Two fish experiments

Blame these on Linda Findley!! She wrote that she took a class with Fred Mullett this weekend and left a link on her blog. Well, I went to his blog and found samples and a few explanations of his techniques.

The first technique was about embossing. He explained how to put various colors of embossing powder (EP) on a stamped image. Now I've done this before, but not to the detail he showed. Of course he added watercolor pencils afterward, but I liked these just the way they were. I used four colors of EP, but the blue didn't stay. I was a bit slow in getting the various EPs on the stamped image, so that is probably why.

I want to be clear that this is a River City Rubber stamp and not one from Fred Mullett. Although they are not as detailed, they are equally beautiful.

Fred's second technique was on spritzing. He said to use watercolor markers, which I have. So, I painted the same fish using five different colored markers. The first one is the clearest, but I forgot the most important thing Mullett said: "Don't mash it into the paper! You want the water and the pigmentation to float on top." Well, what did I do? YEP, I pressed really, really hard, so the first stamping removed about 98% of the color. Subsequent stampings were much lighter than they probably would have been had I heeded his tip.

I used cardstock and Mullett said to use watercolor paper, which I don't have. So the piece buckled and that's why it didn't scan perfectly. However, I do plan to do more of these when I have time. There are several other techniques I want to try from his site, too, so I'm off to play while it's so nice and cool in my studio.