Rubber Stamps, Part 2 : Watercolour effects

One thing I like to do with rubber stamps is creating a watercolour effect using water soluble crayons.

The basic method is that you apply pigment to the stamp instead of ink. Because water-soluble crayons are hard, you need to lay down a small amount of moisture on the surface of the stamp to loosen up a bit of the surface pigment of the crayon. The best way to do this is with a *very light* misting with s fine spray bottle about 6-8 inches away from the stamp's surface.

Once the surface is misted, you can apply colour on the stamp's surface, either one colour all over, or by applying colour to specific areas. For example, if your stamp is a landscape, you could colour green on the trees and blue on the sky. In my sample at the top of the page below, I coloured the central medallions of the stamp pattern with light ochre and then filled in the rest with a rusty red. I also increased the watercolour effect by misting the stamp AGAIN before stamping. As you can see, the watercolour version isn't crisp and clean, the colours have "run" into each other a bit creating some irregularities. This kind of subtle watercolour effect makes a great background to write on top of in your journal.

In the top right corner of the page, you can see the stamp pattern as it would look when stamped with black permanent ink as usual, and on the bottom two samples on the page you can see that without the extra "misting", the watercolour effect is less pronounced, more similar to the crispness of the regular ink pad.

I find it's best to think of this process scientifically ... there are a LOT of variables: the stamp you choose, the amount of water you mist on at the beginning, the type of pigment you apply (and how much), whether or not you add more misting just before you stamp, and lastly, the paper you're stamping on. It will take some experimentation to get a result you like, so I encourage you to play with the stamps and the crayons and inks I bring to class so you can get a feel for what you like.

Top left: Mist + Caran d'ache + mist, for full watercolour effect. Middle section, Caran d'ache but without second misting. And bottom left: Mungyo Gallery water soluble crayons (cheaper, but not as nice). 

On this page, I wanted to show you that the stamp you choose, and how much pigment you apply makes a difference to the final results. These results are neither good nor bad - it depends what effect YOU want to get. 

The water-soluble crayons I used for these pages were Caran d'ache Neocolor II (available at Deserres), and Mungyo Gallery Water Soluble Crayons (available at Opus). For some price perspective, the set of 10 higher quality Neocolors are just slightly cheaper than the set of 36 Mungyo Gallery. You get more colour bang for your buck with the Gallery set, and the quality is still very good - just not "as good" as the Neocolors. This is why I encourage you to use both options in class so you can decide what quality is best for you.

One more page for you, to show you that nothing needs to go to waste! I used up some of my "experiments" with the watercolour effect to create a background for a journal page.

On this page, I wanted to point out that the colours I've chosen are on opposite sides of the colour wheel (purples and blues vs. orange and yellows) to create visual interest against the black and white quotes on the handouts on page 7 this week. I did this to make the seed pod in the bottom left corner really look like it was glowing with inner light, and then I added just a few little touches of yellow elsewhere on the page to draw it together.

Here are you handout pages on stamping, and the page 7 quotes as well:

Hope you'll look at stamps in a new way. Remember, it's not what the stamp IS, it's HOW you use it!