Tutorial time

I just finished posting an exclusive content tutorial over at Scrapbooking from the inside out, however I was unable to add all of my images to the post over in the exclusive content forum. I decided I would share here on my personal blog as well.

Here it is!

As a great inexpensive way to make your very own backgrounds, I highly suggest playing around with water color. One day I was sitting at work painting with water colors with the little girl I watch and it hit me, wouldn't it be neat if I transferred all of the fun of water colors over to my scrap booking? It has been a learning process because you can end up with a lot of bubbling and warping, so choose your cardstock wisely. A good heavy cardstock with a nice texture works the best, I usually buy Bazzil. You can also use kraft cardstock which also works well, since it is tan it can turn your colors a bit of a darker shade. Just play around and see which works best for you! Have fun.


You will need some paper towels(one for just blotting if needed and one for under your cardstock to catch the drips), a glass of water for dipping, some paint brushes, a decent water color set (I bought mine at a local craft store for about 6 bucks and its full of colors), and your cardstock.



This water color set happens to be my favorite, so many colors to choose from and it will last you a while. The possibilities are endless compared to many sets I have seen, I recommend finding a set that suits your needs.




Place your paper towel under your layout for drips, this can get messy and even though water color is easy to clean up this will save you some time.


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Really load up on water and dip your paint brush into the color you will be using. You want to add enough water to create good splatter but not to much for it to make the color to watered down. The amount of water you adds helps your splatter technique better as well as how the splatters come out.




Now its time to splatter. You can use your finger and tap on the paint brush where ever you would like the effect. You can focus more on the middle by holding the brush closer to the paper or for a wide spread splatter hold it further from the paper.




You can leave your paper with just the splatter effect which looks great and artistic or you can go on and create some drips and pooling. This is simple to do just by watering up your paint brush and dipping it in your color and really creating a puddle on the page. When you do this you want more water then usual so it drips and pools. Now the fun part, hold the layout up right and allow gravity to pull the paint down, or you can turn and and have it drip sideways. This is another step you can experiment with and use a straw and even blow some of the pain around.






To get a neat effect add another color to the mix and just follow step 7. You will see the colors sort of mix in together so you want to stick with colors that work well with each other and not create a strange color.




And there you have it. From here allow it to dry for a few minutes. I usually build on from there with papers and embellishments, it becomes your one of a kind background. One little word of caution, this is not for those who have issues with paper buckling because you will have that and some pictures may not lay flat.

Well I hope you enjoyed my tutorial, remember to have fun and see what you can come up with.