Ultimate Watercolor Lovers Blog Hop + Giveaway

Hello, friends!  Welcome to the the Ultimate Watercolor Lover's blog hop today, celebrating the release of a sweet new suite of watercolor products! (See what I did there?) We have the most delightful little Watercolor Coloring Book with breathtaking floral images on each page! We have brushes – all sizes and shapes of artist quality watercolor brushes! And we have a dynamite line up of artists with beautiful projects to share with you!

Watercoloring just got a whole lot more fun! Make way for a brand-new, specially-designed Altenew original product – our Watercolor Coloring Book. Recognize the florals? This gorgeous coloring book features popular Altenew flowers in beautiful compositions.

You will enjoy coloring 12 floral designs with both black and gray outlines. Coloring on the light gray outlined images will give you a no-line watercolor look, while coloring on the black print will give you a stamped look. The high-quality watercolor paper is thick enough to avoid warping and ripping when you color in the designs with your favorite inks and watercolors. This coloring book will open up a whole world of crafting possibilities for you. Use the pages for framed home decor projects, turn them into cards, or simply have fun coloring the day away!

Are you an avid or aspiring watercoloring artist? If so, you will love our new sets of fresh, high-quality round and detailed watercolor brushes.

Our Artists' Watercolor Brushes come in a variety of sizes to suit all of your needs. They will allow you to try out a variety of watercoloring techniques, from background washes to fine detail work. These elegant and beautiful brushes feature synthetic squirrel/sable hair and black birch wood handles accented by a black metal ferrule. The brushes come in a specially designed black cloth container to encase the brushes safely and elegantly in your craft room.

Projects

Let me show you what I made with today's products.

Watercolor Project 1

So, the little Watercolor Coloring Book! At 5″ x 7″, it's perfectly sized for making larger cards, but scales down very nicely when trimmed to the A2 card size of 4.25″ x 5.5″. There are 2 each of 12 different designs (familiar and popular Altenew stamp images) printed once in fine black lines and again with pale gray ink for no line painting. The paper is a high-quality, thirsty watercolor paper, and accepts the watercolor pencil colors, paint, and watercolor brush marker paints equally.

So, let me quickly take you through the four cards I painted and turned into cards! First, I have a study in blues and violets, and I used the Watercolor 36 Pan Set to paint it.

As you can see from the paint palette underneath the card, I leave my puddles of color in the lid to let them dry and reuse them again in future. As a result, the colors I paint are rarely directly from the paint tray, but are mixed at least slightly with another color or two to get a unique, slightly different shade.

Watercolor Project 2

Next up is a study in rose and coral. I love to add shades of yellow and orange to anything pink or red for an interesting new shade!

To keep the focus on the beautiful painted designs, I kept any adornment to a minimum. Finally, I added sentiments to each card from the Fragile Foliage Stamp Set and then added some thin permanent marker lines to finish.

Watercolor Project 3

I most especially love the fine outlines of the images on the watercolor cardstock! This card was painted by coloring first with the Woodless Watercolor Pencils and then applying water to blend with a clean, wet brush.

Feeling confident with the watercolor pencils is a simple matter of playing with them and watercolor paper to figure out how heavily to color with the pencils and how wet the brush needs to be able to activate the pigment to let it blend. Generally speaking, too much water is better than too little because you can always soak up very wet puddles with a clean, dry paper towel if you need to. However, with that said, I still always daub off the brush once quickly after loading it with water before taking it to the paper.

Watercolor Project 4

My last card is an example of no-line painting on the lightly printed designs. I used the Watercolor 36 Pan Set to paint this one, as well, mixing colors to alter the shades slightly.

It's also something of an experiment in technique! If you are wondering why the bottom flower looks “rougher” than the top, it's because I painted the bottom flower first, with a wet-on-dry technique, and the upper flower with a wet-on-wet technique.

Wet on wet is where you paint the shape (in this case, each individual petal) with clean water first, and then add in paint to let it flow and blend naturally. Before each area was completely dry, I added more pigment to the shadows to deepen them and give the contrast that shows the depth in a painting.

Wet on dry is where you load up your brush with water and paint and fill in each shape/petal individually, and then waiting for them to dry before adding more layers for depth and shadow. (A quick YouTube search will provide many examples that demonstrate this better than I can describe with words.)

Finally, all of the cards were finished with paint splatters that coordinate with the colors used on the cards before they were trimmed down, stamped, and clear heat embossed with a sentiment and finished with some thin permanent marker lines.

Special Offer

Receive a FREE brand new Poppy Arrangement Stamp Set (worth $23.99) with every order of the new Florals Coloring Book and Watercolor Bundle from 2/11/2021 at 12:01 AM EST until 2/14/2021 at 11:59 PM EST. Free gift will be added to cart automatically.

Giveaway Prizes

$300 in total prizes! To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $50 gift certificate to 2 lucky winners and a $20 gift certificate to 10 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 02/16/2021 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 12 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 02/19/2021.

Blog Hop

Jaycee's blog is the first stop on the blog hop, and should you encounter a broken link anywhere along the hop, you can refer back to the complete list here.

Altenew Card Blog

Jaycee Gaspar

Erum Tasneem

Therese Calvird

LauraJane

Jenny Colacicco

Nicole Watt

Seeka

Emily Midgett

Amanda Baldwin

Virginia Lu

Rosie Neustaedter

Norine Borys

Terri Koszler

Nathalie DeSousa

Karen Brown

Tenia Nelson

Tina Smith

Lilith Eeckels

Verity Biddlecombe

Maryam Perez

Yoonsun Hur

Kelly Latevola

Thank you for stopping by today and enjoy the rest of the blog hop!

SUPPLIES USED

Watercolor 36 Pan Set [ ALTN ] Fine Liner Pen Set [ ALTN ] Obsidian Pigment Ink [ ALTN ] Crystal Clear Crisp Embossing Powder [ ALTN ] Fragile Foliage Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Fragile Foliage Stamp & Die Bundle [ ALTN ]