Embroidered Collage

I like the look of these cards.  In general, I like watercolors that take advantage of their medium and have the effects you can only get with the flowing of water.  Oh, I definitely appreciate the subject matter and skill when watercolors are simply used as the painting medium of choice to achieve a goal not determined by the medium, but I usually like the other kind best.

I made these atcs by drawing in with my watercolor crayons, deliberately putting in thick layers of pigment in certain places, then applying water while holding the card vertical, putting the most water where there was the most pigment and attempting to control the drips.  Unfortunately, there wasn't as much interesting flowing together as when I tried this on a larger piece last year.  Maybe I used a different brand of crayons for that piece.  The cards originally looked like this.

Next time I do this I need to work with cards pre-cut to 2.5 x 3.5 instead of the 3x4 pieces that I used.  I wanted room to select my composition when I trimmed, which did help, but I lost some really great edge effects where the water pooled.  As it is, this set of cards seem so pale to me.  I want to take colored pencils to them and spice them up a bit.  I may yet.  The swap is themed "watercolors" but I know I can tweak it a little, as other members are doing.