Easy Watercolor Leaf Prints

1. Welcome to Watercolor Leaf Prints: Hi there. Welcome to my class watercolor leaf prints. I'm Charmaine Boggs. I'm a mixed media artist, jewelry designer and skill share teacher. As an artist, I can honestly say I have yet to meet an art material that I can't get along with. And most likely the reason I've turned to mixed media arts so often is that it gives me an opportunity to combine two or more of thes favorite materials in order to create the effects and images that I want to see in my artwork. In this class, you'll learn to simple techniques for printing lovely leaf prints from materials gathered in your yard or on a woodland, walk some tube watercolors and some saran wrap to create beautiful prints on the surface of your choice. In this class, you'll learn to simple printmaking techniques using the leaves that you gather from outside or other plant material that you'd like to print some tube watercolors, some plastic wrap or saran wrap. Whatever brand you have on hand will be fine. And then some tools for applying the water to your surface, things like sponges, brushes and spray bottles. You'll need a surface to work on and that could be a simple as some mixed media or watercolor paper or as elaborate as a piece of stretched canvas or canvass board. In the next video, I'll talk more about supplies and share with you a little more off what I've done, so come on over and let's get started. 2. Supplies and Leaf Preparation: As you can see, I have a lot of supplies on my table here because there are a lot of different options for things that you can use well doing this project, so few of these supplies are essential. Others are simply extra things that you might want to consider having a hand or that you might find useful As you're working. You do always want to protect your work surface. I use a plastic tablecloth from a local party supply store, and I use it over and over and over again until it simply falls apart. So I'm not spending very much money on that at all. You're going to definitely need to have water containers. I usually have one small one that I used to put just a little day off of dish detergent in . You may find that you don't really need to do this, but sometimes you're leaves just don't want to accept the pain. So having a small amount of water with a little district urgent in it will make your pain. It here a little better to the back of your leaves and some brush cleaning water, of course, and you want if you also want to have a spray bottle. I get these at the craft store. You could probably get thm at just about anywhere that sells household supplies. So little water battle for spraying and keeping things wet, of course, paper towels so that your wife in your brushes and keeping things clean and taking care of spills you're going to. Speaking of brushes, any watercolor brushes will dio. I like big, fluffy ones. They do the job really well. They put a lot of paint on the back of your Liefer on your paper, and use will keep things very wet. I also usually keep a sponge on hand. Sometimes that's a really nice way to apply some extra paint to the backgrounds of your project. So a sponge. This is one that I just purchased at the store. Makeup sponges work really well for this. Also, you're going to need some plastic wrap on whatever you have been having. Your kitchen this'd is the last thing that you'll do to keep your leaves printing properly . You're going to need some type of palette or tray for your paints. If you don't have a palate like this one right here that you can buy in a craft store. You can use a Styrofoam plate or even an old kitchen plate that you're no longer using, just something that won't of that's non porous because you don't want your pates to adhere to it. And speaking of paints, I do use to water colors to water colors have a lot more pigment in them than hand watercolors, and they will give you more vibrant colors. You don't have to go out and buy the most expensive brands on the market. On these are grown Bacher, Academy of their student grade watercolors. If I were doing Ah watercolor for commission work or something that I was planning to sell or keep for a long period of time, I would invest in higher grade paints. That thes will work fine for a project, especially in the learning stages if you do have them on hand. I am a big fan of Windsor and Newton paints. They are more highly picnic pigmented, but of course you're going to pay for that pigmentation. So just something to keep in mind. But definitely invest in a couple tubes watercolors. If you have not ever done that in the past. Faras painting surfaces. A lot of them work. This is arches. You don't need to buy arches again. It's a more expensive brand. But what I'm talking about here is that it's a hot pressed paper, and a hot press paper will have, as you see here, a satiny, smooth kind of finish. And this does take the leaf prints really well, and they had here nicely and