Fall is my very favorite season. I haven’t hidden the fact that I really don’t care for summer. I like Spring, too, but it tends to bring really severe weather to the Midwest, and it also means Summer is coming, so it isn’t as much fun for me as September, October and November.
I’ve been watercoloring again, and I really like to make abstract backgrounds – you never know what you are going to get, and they never really are duds. I saw several tutorials on using masking fluid to preserve the white space for more artwork (lettering, usually) and that sounded like something I’d like to try.
And it was, right up to the point where the masking fluid was $12 for a bottle about the size of nail polish. That’s out of my budget for a one-off craft tool, so I shelved the idea.
And then it occurred to me that I could just create a watercolor mask by basically cutting an inside out stencil on my Silhouette and accomplish the same effect.
I tried to cut the lettering for the watercolor mask out of blue painters tape adhered to my mat, but I couldn’t remove it without damaging it. I was pretty sure that if I used transfer tape to move the watercolor mask, it would stick to the watercolor paper and damage that, too.
I thought I was at a dead end, until I decided to use adhesive shelf paper. I cut a piece just a tiny bit larger than my watercolor paper, and smoothed it down. Then I put that layered piece on my Silhouette cutting mat, and designed a watercolor mask layout using part of a cut file from my Etsy store.
I included a rectangle to use as a border in addition to the lettering, so that I wouldn’t have to tape off the edges.
I sent the image to the cutter, using the standard “Vinyl, Glossy” settings that I use when I cut adhesive shelf paper without the watercolor paper below it. I only wanted to cut the shelf paper, not into the watercolor paper.
It wouldn’t be too hard to do this without a cutting machine – I’ve cut lots of designs out of shelf paper for window decorations using an Xacto knife. Letters would be trickier, but if you have a sharp blade and patience, it wouldn’t be impossible.
Once it was all cut, I carefully weeded it, but kind of backward – I left the letters and the outside border on the watercolor paper and removed the middle section. Then I flipped it over and smoothed it again, trying to get the best adhesion possible between the removable shelf liner paper and the watercolor paper. Unfortunately, my shelf liner is white so it’s a little tricky to see in the photos.
When I paint these backgrounds, I tape my sheet to a piece of cardboard to keep it from moving around, and also to keep it from buckling from the water. The trick to these backgrounds is to sweep plain water with a flat brush edge to edge all over the sheet, and then come back and quickly swish in the colors.
The best versions are those that I don’t play with too much – just swish in the color, overlapping as I go and leave it up to chance as to how it ends up.
After letting the sheet dry (I went for my afternoon walk and it was dry when I came back) I removed the shelf liner mask. The watercolor paper did wrinkle a little, but my frame has a plastic piece in the front that will flatten it over time.
Pin this so you can come back and create your own watercolor mask masterpiece!
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