Watercolouring for Creativity International

Recently I was sent some Strathmore Paper sketchbooks by Creativity International to try out, one for drawing and one for watercolouring. As you probably know, watercolouring is not one of my strongest areas so always being up for a challenge, thats the one I started with!!

The first thing I was struck by was the quality of the paper, I have tried out a number of different papers before, usually I get frustrated at the buckling and decide to give up watercolours forever (or until I come across my Inktense pencils and fall in love all over again!) the only thing I have achieved a result I was proud of on is board. The paper in this pad was very thick (for crafters, think of the thickness of Bazzill cardstock) and had a lovely texture to it. It took me a long time to stop gazing at the snowy white perfection and start experimenting! To make things even more difficult for myself I decided not to start with my Inktense pencils but instead to dig out the tiny set of watercolour paints I have had for a million years and used a grand total of twice on my interior design coursework!

I wanted to just get used to the paper, try a few things and see if I could master it (and get as much paint on as possible to see if I could break it, ha!) You can see here the lovely texture of the paper

 

  I managed to get around 3 layers of paint on before the paper started to buckle ever so slightly (pretty good!) as you can see here...

 I managed 4 layers of Inktense colouring (for which you use less water) and still no buckling, it was also thick enough to be cut and layered onto a card using foam pads and look as good as a chipboard embellishment or cardstock sticker would - I will definitely be using it for my Inktense colouring with my crafts again.

Here is my image coloured with Inktense pencils which I made into a card (using the Papermania Kraft basics pad, Cuttlebug Swiss dots embossing folder and a scrap of paper from the TPC Christmas Village kit)

I will be trying out the drawing pad later this week and will post my thoughts on that one too (for now I'm still at the 'gazing at the snowy whiteness of the paper' stage before I start messing with it!)

Sarah x