Distress Stain Watercolouring

I don't have any watercolours but love the effect that is becoming very "on trend" as Gok Wan would say. I'm trying to cut down my spends a bit (hollow laugh there) but before I splurged on some I thought I would look around and see what else I could use. I have some Twinkling H2Os but when trying them out I found the colour a bit too intense. So instead I thought I would see what Distress Stains would be like. They are brilliant! Mind you I don't have many of those either so it is only a short term solution!

I squirted some of the stain out onto a craft mat and then with a heavily watered thick brush stroked some of the red down on the bottom of the layout - it was so watered down it was the right shade of pink. I then added blue, overlapping the red a little bit. I flicked some of the blue distress stain and also some Picket Fence ( a more opaque white) over the layout as well. 

I also brushed more of the two colours onto a spare piece of card ready for punching out later

You can't really see H's face on this photo of a photo so here is the original. Isn't that a lovely smile?

I used the Skyline Quirky Kit Lite for this layout.
 I wanted to keep the rest of the layout light so just cut a few strips of paper with my scissors.
I really liked the phrase "these moments make the best memories" from the Elle Studio paper but it was a bit too green so I decided to add some extra fine blue glitter onto the thick green lines with a glue pen.

I found the "time, date" etc wording on the strip on the bottom of the Elle Studio paper so cut it carefully and stuck it to the top right of the layout. 

I punched two circles with a circle punch (Woodware yellow) and added the stickers from the kit - one of which I halved to use in different places.

I used the Thickers from the kit as the title.
As a finishing touch I added some of the sequins from the kit. I thought it would also be nice to add some mica flakes, added with a glue pen. They look nice but got EVERYWHERE - as you can see.

I love this layout and the sweet summer memory it envokes