Watercolor Paper Towel Technique

Last week I shared this card....

and lots of folks asked to know what technique I used to create the background. 

I have to tell you that I discovered this technique quite by accident a few years ago.

I had been playing with some Distress Re-inkers and was cleaning up my work space.  I wiped up some of the inks with a damp paper towel and set is aside while I put a few more things away.  Well, when I went to toss the paper towel in the trash along with other garbage I noticed the cool pattern the damp towel had made on the paper...

Of course this sparked an idea and I pulled everything back out and began to experiment.

Watercolor Paper Towel Technique

Supplies:

Distress Ink, Stain, or Re-Inker

Paper Towels

Water

Paper

Instructions:

1. The first thing you need to do is dampen your paper towel with some water...use as much or as little as you would like.  Sometimes I get my really soaked, other times just so the entire towel is wet but not dripping.

2. Now dab a bit of ink on your work surface and wipe it up with the wet towel.

3. Now dab the inky towel onto your cardstock!  If you get too much of one look, re-wad the towel and pounce some more!

 I like to use 1-3 colors per design...much more than that and the design starts to look muddy.

And here is what it looks like using all three  of my inky paper towels...

You can add some real interest to your finished background by squeezing out small puddles of inky water....

then drying it immediately.

Here are my single color  sheets....  you will notice on a couple I used more ink while the broken china I used only a small amount...

You end up with some really awesome looking background papers...

Here are my multi color examples...

And a couple projects putting these nifty backgrounds to use....

(all images are Just For Fun Rubber Stamps)

And there you go!

A really fun and oh so easy technique that

makes you and your projects look super!