Inking Royalty Spring Blog hop

Welcome to InKing Royalty’s April Blog Hop! During this year’s blog hops, we are enjoying a year of celebrations. This month’s projects celebrate Springtime, so I hope you are ready for gorgeous Spring colors, flowers and butterflies – and maybe some sweet baby animals. We are excited to share our creations with you today! After you read my post, I hope you’ll hop over to the next person on the list at the base of this post.

It just doesn’t seem like springtime to me yet here in Alabama.  We have definitely been having sprig weather with storms and warm temps during the day.  I just have not felt very springy.  It is one of the many side effects of the current virus situation.  Another side effect seems to be the emotional rollercoaster we all are riding. One of the things I started doing to bring calm back into the rollercoaster is actually using my sketchbook.  Those of you who know me know I don’t do well with art journaling.  I like to have something to give when I’m done. That is part of the reason I love card making so much!  In card making the end product brings joy to someone else and that makes me happy.  In other words, doing something that is purely for the sake of making or for my enjoyment is hard. Anywho, my routine has changed (who’s hasn’t)  and I have started incorporating watercolor back into my daily life.  That brings me to my post for today.  I am sharing just a little bit of what has been going on in my “sketchbook”

I love watercolor and one of my favorite watercolor mediums that Stampin up gives us is the Pigment Sprinkles. They come in a set of six. Bermuda Bay, Mango Melody,  Gorgeous Grape, Melon Mambo, Granny Apple Green, and Daffodil Delight

The pigment sprinkles are so much fun to use.  I really enjoy using them like traditional watercolor. There are also lots of cool techniques you can do with the pigment sprinkles

This is how I started out, with my favorite watercolor pallets, extra water bowls, sketchbook, a cool pen, paper towels, and the Pigment Sprinkles of course.

The first thing I wanted to do was make swatches of each color using some of the most popular techniques used with Pigment Sprinkles

• For each color, I used 4 different techniques.
• The first is as watercolor
• The second technique is adding water to paper using a paintbrush, then sprinkle on pigments, the more water in spots with a paintbrush, then finally using a paper towel to blot in places
• The third techniques are water on the paper then adding sprinkles.  This technique requires patience. Cause you want the pigments to do there thing.  It also requires the paper to be truly wet.
• The final technique was to add the pigments to dry paper and spritz water on top

Below is two of my favorites from the above techniques

I love how the pigments move naturally and break into different shades and colors.  The peach in the Melon Mambo is the boom!

This is the Bermuda Bay. I adore this color.  It really is beautiful!  Look at all the different colors that come from one pigment sprinkle color. It is quite interesting that some pigments move and push color. And some kinda just sit.

The second thing I wanted to explore was the mixing properties of the pigment sprinkles On both pages you can see where I mixed colors on my pallet and made new colors. Below are a few of the interesting color blends I found

That Bermuda Bay and Gorgeous Grape is awesome!  As is Granny Apple Green and Gorgeous Grape.  The brown is so wonderful!

I found the colors created by Mixing Melon Mambo with other colors quite interesting.  The blue created when mixing with Bermuda Bay is quite interesting.  And a little Bermuda Bay you get a purple magenta.  And more Bermuda Bay you get a dark night blue-green. The next step was to start applying all the knowledge I had gained from the swatching.  I just naturally decided to try and Watercolor with the pigment sprinkles

Keeping with the learning process I decided to pick a stamp and Watercolor. Knowing today we were talking about spring. I picked one of my favorite spring flower stamps. Mine is a wood mount. But,  don’t fret Accented Blooms is still available in cling mount.

This is what the page looks like as of now! It is not quite finished but, you can see the progress and process of mixing colors and making notes. So, I can refer the next time I use the pigment sprinkles. Thank you for sticking with me through this long and nontraditional stamping post.  I hope each of you is finding ways to bring a little joy into your world.  Life has changed for us all and the one thing I know is we are all in this together.  Hugs and love to each of you!

Each of your comments makes me smile! Please, comment HERE.

 I hope you’ll hop along to the next stop on the blog hop, Candy Ford, Stamp Candy. There’s lots of inspiration to be found in this group – and you don’t want to miss it!

Thank you for hopping along with us. If you get stuck during the Blog Hop, please use this line-up as a guide:

1. Brian King at Stamp with Brian
2. Pam Morris at Tap Tap Stamp
3. Ann Murray at Murray Stamps Ink
4. Sue Jackson at Just Peachy Stamping
5. Sheryl Sharp at Sharp Notes by Sheryl
6. Julie DiMatteo at The Paper Pixie
7. Peggy Noe at Pretty Paper Cards
8. Robin Myren at Songbird Designs by Robin
9. Lynn Kolcun at Avery’s Owlery
10. Shawn de Oliveira at Shawn Stamps
11. Linda Krueger at The Stamp Coach
12. Joanne Brown at Stamping with JoJo
13. Sheryl Abernathy at Elegant Sentiments
14. Jackie Beers at Blue Line Stamping
15. Jennifer Spiller at Westside Paper Creations
16. Candy Ford at Stamp Candy

I truly hope that each of you is healthy and staying safe whatever that looks like for you.  If you are interested in seeing more of the sketchbook check out my Instagram @westsidepapercreations my stories Artsy life.  I have been trying to post different projects as much as possible! Have a great day and remember to always be creative in life

Peace my crafty friends-