Watercolor petals

Looky there, a new header image has arrived! I really liked how the watercolor flower turned out, so I wanted to share with you how I made it. 
I actually tried using two very different types of paper. The one above is made with tracing paper: I just roughly brushed on varying shades of purple and let the paper dry. Then, I cut petal shapes from the paper, brushed Mod Podge onto the backs (one at a time), and smoothed them to a scrap of sturdy card stock. I added a second round of overlapping petals to the first level, ending up with five over five. This photo shows a second flower made using this method, sitting on top of the cut-up paper.

I did something similar using actual watercolor paper; brushed varying shades of purple (mixed using blue and red in my simple watercolor set) onto the paper, let it dry, and cut out petals. This time I cut them in three different sizes, then stacked them from largest to smallest.

You get more dimension with the thick watercolor paper, but you lose the nice translucency of the tracing paper.
​More photos of the two effects:

Because the watercolor petals were so thin, and so evenly glued down, I was able to use a craft knife to cut out the letters in "ink" without much difficulty.  
Happy Spring! 
​xo