you get some nice, vibrant colors. But again, it doesn't have to be an expensive brand like urges. If you've purchased cold press paper, this is also arches. Cold pressed paper is going to have more of a grainy surface, so you're going to have more texture in your leaf prints, and that could be equally attractive. If you don't want to invest in a lot of paper. Mixed media paper works fine. You can use this for just about everything. Basically, you want something with a little bit of weight to it, rather than just drawing paper. Sometimes I've worked on illustration board, which is a cardboard like surface has is not a leaf print, but it's like a cardboard very thick and heavy, very smooth on the surface works well with these, or if you have them on hand color art boards. It's the same thing, But this is the heavy cardboard, very heavy cardboard surface with a watercolor paper on the top, so it has a little bit of a texture, the last type of surface I want to share with you. If you choose to do this, you can use a raft canvas or a canvas panel, and this will work. However, I have found that it works best if you prepare your canvas surface with some extra Jess. Oh, Jess. Oh, is a product that, but this is liquid text brand, which is a very economical brand. This is white. It's a surface preparation that allows the paints to it here a little bit better. This is white, so if you want a white background or you're going to work with colors that will look best on white, you can also buy just so in black, and you'll see that in one of the projects that I have, where I just I wrapped canvas with some black Jess Oh, to do my work. And of course, last but not least, we need leaves to work with for this project. You do want your leaves to be flat pressed, but you don't want them to be really dry. I'm not going to have a little moisture. So what I did? I gathered thes leaves yesterday and put some paper towels down on these little trays, and I just spritz the paper towels with my lighter battle and layered my leaves in between the layers. This is going to keep your leaves nice and soft and pliable, which is how they will work fast for this project, and you can also reuse them until they eventually break down from all the use. So it does look like a lot of supplies, But again, you can pick and choose one type of paper, couple colors of paint, your basic painting supplies and your saran wrap and your leaves, and you're really good to go. 3. Painted Leaf Printing: Okay, so I have my cold pressed paper with its textured surface. It's the hydrangea leaf, and I have a little locust spray. No relief. I have a fluffy brush. I have my soapy water, just in case I need it. Spray bottle brush, cleaning water, paper towel to dry, my brush between colors, my palate, my color choices and my plastic wrap ready to go. So the first thing I'm going to do before I even do anything with my leaves, I'm going to go ahead and put a little bit of each color of paint in here. I have yellow Joker. This is the academy kind of a golden color. And because this is a more pigmented paint, you don't need large amounts of paint to make this work. This is a deeper brown color. This is burnt Sienna. It's a very pretty reddish brown. Then I'm going to switch over here for my red. I am using my Windsor and Newton can be, um, red, which is a nice, bright, nice, bright red. And my last color choice is some Academy brand hooker's green, which is a nice mid range green. I don't recommend using more than four colors because you can get some unpleasant effects. Sometimes if you lend to many colors together, you're going to get a muddy here look going to turn my paper sideways so more of it will fit in my camera view. He paid to the side for a moment and the first thing I'm going to do to prepare the paper. You'll want to spray spray the surface of your paper so it's nice and wet. Not totally, but nice and wet, moist. And then I usually put my paper towel and just smooth that out to make sure there are no excessive huddles, that I'm gonna keep my paper towel my paper away for a moment and I'm going to get my leaves painted. You're going to want to paint the back of your leaf because the veins are more prominent in the back. So I'm going to what, my brush and this leaf I'm going to do with some green. So I'm going to let my brash and a little water in here with my green get a nice, nice, a nice green, and I'm just going to see how well this particular leaf is going to take my pain and I can see here that it's taking the paint fairly well. I'm not getting a lot of sleep back for empty spaces, so I don't really need my soapy water for this. Leave. And then I'm gonna rinse my rinsing, my fresh, and I'm going to add just a little bit of this golden color to my leaves as well. Just randomly, Damn Cem to give my life a little more autumn color. My life is ready. It's take my leave and I'm going to just simply lay my life down Press it gently into place and just let it be. If