Watercoloring Peonies with a Side Helping from the IC.

 This week Kia is hosting both the Watercolor challenge and the Inspiration Challenge and the video for the watercolor was doing loose peonies seen here on YouTube by Harriet DeWinton. And then I started watching my buds like a hawk waiting to see them open this week. so Far the pale pink and bright pink have opened but not the layered color or the reds. 

So, I took some photos so I could get an idea on the pink ish color and I have a hard time painting pinks and reds it seems like I never have the shade I want. so, this is the pale pink. ( these are 30+ year old plants) That we moved here from our first house when we bough this one 20 years ago now.

There is a hint of yellow in the stems on these and in the centers of the blooms

The brighter pink shades. So, it was days apart between when I watched the video, seen the blooms open and then stole time to paint.

So, using the pinks I have I started like so on some Arches cold press watercolor paper with Daniel Smith paints.

And I knew that the Inspiration site she had chosen was this one to "Unshattered" and their pinterest boards where I found this simple bag. And I thought OK you could do some kind of a simple grid/plaid textured background for these and skip painting the mason jar vase element. 

So I pulled out this neutral printed paper out of a Maja designs Christmas pad and then ran it through the big shot in this Tim Holtz folder to get more texture on it and then chopped it up. 

Which I finished as a square card. the base is some Stardream shimmery pink cardstock cut to 5 1/2" square and then the birthday wishes was stamped previously and diecut with a rectangle die an was out of the envelope of previously done ones in the drawer. This is an old Hampton Arts dollar bin stamp that had a trio of gift packages to the right of the sentiment and I have cut this apart and removed mine from the block so, its a cling one now. The watercolor panel was also cut down with a rectangle die and that's about it from me, I hope you are doing well. Thanks for stopping by.