5. Faux watercolour with markers (on patterned gesso cardstock)

Have you tried faux watercolouring with markers? The ever-inspiring Maria made this amazing tutorial and I was aching to try it, but I didn't have any watercolour paper, so I thought I'd try on gesso paper. It was a blast.

This particular card is made with a doodle that I doodled in pencil, but the marker faux-watercolour technique is fast-fantastic-fun with stamping & embossing.

In this post:

A) Doodle your own artsy papers
B) Faux watercolour with markers (on gesso cardstock)
C) A super-fast variation: Faux watercolour resist (with markers)
D) Original watercolour resist (no gesso needed)

Here's one watercolour effect you can get with markers:

I was after big splotches of wateriness, but you can also achieve a more refined look. The doodling is in pencil on patterned gesso cardstock. You can't see the pattern too well in this scan, but I wanted to show you the marker texture. (Click the pic for a closer look.)

A) Wanna make your own doodles into artsy papers? It's simple; I just...

1 ...Drew a design in pencil (but waterproof marker would work too)

2 ...Went over the pencil with a Sakura clear glaze pen (so the pencil wouldn't smudge) & I like the slight shine from the glaze pen. The glaze pen also resists the watercolour markering, so you could get some really neat batik effects that way!

3 ...Then, the marker part was super fast. Here's how...

B) Faux-Watercolouring with markers

(on Gesso Cardstock):

1. Make gesso cardstock (Just brush gesso on paper--you know you wanna! ;0) tutorials here for textured or patterned gesso c.s.)

2. Stamp or doodle an image/pattern

3. Colour with markers (no tricks--just don't drag your hand through it like I did, lol) ;0)

4. If you make a mistake, you can use a q-tip or a clean damp brush to erase it.

5. Lift the colour off in areas. An aqua painter or damp brush works great to move or remove colour. You can just daub a little to make quick work of it, OR you can keep cleaning your brush off to lift more colour away.

I like how quickly plain markering looks on gesso cardstock like it's water-colour painting with no fussin' about with paint/reinkers and no mess.

This cardstock has the Form & Function background stamped in Black Stazon & then gesso brushed on:

Markers used to faux-watercolour: Stampin' Up!: Mellow Moss, Close to my Heart: Breeze & Twilight. The charm is from an old necklace.

C) Super-fast variation--
Faux Watercolour Resist with Markers:
(click pictures to see detail)



1. Emboss a stamp or pattern on gesso cardstock.
[I used versamark & clear e.p. on gesso patterned paper & the I stamp used is a paisley large design from Above the Mark (56005 I)] The marker is Breeze from CTMH.






2. Quickly cover surface in marker.
Applying the marker with its side laying almost flat against the paper saves tips from getting wrecked (I'm loving Close to my Heart markers immensely, SU markers work too. If you try another type I'd LOVE to hear about your results)





3. Wash over it/daub with an aqua painter/wet brush.
No worries if it curls it will flatten later.








4. Add more marker & repeat water brushing until your happy. You can use multiple colours if you like.

The 1st example has only one colour
of CTMH marker (Breeze)

on this 2nd example, I added another
marker colour (Twilight) & blended:




D) Don't want to make gesso paper? You could try the original watercolour resist:

1. Emboss on watercolour paper (or what you have)
2. Scribble with watercolour wonder crayon/ watercolour pencil
3. Wet it, blending the colour

it looks really neat on mulberry paper too! :0)


The Tab:
The look of this tab is nothing special, but this is (!): using gesso c.s. you can
emboss with in-colours, & erase stamping mistakes:

I wanted the tab to 1) have embossed Blue Bayou ink & 2) have some finicky repeat stamping:

1. I stamped Blue Bayou ink onto gesso c.s. & embossed with clear e.p. [Yup! It embosses in-colours (dye inks) really well. Neat huh?]

2. For the tab, I needed to stamp more text on the left of "unique" for a balanced look (hard to line up) & I stamped it wrong 3 times, but you can just erase stamping mistakes off of gesso c.s. with a wet paper-towel! Since my first "unique" was embossed, I could just keep stamping until I got it right! Big cheater, huh? :0)


Other card details: Main card Blue Bayou c.s. with black scalloped c.s. (done with corner rounder) dollar-store gems; "unique" from Define your Life. See card supplies at a glance on SCS here

Go to the Gesso Index (7 techniques)

P.S. You've gotta see Sue's amazing results with gesso & drier sheets & Inkssentials crackle medium. What a work of art!

P.P.S. Thank you all for your kind comments and encouragement with this gesso madness. Some subscribers are not happy with the shift in events (gone byebye at a new rate), so it's great to know that you can please some of the stampers some of the time. Your commenting & excitement means the world to me! :0)