your paper springs back, you can put little bits of tape in the corner. I usually don't. I don't let things like that worry me too much. All right, this is a locus leaf. I'm going to not put paint on going to use it more as an image that will have paint around it. So I'm just going to lay it in place here, just like so. And then I'm going to paint my my hydrangea leaf. Give it a little bit of color. It's neatest of painters. I will tell you. I have my Hendry. Actually, my hydrangea leave I'm going to do. And red and my bed is a nice break. And this one's painting pretty well too. Although I'm getting a little bit of that fleet back. So I'm going to take my clean brush and swishing in my soapy water. Just add a little bit of soapy water. Can I leave like so? And then returned to and you'll notice the pain. But here is just that little bit more then it wasn't hearing before, so sometimes that a little bit can really make a difference. Have been great with this one. I'm going to add a little bit of that golden tone into that. So I have some crossover with my colors and this one Oh, place very here. Don't worry about that kind of thing. That's just gonna happen. All right, Now I have my leaves in place, and the next thing I'm going to Teoh is spray around. I think so. And now I'm going to take my brush and a little bit of that brown that I had and I'm just going to add bits of it. Thanks. Okay, my favor. This is where a sponge will come in really handy. You can wait your sponge and just kind of damp your paints with your sponge. Damn, it contains over where I have this leave the little guy. And I'm just looking at this. I really want some more vibrant colors around those edges. So I'm gonna get my read out and that golden get Loker and mix those up pretty watery and just add gets of that randomly around. I think so. Okay, just clean my brush off a little bit, Have a little of the cold, so I'm really being generous with my pains. I want a swab over this little guy a little bit. I don't know what he's going to dio because it's moved a bit. Give it one final straight. No, I'm ready for the plastic wrap. Going to plastic after my paper and a to being as careful as I can not to move my leaves too much have come down and you'll already noticed your plastic graft will create textures as you press it down. Can I just put some paper towels over this? Like so? And then we have weighted down going to layer. So my across the top like so and we wait. And I recommend that you leave it like this for at least a good hour because you want those paints to be fully absorbed into your paper. Okay, after roughly 30 minutes to an hour, if you're a little bit impatient, it's OK. I often and we're going to do the grand reveal and remove the weights, but we won't be removing the Saran wrap quite right away. We're going to just take a look and see what we're getting. Gives us a chance to look at it, and it looks like it's absorbing nicely. I can see places where I'm not really happy I'm looking here, and I'm just thinking I'm not really very crazy about that. Looks kind of dull. Not as pretty as I had hoped. So what? I can dio just maybe fix it a little. I'm going to spray it, make it a little better, and I'm going to just kind of crumble my saran wrap and just let it sit a little longer. Now, at this point, you're papers is very wet. You don't want to remove the saran wrap or the leaves until your paper is almost completely drive, so you need to put that you can put it on a piece of cardboard or a large magazine or book . I just happened to have these neat little plastic trays because I do things with my grandkids a lot, and they come in handy. So I'm just going to set it in a plastic tray so that I can set aside for a while and we'll take a look at it when the paper is completely dry. Okay, let this dry for a few hours. My paper is damp but not completely wet, so it's safe to gently peel back the saran wrap. And I want to be really careful not to move the leaves too quickly because there could be water and color on the top of the leaf. And I don't want that to run off onto my paper. So I lift my leaves straight up very carefully, and I think that's a very nice print. This one, the green one could have used a little bit more color and my little locus leave spray there could have probably used a little more around it as well. But overall, it's a good print. It has some nice textures in the background, and I'm happy with it. I'm sure that I can find some areas that I would want to crop out, perhaps to Matt or frame or used as part of a greeting card. You'll see a number of different ideas that you can do with your leave prints when you go to put together a project. 4. Painted Paper Printing: with this method, you're going to put the color on the paper before you do anything with the leaf. Then put the leaf on the wet painted paper. Seal it with your saran wrap and you'll get a much softer, more delicate impression. This is a really good technique to use with ferns or delicate leaves that might otherwise break or tear while you're using them, putting paint on the back of Asian, I'm going to just use mixed media paper, which is thinner and more likely to buckle and roll up. So I just have an old piece of cardboard. I'm going to tape it down to using some painter's tape, and this will keep it from buckling up is much. Well, I'm applying the pain. It will leave you with white areas along the edges, but I don't think that's a serious problem when you're doing a project like this. So my paper tape down that's going to prevent a lot of buckling as I work and again, I'm going to prepare my palate and my leaves. I'm going to for this one. I'm going to use just three colors I'm going to use. Some of these are Academy brand Graham Becker Academy. This one is cadmium yellow deep, which is a very nice as it as it says, a nice deep yellow. And I'm going to choose squeeze out more pain for this because I'm going to be putting more pain directly on the paper. I'm also going to use some scarlet lake, which is a very pretty red, a little less foreign gee than the cadmium red that I used on the other. And I'm going to go back to my birth. Seanna, which is a really nice radish brown and will go well with these autumn colors. I will not need my soapy water. I'll just need some brush cleaning water, my spray bottle, my fluffy brush and then, of course, my leaves. And for this one, I am going to work with some of my more delicate leaves. I have a lovely Japanese maple in my yard, and it has these beautiful, delicate leaves. So I have some Japanese maple and I have firmed have fern Japanese maple, and this I just found. I'm not even sure what it Wasit was out along the edge of my property, so I'm just going to give it a world. My husband would just say It's a nuisance. Weep, But I'm going to use minor since week for this some I have my cleaves picked out and, of course, many of my surroundings. So for this one, I'm going to spring peepers. And for this one, I'm simply going to apply paint directly to my paper. Start with my yellow. Just apply very thick, very thick. Lots of modern, good, thick layers of paint. And I usually work from lighter to darker when I'm doing this. And at this point, before I apply any of the brown, I'm going to give my water a little time to. And with this I'm not getting a lot of bleed. Watercolor paper will give you more of a bleed. This is working nicely. And I know a lot of people do have mixed media paper on hand and that you don't need to go out and buy something else, and I'm gonna be except me I was going to taps of Brownie in, but except I'm just put some brown paint on my brush and I'm just hitting the handle of my brush to spritz little bits of brown from there a little rocking motion back and forth to curse. I'm just going to let that sit on our for just a moment, and this time I'm going to have my leaves right side up so that the veins are actually into my paints. So until they nice my leaves to position thanks and then and it's the same process, I'm going to lay it in place. Let it wrinkle a little bit padded an. They have my paper towels. This just protects anything that you're putting on top of your piece to weight it down, paper towel, then my rates. And once again we wait. Okay, It's been over an hour when you're using mixed media paper, it usually has its smoother surface, and it's not going to absorb the paints like watercolor paper dots. So what? You'll notice as I peel back the saran wrap on this one, you're going to see a fairly large, possibly looking areas of pain on the surface. So when you're peeling back after using some mixed media paper, it's going to trap that moisture, and it's not going to be totally absorbed, so when you lift your leaves, lift them straight up you'll notice actual puddles of pain. Do your best not to disturb them. Just allow them to remain there on the surface. I am picking it up so that you can see it a little closer, but you want to not disturb that on. Allow that to dry, sometimes overnight. It's going to take quite a while for those paints to fully dry because you're basically dealing with evaporation now rather than them being absorbed into your paper. Once the paints air completely dry, it's safe to peel back Any tape that you use told your paper in place and your print is finished. What I like about working on mixed media paper because it doesn't absorb the pain as extensively as watercolor paper does. Many times, your colors are going to be much more vibrant, and you're actually going to have almost a textured feel where those heavier layers of paint dried so it can give you some really beautiful effects that you're not necessarily going to get using watercolor paper, even though you have the exact same paints. Here are a few samples to show you how the same technique reacts with different types of papers. You're mixed media paper will give you the most vibrant tones with a chance of even a little texture. Watercolor board, which is cardboard with the watercolor paper on top or watercolor paper, will absorb more of your paint and give you much softer tones. 