Using those pretty watercolour papers!

Hey Magpies! Welcome to August, it’s Rachel here with some of the pretty watercolour papers that are available in the shop now. I love these papers, they are so pretty so a I chose a few this month and have used these 4 on my LO’s and then I  couldn’t help but do a super simple, graphic LO to end with lol!

Pink Paislee, Summer Lights #02 Paper is the first paper I used. This paper is so lush, I had to use it first. I think it’s meant to be a sunset sky but I turned it upside down to have the purple at the bottom on my LO just because it suited me better that way.

I have used a lot of Nuvo Crystal Drops this month (what’s new eh?!!) and I had a few problems with my Ebony Black on this LO and also the Love You LO further down the page. My black seems to be quite gloopy and thick and if you look at the black dots on the right hand side of my Love You LO, you’ll see that a few of them are mishapen and have tails on them. This is my second bottle of black and I’m sure my first bottle wasn’t like this. If I take the time to roll the bottle between my hands to warm it up before I start, and give it a really good old shake up, it is fine and my dots come out perfect. But as I’m a little impatient and forget to do this, I have suffered a couple of mess up. On my LO below, I was doing a line of dots and I really messed up. I tried to wipe them off the page and made things much worse! It was a right mess, here’s a pic…


So Washi Tape to the rescue! My black and white striped one was from the Bella Blvd, make Your Mark collection but I think it’s out of stock now unfortunately but there are loads of tapes to choose from in the shop and they’re so handy. I put some tapes over my black smudge mark and then added an exclusive Hey Little Magpie Flair badge over the top and it was good enough for me!

I decided to use my Pink Paislee, Summer Lights #02 Paper as my background. When I got on with things, I decided I needed a black border to make the paper pop a little more. Then I just layered my photo on some offcuts of paper I had on the side of my cutting mat. I also used some washi tape and the black and white diagonal striped paper ribbon is something I recently bought at Liberty of London. I have gone a bit embellishment crazy but hey, they’re better off on a page eh! If you ever want to know where I’ve got a specific something on a LO and I haven’t mentioned or linked it, please leave a comment and I’ll let you know what it was.  Here I’ve used one of the Fancy Pants, Dream Big, Puffy Sentiment Stickers along with an older Heidi Swapp wood veneer word (there’s some similar Frecked Fawn ones here) and older MAMBI puffy arrow sticker for my title. Then I dotted around some older embellishments.

On the Heidi Swapp wood veneer word, I did a quick coat of white acrylic paint and then I went over the top with Nuvo Crystal Drops in Gloss White. Using Nuvo Drops on top of things like this doesn’t give a smooth finish, it does come out with a bit of texture but I quite like the effect.


The little resin stars I used were from the Crate Paper Cool Kid collection but they’re sold out now unfortunately. I also used one of the MAMBI Puffy Stickers, Love Arrows and the Look Flair.


 
When I saw this Follow Your Dreams, road paper from Fancy Pants, Dream Big, I had to have it! I could see a LO on it already. So I got 2 sheets lol!

I pfaffed around with my photo on the paper for a couple of days and then finally decided to cut the paper down to 9×12″ (all of my LO’s this month are the same size) and make the road a bit more asymmetric rather than symmetrical as it is 12×12. I think this adds a bit more interest to the LO and also, I have a second sheet to use 12×12 don’t I! So I cut it down and then decided a black border would help the paper pop a bit more so I added that and then drew dashes on it, like a road. I just laid my photo on and added some offcuts of black under it which I punches with an old border punch. My title is an acrylic word which I am working on producing for sale soon and some old style Thickers.  I’ve used a few of the MAMBI Vacation Chipboard Stickers and the super cool Sunglasses Flair from HLM and the Ebony Black Nuvo Crystal Drops I used, worked perfectly this time because I warmed up the bottle and gave it a good shake before dotting!

Here’s a little close up, the word strips I used were from Pinkfresh Studio, the Live More collection but they’re out of stock now unfortunately. If you got your hands on them, well done! I’ve used them a few times this month and they just had the perfect sayings that I needed!


 
Next up I used the reverse side of this Fancy Pants, Hello Sunshine, Pool Party paper. I do love the striped side and may have to buy another sheet so I can use that sometime, but the green vignette on the reverse side got my attention straight away. I do love the ombre effect so I had to use that side first.

