Blooming watercolor

I was inspired by some recent cards on my fellow MDS Monday team members blog.  Heidi has made some really pretty watercolor cards and I wanted to get out my aqua painters and make some too!  The Aqua Painters do get a lot of use in my house, I even bought some for my kids so they would leave mine alone! 

I inked up my stamp from the Hostess set "Bloom with Hope" and then gave the stamp a spritz with some Stampin' Mist (stamp cleaner ~ you can use water but this is always sitting on my desk and it smells pretty) and stamped my paper.

I took my thin Aqua Painter and added a bit of ink and water in Rose Red to the flowers, letting the ink get smeary. 

I did the same with the green, in this case Mossy Meadow.

I next used Soft Sky to add a background.  I also gave it a bit of distressing by adding some crumb cake dots with the tip of a broken pencil.

I cut out an oval with the Oval Collection framelits.  I added a little depth to the top layer by sponging along all the edges and using Versamark (a watermark ink) to ink up the leaf stamp from the same set.  Versamark gives a nice tone on tone color effect. 

I added some ribbon and a Happy birthday and I was done! 
I think it turned out rather pretty but a bit safe, did you check out this one by Heidi?  Not safe at all, but stunning, I need to be a bit freer with my water, I keep the brush a bit drier.  I'm going to try to let loose a bit next time :) 
Thanks for stopping by!!