5. Time for a Project: welcome back. Like all skill share classes, this one ends with some projects. Suggestions. Leaf prints are great. You can crop them and math, Um, and frame them. You can slip them into card holders that you buy at the craft store. You can add extra paint or even a little bit of glitter for some sparkle. Or you could grab some pen and ink and do a little outlining to bring out the shapes. I even found some stress more postcards to send to family and friends. I'll share a few tips for things you can dio, but use your imagination and surprise me with your project. Sometimes your print isn't as crisp or showing up as well as you would like. I'm using some Derwent intense watercolor pencils to blend in my edges and add a little bit more emphasis where I want the color to be a little more striking. Any brand of watercolor pencils will work whatever's available locally, they've become quite popular, and you can even get them at your local craft supply store in a student grade that because they have become much more popular with elementary and middle school classrooms, and then what you do is what Just take a black paint brush. Just wet it, dabbing out, make sure it's not drifting, and then add that water to where you put the card pencil. That will activate the paints underneath that have already dried and and your new color for a little bit more emphasis on the print so that you can see it that waas almost invisible against the background. And now you can more clearly see the leaves, the post hurt size or, if you cut your own paper to postcard size, will fit nicely in these card holders. So if you wanted to growing greeting cards, this is a brand called record recollections. I just got this at Michael's. I think Michael's or Joann's, the craft store so and you have a very pretty have a pretty little note card if you have a larger print, but you may not. Maybe you don't care for all of it. They're areas that didn't print us well. Another thing that you can do is take a Mac again. This is just from the art supply store. Probably Michaels or Jo Ann's somewhere like that. You can try a man, take a bad and kind of see where the best part of your print is. Cut it to fit the Mac and frame it. That's another option that you have. I like to keep a variety of mats and indifferent. I buy them when they're on sale, like texture to the paper. So you could try. If you wanted to frame it in something a little smaller, this would work, and then you could find have a frame that that would fit into nicely. A nice friend. You could actually frame your pieces that size. This is a five by seven with an opening for four by six Picture, which is the size of the post, hurts. So you were doing the postcard size. Therefore, by six. Just like a photograph. You can math, um, put them in a frame, put them in a card. I want a different ways that you can use them. You can keep them as standalone art prints. If you have one that's fun aboard, that's gonna be more of a stand alone. Just because they're so hard to cut, you can cut them with, um, a heavy duty Exacto knife utility knife. If you didn't want to do something like that with a lot of times I would just get a map that fits that size. You can match them a standalone artwork. This is another one that wasn't showing up, a swell Asai would have liked. So I started working with the colored pencil to bring out you see, to bring out some of the pattern. It wasn't quite as visible, so you can go over them with watercolor pencils or regular colored pencils. You just wouldn't have that blending effect with you can map them. You can frame them. You can put them in cards so many different things that you can do with a simple, different. 6. A Few More Things: Well, that's a wrap for watercolor leaf prints. I hope you enjoy the class and the project as much as I enjoyed teaching it, and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing from you and seeing your projects posted on our class project page. So don't be shy. If you like this class, be sure to hit the follow button so that you'll be notified when I publish new classes. And while we're talking about it, go ahead and check out my skill share channel. I have other classes for mixed media artists, as well as some printmaking classes and some classes that are ideal for parents looking for something to do with the Children at home, on breaks and weekends or for daycare workers, baby sitters and classroom teacher. Like most people these days, you will find me on social media I most active on Instagram, where you can find me almost daily at sea box art. I'm on Facebook, also a C Boggs art. I have a website, www dot c boggs are dot com, which can link you to everything that I do and you'll find me on Pinterest a swell See Boggs art. Of course, earlier this