Ellen Hutson Anniversary - Essentials by Ellen Favourite

Happy Anniversary to Ellen Hutson LLC! Over the past couple of days, the Design Ambassadors have been showing cards made with our favourite EBE stamps and dies to celebrate Ellen's 12th year in this business.

I tried and tried, but there was just no way to narrow it down to one favourite. But I noticed as I flipped through my stamps that the Mondo flowers kept making it to the short list. I decided to go seasonal (still trying to get my Christmas cards done!) and try something new with this Mondo Poinsettia, which has been around for a couple of years.

I stamped it on watercolour cardstock with Catherine Pooler Twilight ink and then masked it to add some leaves.

Then I used more Catherine Pooler inks to no-line watercolour. This was actually a frightening process - I am in no way an expert at watercolour or at no-line colouring. But I kept going until I didn't think I could do much more. I wasn't happy with it at all, but I left it to dry and came back to it.

As is often the case with watercolour, it did look better once it was dry. But it needed something. I started with one of my favourite tricks for 'fixing' watercolours and spritzed it with water - these inks reactivate when water is added. This gave it some pretty texture and helped soften some hard lines I had gotten in the background.

Next, I got out my Faber Castel Polychromos pencils and added some definition back in with darker colours. I also added some grey shadows around the bottom edges.

Finally, I pulled out another favourite trick and simply cut the poinsettia out with the large circle die from Alpine Windows and popped it up. This is an easy way to add a bit of interest without any layers. I did add Stickles around the edges of both the watercolour panel and the popped up circle, as well as on the berries for some sparkle.

Here's a video:

I used: