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Hey there! Daniel West here from Del & Artie. Thanks for joining me today on the Tonic Studios Blog. When I first started making cards, I fell in love with stamping. It felt like a few stamps and some ink made me an instant artist (you know the feeling!). But then came watercolor and I just could not believe how beautiful they were. They come in many forms, but I want to show off a bit of the beauty of the Nuvo Aqua Flow Pens in this post. They come in sets of three that complement each other perfectly. Today, though, I will use two from different trios to create an ethereal watercolor look to my background and stamped images.

The Ellie Goes Nuts Adorables stamp set with coordinating dies has a sentiment, “Dream Big.” Paired with the elephant images, it made me think of a dreamy night sky around the watering hole on the African savanna.

I created a video to show you how I made this card. You can watch it here!

I decided to create a card panel with a watercolor background down the middle and the elements hanging off the sides of the background.

• To begin I trimmed down a 4.25 x 5.5” panel of Canson`cold press watercolor cardstock. I wet it down the middle and added some color from my Rustic Oak and Indigo Batik Aqua Flow Pens.
• To achieve this background, I added several layers of color, drying after each one with a heat tool. I sprayed water over the last few layers to add some spots for stars and texture.
• After finishing the background, I painted a few savanna style trees with the Rustic Oak pen.
• Then, I trimmed down the panel to 4 x 5.25”.
• I stamped out two of the elephants from the stamp set using Nuvo’s Acorn Brown Hybrid Ink onto some Bristol Smooth cardstock. This cardstock has a very smooth finish and allows for inks and watercolors to move around a bit before seeping into the paper. This helps with blending all kinds of mediums.
• Again, I colored these little elephants in layers. I started out light and then added darker colors for shading.

• For the sentiment, I chose the words, Dream Big, from the stamp set and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. Then I colored the cardstock with the Indigo Batik Aqua Flow Pen and trimmed it down to a strip.
• Then, I die cut the elephants out of the card stock and popped them up on to the front with some foam tape.
• Finally, I adhered the panel to the front of an A2 sized card base with Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive and I added some Nuvo Glitter Drops to finish off the card.

Thanks for joining me today! I hope you enjoyed this little project as much as I did. I have a list of supplies in a grid below for your convenience. 

Let me know the name of your favorite colors from the Nuvo Aqua Flow Pens from Tonic in the comments below!

Daniel

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