year, I also started a YouTube channel where I offer some shorter art related video tutorials. So if you like to do something quick, easy and fast, or a short project to do with the kids at home took out my YouTube channel a C. Boggs art and see if there's something there that works for you. Meanwhile, thank you for watching this class watercolor leaf prints and have fun creating your own leave prints over the coming weeks. I'd love to see what you've done, so be sure to post them on our class project board. Until then. Have some fun, and I hope to see you again soon. 7. Bonus: Leaf Prints on Canvas: In the end, this lesson turned out to be a true bonus lesson. Not only will you learn how to print leaves on a canvas, you'll also learn what to do when things don't turn out quite like you expected to work on a canvas. This is a canvas that's been just sewed with black. Jessica and I have just simply printed a leaf on it with no background. Additions just believe print itself. So for this one, this is the canvas back just on it. I'm going to use these two Japanese May believes, and this little leave from one of plants in my garden For this one, I want to make sure I have good coverage with the paints. So I am using my soapy water, and I'm also going to be using the same colors I used in the other ones. So I'm using my Windsor and Newton yellow Oakar, permanent sap green and a little bit of cadmium yellow. I have my palate, my paper towel and some rinsing water, and my brush a little bit of each color on my palette, and I won't need very much since I'm only painting the leaves and not creating anything with the background, so I'll just do some little little bits of each color. If I need more, I can put it out later. That was tight. I haven't used that one for a while. Excuse me a second. I need a little pair of players, your paint tubes Very well. And I'm using a lot more green than the other colors. So I'm going to do a little bit more of the green, and I have my paints ready, and I'm going to put the paints on the back side of the leaf where my veins are most prominent. I'm going to use my soapy water first so that I can make sure I have good coverage and because I have these nice connections here, E. Leaves. I'm going to try to get a little bit of my paint to stay there during this process. Right for this, I'm going to start with the green. I'm going to paint my leaves. The green pain. It's a little hard to tell. We have very much pain staying on my leaves, so I'm going to make sure I have a generous supply. It's not even with my so be water. I'm still not getting really good coverage, something that sit for a second and then go over it again. And that does seem to help clean my brush. And I'm going to add just little dabs of my other two colors. It's some random dams here. This is the yellow ochre, which is going to give me. The golden tones also helps to fill in the little spaces that may not have covered as well . My last layer is going to be my yellow. Normally I would work from light to dark, but I want my lights to be a little more prominent, so I'm putting on the surface. Okay, good that I'm going to campus server and placed my leaves. Candace, have them gently like so, and I'm going to repeat the process with my other leaves in order to be sure everything's very secure for this one. I'm not trying to create textures with my Saran wrap, so I wanted to be on a smooth as possible, press it down really well, and then I'm going to fold it back behind my canvas so it's on tight. I'm going to want to flip this one over so this one is going to be flipped over flat and I want to be a little too dress really Well, with this interfered here. So So box will that you need to find a little something that'll fit in there to keep it pressed. That's even a little too big stone statues, A little bun bun in here. An impressive and it will sit. Okay, a little disclaimer here on this one. I actually forgot about this because I had company over the weekend. And so I left this face down with the weight in it for close to 36 38 hours. And because of that, I caused my own problem. Had I opened this up within a few hours of starting the process, I probably would not have had any problems with the paint at hearing what I found when I took the weight out and carefully unwrapped my saran wrap is that the paint had dried so completely that when I pulled the leaves off the paint stuck to the leaves rather than the canvas. So there are whole areas in this where you don't see any pain at all, or just a very faint image of the paint, but that was a problem of my own making, so I needed to come up with a solution of my own making. Usually when something doesn't turn out quite the way you hoped, there's something you can dio to fix it before you give up. I can cover this whole thing with Black Jess Oh, and repeat the process with different leaves. But before I do that, there are some nice possibilities in the design that I have here, so I