ScrapThat: Soak up the Sun

Today I am up on the Paper Issues blog with a Working with Water Colors post.

I used the Sun and Fun free cut file and turned it into a stitching cut file.

The water colors are the focal point of the sun center and the background,

as well as a way to add a vintage look to the title word strips.

Here are a few close ups of the layout: If you have never turned cut lines into stitching marks for your needle, check out my cut file stitching tutorial post here to show you more!

The foam adhesive keeps the layers separated and casts slight shadows to create depth above the water color background. Water colors are also a focal point of the center of the sun cut file. I love how my children's beach sunset photo worked so well with this sunny cut file and water color splash background.

Adding watercolors is easy by using the packaging technique. Here's how it looked under the cut file and photo. It is important to layer the colors and dry the area in between the layers. I use a hair dryer to dry the paper quickly and this minimizes paper warping.

Here's another background showing the packaging watercolor process. I cut a scrap of plastic packaging and add water color to it. It naturally beads up/pools on the plastic. Press it onto the paper where you'd like the color layered.

When it is sufficient, I stop and dry the area with a heat device such as a heat gun or hair dryer.

On this example, next I moved onto a golden yellow stripe. You can see slight variations of yellow and gold I layered in varying places before drying it.