Pinkfresh Studio Challenge January 2026 To a Wonderful Friend

Pinkfresh Studio Challenge

Trying out new techniques today- embossing with hot foil plates and creating custom paper with liquid watercolors.

Steps to recreate this card:

1. To create the vase and the flowers, cut four A2 size panels from watercolor paper. For the color mixtures, use the following combinations of Pinkfresh Liquid Watercolors: green = Marigold + Atlantis + a small amount of Stargazer; pink: Raspberry Bliss + Regal Kiss; turquoise: Atlantis + the green created earlier; yellow: Marigold + Raspberry Bliss. Paint each panel separately. Tape the panel to a craft mat or moveable board with low tack tape. Apply the color unevenly and mix in different amounts of the colors to create lights and darks on the paper to give a watercolor feel. Dry with a heat tool. To make the watercolor shiny, add in Winsor & Newton Watercolor Mediums- Iridescent Medium. Mix the medium directly into your paint on your palette before painting. 

2. Die cut the shapes from the prepared papers. For the vase, use the vase with the lines from the Farm Fresh die set. For the flowers and stems, use the Embroidered Blooms die. Cut each color one at a time. Add in extra cardstock shims to the die cutting sandwich if the machine is having trouble cutting through the watercolor paper.

3. Ink blend an A2 size panel of white cardstock with Summer Shower ink. Using the correct sandwich for your die cutting machine, emboss the ink blended panel using the Abstract Triangles hot foil plate. For this design, place the inked side facing the hot foil plate. Glue to a card base with the ink sided facing up with the impression indented rather than raised. 

4. Cut an A2 size panel of copper metallic cardstock and die cut using the Elongated Lattice Coverplate Die. Glue to the front of the card on top of the blue panel. 

5. Attach the vase with glue and arrange the flowers and glue them in place.

6. Using a stamping platform, stamp the To a Wonderful Friend sentiment from the Wildflower Bouquet stamp set using black ink on a piece of white cardstock prepared with anti-static powder. Use clear embossing power and a heat tool to make the sentiment shine. Die cut the sentiment using the Wildflower Bouquet die. Die cut a few extra pieces from white cardstock to add to the back of the embossed image to create some dimension. 

7. Finish by adding some Dew Drops: Iridescent bling. 

Finished!

I hope you feel inspired to create your own custom colored paper using watercolors!