don't want to give up too soon. What I'm going to do is take those same leaves that I had used. They're quite flattened, so there's not a lot of the leaf veins, so I don't know what's going to happen with this, and they are a little dry. What I'm going to do this time I'm switching my paints. I'm using this academy cadmium yellow medium, which is a darker. It's a darker yellow, more intense yellow. So I'm going to try that, and I'm also using the ground backer Academy Hooker's Green Light, which is again a slightly deeper green than what I was using on the other one, and I'm not going to introduce the gold color at all. Try these also, Since I'm working on a rough surface of canvas, I'm gonna try another thing. I'm not going to wet my brushes at all, so I have to brush is one for the yellow and then for the green. I'm going to paint the green first so each leaf is going to be painted with no water on the leaf. Not soapy water, not no water at all on the leaf. And I'm just going to cover as much of the leaf as I can get paint to stick to give it on goods. Because I think part of what interferes with the transfer of the pain when you're working on canvas is simply the texture of the canvas itself. It's similar with watercolor paper, but watercolor paper, even if it has the rougher texture, is designed to be very absorbent, so you tend to have less trouble with your paints when you're doing using on a colored paper paint that so and then I'm going to switch my brushes and add some bits of the yellow this kind of randomly into my leaves. Now I have much thicker paint, so I may end up getting slightly better results, but I want to do to put this on my I want to try to get it as close as possible to what I had before, although it isn't necessary that it be perfectly lined up and I'm going to press that down . It's not perfectly lined up, so we'll see what we get. And then I'm going to do the same thing with my other leaves on my Saran Wrap didn't get terribly, so I'm going to be used leaves over and a little bun. Been impressive. First steps. It's good press and a little bun bun in spot. And again wait right because I suspected that the amount of time I waited was part of my problem. I only left the paint on for about an hour before I unwrapped to see what my results were. So here we are, the great on wrapping, and when I pulled them off, I found that it was improved but still not as defined as my print of the firm leaves. So now I'm beginning to think it isn't totally about timing or paint. It actually might have something to do with the texture of the leaf itself, and the fern leaves have a much more prominent texture that can pick up the paint's. So now we go into let's see what else we can do. Mode. One of my go twos is to add a tiny bit of glitter. I actually used it on the ferns. This is Rose Gold Stickles, which I really like. It's Ranger. They sell them where paper crafting supplies are found and what I like about this glitter glitter glue, I guess you could call it, is that it's a very, very fine glitter, so that it leaves a very subtle shimmer to your work. And it's not like that craft glitter that you remember if you have Children that you remember being all over the floor at the holiday time. So I just got some teeny tiny little brushes so I could apply just some very small amounts of glitter. Keep some water handy to keep your brushes clean, because this will dry fairly quickly and will destroy a brush if it dries on the brush. So keep that handy. I'm working on a piece of cardboard, so I'm just going to squeeze out a little bit of my glitter and then go ahead and use my small brush to use a little bit of glitter to define the veins of the leaf and perhaps a little bit of the area around the leaves to apply the glitter. I'm using just a small amount on the tip of my brush and a little bit of a tapping motion wherever I want the glitter to stay. I'm not trying to fill things in. I'm just trying to add a little bit of dimension. Give a little suggestion of where there are veins and where there might be edges and tips to the leaves, so usual glitter sparingly. But it is a great way to fill in those spaces. That and healthy. I read them as a leaf. Another thing that you could do and I actually did but didn't film. After the glitter was completely dry, I got out the paints that I had used for that second print and use that same teeny tiny brush to dab little bits of extra paint into areas that I wanted to highlight. So now if you put the two prints side by side, you will see some slight color differences but overall, they are very similar. So there you have it. Now you know how you can apply watercolor paint leaf prints to a piece of just sewed canvas wrapped canvas or canvass board. You also know what to do when things don't turn out quite the way you hoped they would. Unfortunately, my glitter doesn't show well in these photos, but it is there, and under the right light, it does add a really pretty effect.