I almost feel like I should give a warning to readers before they scroll down to see this layout. I think both my husband and kids thought that maybe I've watched a few too many true crime documentaries when they walked into my workroom and saw it.
But, I just can't help myself with taking a theme to the extreme...
Supplies used - Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned papers: Authentique, Cosmo Cricket, and My Mind's Eye; Watercolor: Pinkfresh Studio; Dripping cut files: Sophie Gallo from the Silhouette Design Store; Alphabet stickers: My Little Shoebox; Embroidery floss: DMC; Computer fonts: It Bleeds (dripping font) and Century Gothic
I've been dying to try the watercolor drip effect for a long time! (See what I did there. Hahaha!) A few years ago Jackson was Pennywise from the movie "It" for Halloween and we used some of that red hair spray to dye his hair.
When it came time to go trick-or-treating there was a light rain, but of course that would never stop a kid from collecting his candy. He trooped on, did his trick-or-treating, and by the time we got back home he had hair dye running down his face. It made his costume even creepier!
I thought that the photos of him with his bleeding hair dye would be the perfect opportunity to try out this dripping watercolor effect. Now, a good person would have taken pictures of each step, but someone, we won't say who, got a little excited about the idea she had in her head and didn't take pictures of each step. Sometimes that happens. I just get in my creative zone, experimenting and playing, and forget to do that part! However, it's a super easy technique so I feel like you'll get it without the photos.
The first thing I did to create this bleeding look on my layout was painting the top half of my layout with red watercolor. I knew that I was going to use the dripping die cuts so I had already cut those out and I used them as a guide for where I would apply the paint.
Then I let that section of watercolor dry before I added the drips. When painting with watercolors or I'm sure with lots other types of paints you often times have to work in layers. With watercolor if you add a new color on top of wet watercolor it bleeds. When it does that it does create a really cool look, but I needed all of my watercolor for the drips to stay contained as one drop.
After my base layer of watercolor was dry, I would saturate my paint brush in red watercolor and apply a large droplet of it at the edge of the watercolor base. If you had one of those liquid dropper things, it would be perfect for this, but I didn't have one so I just used my brush loaded with watercolor.
Then I tilted my paper in the direction that I wanted the drop to flow in. Sometimes the watercolor would drip perfectly and sometimes I would have to help it along with my brush. I worked my way across the whole page creating drips in a variety of lengths.
After I had all of my drips done, I used my brush and flicked it across the layout to add a spray of red watercolor across the layout.
When everything was completely dry I added three different dripping die cuts to the top edge of the layout. With so much red on red, even though they are all different shades, I wanted to find a way to define the edges of each dripping die cut. To do that I added hand-stitching along the edges of each one. That really highlights that dripping look!
For the rest of the layout I kept everything really simple with just my title and journaling. The best find was a fun "bleeding" font that I found in the Silhouette Design Store. It was so perfect for this layout!
This layout and 9 more are featured in my latest YouTube Video...
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