Watercolor Resist

This technique is a blast to do. They turn out super bright and vibrant too. And… this can be done on any shape or size of paper (not just circles). I chose circles for this tutorial because I still have a bunch leftover from the succulent/cacti challenge I participated in this past May (I did a watercolor drawing of a succulent or cactus every day for 30 days on my IG).

Anyway, these can be used for multiple crafts. Some ideas include:

1. Use a hole punch and make them gift tags
2. Use a larger sized paper and write a quote on it
3. Make a 4×6 or 5×7 and it can be used as a greeting/note card
4. Use them as flash cards and teach young kids the colors
5. Embossing or doodling! Use a black or white pen and the colors will pop even more.

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Now that my fingers are permanently stained with beautiful colors, let me share how I did this, both in video and picture format.

-Start off by protecting the work area-

Please note, the results vary depending on the paper used. Basic computer paper doesn’t work well. I highly suggest using watercolor paper. This is the watercolor paper I used.

To achieve the circle shape, I used this 2.5 inch hole punch.

These are the tools I used-

I started off by using 3 shades of brush markers from this set – two of the colors are also available in this smaller set.

Starting with the lightest color first, I began coloring on a sheet protector (a sandwich bag or plastic wrap will work too).

Then, I grabbed the medium shade of blue and colored around the first color.

Last, I used the darkest color of blue and colored around the other two colors.

Once the colors were laid out, I sprayed the colored area 2-3 times with generic rubbing alcohol. The rubbing alcohol acts as a resist and creates a unique effect.

Then I used this spray bottled and sprayed the colored area one time with water.

I then took my watercolor paper and dipped it face down into the mix.

This is what it looked like after one dip into the mix.

Because I wasn’t fully satisfied with the first dip onto the paper, I dipped the paper back into the mix and covered the areas I felt needed more color.