How To Mix Avocado Green with Watercolor

Mixing greens in watercolor can be tricky. Join Lisa Spangler as she shares her tips for getting the perfect avocado green. She’ll have you saying “holy guacamole this is easy” in no time! The Guac On stamp set she uses will be available TOMORROW at 9AM PST!

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Hola! It’s Lisa here with tips on mixing that perfect avocado green to get ready for the upcoming Essentials by Ellen Guac On set in the February release! This set is SO FUN you all!

I’ll be using the Daniel Smith Essentials set of 6 tubes — it’s such a great set for learning to mix colors and definitely belongs in your toolbox.

The Daniel Smith Essentials set comes with six tubes of paints that you’ll need to squeeze into a palette — or just use a white plate. Pro tip: let the paint dry overnight so it’s easier to work with.

Here’s how to mix the perfect avocado green:

1. Mist your paints with a little water to activate them and let it sit for a bit while you stamp your avocados on watercolor paper. I like to stamp my images with black ink and emboss in clear as this will keep the images looking nice and fresh — they won’t get cloudy when you use opaque pigments.
2. Make a juicy puddle of Hansa yellow light on your palette — I call it HYL for short. HYL is a very light color as the name implies, so you’ll want this to be about the consistency of milk.
3. Now touch your brush to phthalo blue and then mix it into your puddle of HYL. Phthalo blue is one of those strong colors that tend to take over, so you really only need a teeny tiny bit! If you get too much just add in more HYL. You should have an eye popping clear bright light green at this point — don’t worry, we’ll tone this down in the next step!
4. Finally, touch your brush to quinacridone rose and and a little bit to the green to tone it down. Ta dah!

If you add too much quin rose just save it for those ripe avocados lol! It’s also handy for coloring the pits and adding little details.

Here are some more tips and tricks!

• If you’re just starting out with watercolors you’ll save yourself a ton of headaches if you use 100% cotton paper such as Arches — the paint is so much easier to control! Save the inexpensive paper for testing colors or making backgrounds and base cards.
• When watercoloring images, I like to stamp the image in black and heat emboss in clear. This way paints that are opaque won’t fuzzy up your clean, crisp images! It also helps corral the water so you stay in the lines.
• I always use a MISTI stamping tool since watercolor paper has a bunch of bumps on it — that way I can resetamp to get a good image.
• To get smooth blends, first color the whole avocado with light green and let it dry. Then mix up a slightly darker green for the edges. Wet the avocado all over with clean water, then drop in the darker green along the edge and let it diffuse naturally — easy peasy!
• For the pits, I like to leave little bits of the paper uncolored to represent the “shine”! If you forget tho a white gel pen is your friend 🙂
• One last tip for those pits — I like to drop in a bit of French ultramarine as it adds a bit of granulation — love!

Now on to some cards!

Bravocado!

While I have my puddles of paint mixed up I like to go ahead and make a bunch of avocados — any that I don’t use right away I just tuck in the sturdy envelope that the stamps come in!

This first card came about in just that way — I had a whole bunch of the little guys sitting there and they looked like they were cheering — this card kind of made itself! I added simple swooshes of phthalo blue to “ground” them.

Some painted confetti plus some iced confetti sequins plus the “bravocado” sentiment stamped and cut with Essential Rectangles for Stitching set the little scene.

And then I just had to add some fringe die cut from tissue paper using the new EBE Never Ending Fringe to finish off the card!

Avo Nice Day!

Next up, a clean and simple card!

That little bouquet is from EBE Bear Ware 3 and I think it looks just perfect here don’t you?! Pro tip: cut the arms and legs out to make yourself a lil template so you can cut ’em out evenly. Also! Go ahead and use your scissors to trim ’em a little shorter if ya like!

The “Avo nice day” was stamped in a speech bubble that was die cut with High Five and colored with a peachy tone, also mixed with the Daniel Smith Essientials set!

Just had to add that I’m loving the new EBE Essential Rectangles for Stitching to add that little detail to the edge — I can see myself using this over and over. OH YES!

Smash That Hass!

This card totally cracks me up you all!

As soon as I saw the new EBE Never Ending Fringe set this card just popped into my head — it just HAD to be done! Had to!

I cut the fringe out of tissue paper to give it a light and airy feel, then I adhered it to plain white cardstock and trimmed it with the EBE Essential Rectangles. I tried using both sticky tape and my trusty dot roller and both worked well, although I found the tape easier to work with.

One thing to know about the new “Stitching” dies — they only punch the holes. So you’ll need the original shape to cut ’em out. As you can see I used the new EBE Essential Rectangles for Stitching as border again! 🙂

And that was that!

Supplies:

Find EBE Guac On, the Rectangles for Stitching and Never Ending Fringe all right HERE in the February release!

Now for the rest of the supplies:

Thanks so much for joining me today — and Guac on! — Lisa