Happy Little Stampers January Watercolor Challenge

This is my first post as a member of the Watercolor Challenge Team at Happy Little Stampers. 
I joined this team because I want to improve my techniques in watercolor and the challenge blog is a good way to widen your creative boundaries.  I hope that I do a good job of inspiring your creativity.

This month the watercolor challenge at Happy Little Stampers is texture.

I recently took an online card class and one lesson was to use salt on your watercolor background to add texture.  I have done this in the past but had forgotten about it.

I took watercolor paper and colored it with watercolor and liberally sprinkled it with coarse sea salt.  Here is an example of one piece of blue watercolor paper with the salt lying on top.  You let the piece dry completely and then you brush off the salt and you get these amazing spots of color and texture on your background piece.

I had also done a piece of watercolor paper with a teal shade of watercolor.  My background piece is just a much lighter shade of the color used on the heart.  You can see the brushstrokes in the background and the different shades (I think this would be texture also). 

The heart started out as a square piece of watercolor paper on which a high saturation of color was placed.  The salt was sprinkled liberally on top of the wet piece and allowed to dry.  Once it was dry, the salt was brushed away and I die cut a heart.  The heart was pop dotted on top of the background.  Hello was die cut several time and layered together before adding tot he heart.  The sentiment was heat embossed on a scrap of the lighter watercolor paper.

Get our your watercolors and please join us for our January challenge at Happy Little Stampers.  You will have a wonderful time and start to develop new skills. 

Thanks for stopping by.