Water Color Week- Water Soluble Oil Pastels

I love the look of watercolors and have found that my favorite way to get that look is to use water soluble oil pastels. The pastels are like crayons and they easily create varying levels of color and are very simple to use. Here's the layout I created.

Because they are like crayons it is very easy to just draw on your paper. You can either wet your paper with a brush or dip your crayon into water.  I often then follow this step with a wet brush to soften the design further.

As you can see from the the photo above,  I also discovered you can easily draw inside small shapes like this stencil.

I worked with a wet tip and simple filled in a little bit of every space on the outside of the design.

I used a slightly damp foam stencil dauber to spread the color around.  Doing this I was able to create an ombre effect. Finally, I painted the edges of the layout with the watercolor using the same wet tip and paint brush technique.

Here's another trick.  I almost always work on my non-stick craft matte. It's a great place to puddle some paint.  You could also do this on a plastic paint palette. Here are some close ups and the layout again.

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studios Country Charm, Paper Ribbon: GCD Studios, Stickers: American Crafts, Journaling Stamps: Studio Calico and Making Memories, Brads: Crate Paper, Punch: Fiskars I hope this inspires you to pull out your water colors. In addition to Oil Pastel Crayons, water color pencils are also another very easy way to dabble in water colors.  Go ahead, get your brushes wet!!