WWC55 - Happy Birthday (Jean's Colour Challenge)

Welcome to another Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.  This week Jean Fitch is hosting a Colour Challenge and as soon as I saw it, I fell in love with the colours.

Yes, it's a gorgeous ring and the Stampin' Up! colours which match it are some of my favourites.  That's always a good place to begin---loving the colours you'll be using.

I decided to heat emboss the beautiful rose image from the Rose Wonder set in Silver embossing powder.  To give myself a good base on which to watercolour, I did my heat embossing on one of my favourite papers, the Shimmery White specialty paper.  It has such a lovely, subtle shimmer as well as being strong enough to allow watercolouring without any pilling of the paper.

Using my Aqua Painter and the Perfect Plum ink, I coloured in the rose, concentrating the colour in areas such as the centre by adding several layers of ink.  Then I coloured the leaves using the Mint Macaron ink.  For the background, I watercoloured the upper area using Pacific Point ink and then carefully blended in a lighter wash of the Tempting Turquoise as I reached the middle and lower part of the paper.  I did the same with my sentiment, heat embossing it using Silver embossing powder, and then used the bracket from the Rose Garden thinlits dies to cut it out.  To finish the sentiment off, I used a light wash of Perfect Plum ink.

My base cardstock is Smoky Slate with a layer of Silver Foil added.  I love the way the Silver Foil repeats the silver in the embossed rose and sentiment.  Besides using the round corner punch on the Silver Foil, I used the Curvy Corner Trio punch on the watercoloured Shimmery White paper.  A single rhinestone finishes off my card.  The photograph doesn't do it justice.

I hope you'll check out the wonderful creations by the other Watercooler Artists at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.   Of course you're invited to link up your own creation using our challenge colours.