 
I layered up some washi tape and the black diagonal stripe paper ribbon I used previously on the top and bottom of this LO. Then I got out my Nuvo Crystal Drops and got dotting! I used Ebony Black and as I said before, look at the dots on the right hand side, I really made a mess of some of those but I didn’t bother to try and fix things, I’ve learned my lesson there! Some of the lighter colours of drops you can wipe off if things go wrong but the darker colours, don’t even try! It doesn’t bother me that they’re not perfect and I thought I’d write about it in my blog post so that everyone knows, mistakes do happen and it’s not the end of the world! I straightened up my Nuvo Crstal Drops crown and carried on with it. I also used some of the Rhubarb Crumble dots on the top and bottom, Rhubarb is definitely a deep pink colour, I think the photo on the site looks more red but then I am colourblind and not the most reliable with colours, but I think it’s a deep pink and definitely not red in real life.
I also used some of the new Nuvo Jewel Drops on this LO and I’ve taken a close up for you to see them.  This is the Key Lime colour which is out of stock at the moment, but there will be restocks coming so it’s worth signing up for an email alert for when they arrive.

The Jewel Drops are definitely more like jewels than the normal, opaque Nuvo Crystal Drops. They are beautiful colours. Here’s a quick shot of my colour sheet. I have them all dotted on there with the name beside so I can put the sheet on my LO and see what colour to use. I don’t have the blue Seabreeze yet, I am waiting for restocks to arrive! But you should be able to see that the Jewel colours are transparent compared with the Woodland, Navy Blue and Midnight dots on my sheet. I had a few problems dotting these but that was cause they’d just been delivered and I think they were a bit cold and gloopy! I was too impatient and didn’t warm the bottles up – whoops! I was too excited to get new colours of Crystal Drops lol!

After I’d layered up some washi and paper ribbon on the top and bottom of my LO, I layered up my photo on some offcuts. Ok…. I’ll come clean, I actually started this LO on a totally different piece of paper and used a stencil and some embossing paste to make a bakground and it all went horribly wrong and looked awful. So I took off my photo layers and put it on this green paper instead and it worked so much better! My title is from Pebbles, Girl Squad Thickers and I’ve used some hearts from an old Crate Paper line as well some from Illustrated Faith too. Then one of the awesome HLM Whatever Flairs to add something extra to my title. I did mean it in an ‘I love you whatever happens’ kind of way rather than a ‘I love you…….. what-everrrr’ manner lol!

I also used some of the little phrase stickers from Pinkfresh, The Mix No1, they’re quite cute!

And another close up to see my wonderful dots hahaha!


 
This is another stunning paper from Pink Paislee, this is Summer Lights #08 paper and there’s some lovely colours in this one.

I don’t know where I got the idea to cut the paper into strips but I bet I saw something somewhere and it sparked an idea off! Because the reverse of this paper has a handy grid on it so I just cut it into strips, 2 squares wide with 1 square in between. I cut them all but left one side attached, then I stuck it on my black background, poked a cuttin mat between the layers and cut the edge off. It worked really easily. Then I chopped bits off the left hand side to make it a bit random. In between the strips I dotted some Buttermilk Nuvo Crystal Drops. My title is another word from the Pebbles, Girl Squad – Foam Phrase Thickers and underneath I’ve used some old Dear Lizzy Thickers.

The rubber ‘epic’ arrow comes from Cocoa Vanilla, You Rock and the ‘so rad’ resin star is from the old Crate Paper, Cool Kid collection so I hope you got your hands on some of them when they’re around, they’ve so versatile and definitely not just for little boy LO’s.

I’ve also used a cute little puffy sticker of a mobile phone with BFF on it, that is from the Pebbles, Girl Squad – Mini Icons pack.


 
My last LO is a super simple, graphic one. I couldn’t help myself! There’s only a tiny little strip of patterned paper on this LO, under the photo an offcut of black & white striped paper that was hanging around on my desk. I put my photo on and my title is made up of an acrylic word and I used a hastag from the Pebbles, Girl Squad – Foam Phrase Thickers and the word Auckland is done with Freckled Fawn Puffy Alphas in grey, you can get white & gold or yellow ones in the shop. I also used a Freckled Fawn Puffy Heart which I love because they’re matt rather than the usual shiny finish to scrapbooking embellishments. And I used lots of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Duck Egg, Oyster Grey and Ebony Black. Again, I had some problems dotting if you look down the bottom left but what the hey, it doesn’t matter!


 
So that’s it from me this month with my random mix of products! I can’t stress enough how much I love Nuvo Crystal Drops, they’re so versatile and easy to use. As you can see this month, I had a few issues and I think my Queen of the Nuvo Drops crown has definitely slipped a lot but it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things and I need to slow down a bit, shake the bottle and warm it up a bit before I start dotting! And the watercolour papers, I’m all over those, I love them so much! So here’s to a good August Magpies, I hope the summer carries on a bit longer, it’s been quite good this year hasn’t it! See you next month xXx