and knew exactly how I wanted to use it. By flicking the paintbrush to create speckles and splashes, really adds to the ocean inspiration. While we’re talking about ocean, can we take a second to admire those blues and greens in the background? The beautiful gradient is so calming. I can’t wait to create either a card or art piece with these watercolor backgrounds.

I was given a set of Gelatos by my mother this past weekend to try out. What the heck are these things, I thought?! After doing some research, along with a handful of trial and error, I found the easiest way for me to use them was to rub them directly on the paper, then use a baby wipe {because those things are golden!} to blend the colors together. You can also use them similar to watercolors, use a spray bottle, or just color like a crayon. In this piece, I overlaid a few spots with white to give more depth.

This is by far my favorite of the patterns I created. I had a beautiful watercolor printed paper, used white ink to stamp the leaves, let it dry over night, then colored the leaves with colored pencils. Something so simple turned out to be so gorgeous. This is the perfect spring time pattern. You definitely have to make sure that you let the white ink dry over night, before you color over it; learn from my mistake! I'm working on some other patterns using the white ink and stamps. This technique is going to work great for all my spring time cards and projects.

My beloved distress inks were put to use in a much different way than I have done before. I normally use them for distressing edges, giving paper an antique look. This time, I used it as a coloring medium for this vintage gears stencil. Blending the colors was easy using the foam blending pads, and if I could find my spray bottle, I'm sure I could create a different effect. You can create perfect gradients using these ink pads and this technique.