Aqua Painter

Since I already had a big mess on my craft table from making adorable hedgehog cards (click here for that post) and had my stamps, ink pads, and papers all out, I decided to finally remove my aqua painter from it's packaging and see if I could figure it out. I've had it for like 2 years but haven't taken the time to play with it - and it was fun! And quite easy once I got the hang of it - you fill the barrel with water, squeeze a little and water comes out into the brush. Lightly touch the tip in stamping ink, blend it a bit on the underside of the ink pad cover, and then paint on your paper. I learned that if there is too much water it (a) makes a mess, the ink bleeds and runs all over, and (b) regular paper get's all wavy if it gets too wet. So I started wiping the brush off on some dry paper towel to remove the water and just used a lightly damp brush to "paint" the color on and that went much better.

Here's another card I made using Ronda's card class kit, and how my first attempt at aqua painting went:

These are the pieces that she used to make her card (you can see her example on the paper above the pieces). I changed it a bit by only stamping one hedgehog and then stamping some mushrooms that came in the stamp set on the other side instead of the second hedgehog. Also stamped the sentiment to the side instead of in the middle. 

Using the aqua painter I filled in the little flower - this was the first time using the aqua painter and when I learned that too much water isn't good, the flower got a little smeary! But the card still looks good so I didn't start over...

Then because I was getting the hang of it I colored in the hedgehog a little, and added watercolor "grass" along the bottom edge. Then I trimmed some of the cardstock from the bottom so it didn't look like my hedgehog was floating in the air so much!

To finish the card I stuck the white stamped piece to a little bit larger of a piece of blue so there's just a border showing. Tied a piece of twine around the bottom and then attached the whole thing to the embossed brown piece using dimensionals (foam adhesive squares), and then glued that onto the card base. I'm really happy with this cute card!