Tinkerin In Ink with Tanya: Feathered Feathers Watercolor

Who loves feathers? I know I do! As soon as I saw the Four Feathers set in the Holiday Mini, I knew I had to have it. The fact that there are coordinating dies just made it a sweeter deal :)

I recently saw a card with these feathers that made me want to experiment with some watercoloring with it. The result is two cards. Since they turned out so very differently, I will post one today and one tomorrow. (Here is the link to card #2, but please know that it will not work until 9/27/14)

This was my first effort and I like it. But it was definitely an experimental card, lol!

First, I cut a 4"x5¼" panel of watercolor paper. Then I laid it on my silicone mat to protect my desk and wet it liberally with a large paint brush. The paper was shiny with water and a little was pooling at the edges. The paper curls when it is wet, but don't worry. It flattens back out when it is dry. But when you go to stamp on it, you have to push the paper down onto your desk!
I inked up one of the large feather images with Hello Honey and stamped onto the wet watercolor paper. Then image immediately started to blur and bleed out. Not really a feather anymore. Ok, keep going! I quickly inked up the other large feather in Cajun Craze and stamped that next on the wet paper. Same thing. Now the paper was starting to dry out so I re-wet the bottom portion, then inked up the first feather image with Mossy Meadow and stamped it quick.
I went back while the paper was still damp and each color again with a freshly inked stamp. Then I let it dry. OK, I really took my heat tool too it, but who's asking ;)
I still wasn't quite happy with the definition of the stamped images, so I went back and stamped the feathers again in Gold Encore ink when the paper was completely dry. Then I loved it!!
Next, I took a smallish paint brush, dipped it in water, and picked up some reinker off the lid of the Hello Honey inkpad after I squeezed it to get ink on the lid. I then held the paintbrush over the panel and tapped it to get a spatter of color. I repeated this a couple times with the Hello Honey, and then with the other 2 colors. WARNING: this spatters ink all over the place!! I had a few other projects going on at the same time and got spatters on them too. So don't be like me, clear your area before you try this :)
Then I inked up the "hello" from Hi There in Gold Encore ink and promptly dropped it on the panel I had just spent so much time on.... sigh. I guess I am going for the double image effect! So I moved it down and to the right a little and stamped again to hide the skip mark :) Yup, that's how I roll.
And because I have to outline everything, I used the Gold Dazzle marker to outline the panel before I glued it to a Very Vanilla card base.

Then I decided I needed some feathers on the inside. There was no masking done between the Honey and Cajun feathers. That was me not inking enough of the Honey feather before I stamped it, then covering up my goof with a well-placed Cajun feather, lol!

What do you think? A flop, or a successful experiment?