Practice watercoloring

I had to laugh as I received sales emails about products and techniques that were popular many years ago.  One of them was Peerless watercolor papers.  I had bought these many years ago at a convention and never really used them much.  I was about ready to discard them.  I had mounted half of each sheet of intensely pigments watercolor papers onto cardstock with labels.

I have 7 pages like this in different colors.  I mailed the half that I hadn't mounted to a friend.  We're both trying to learn to use them.  My first attempt was very dark, so my friend suggested I use wet brush to pick up color and put it on a 'pallet' (plastic lid for me) and color from that swatch.  This is my first acceptable card using this technique.

I have a lot of practicing to do before I consider myself good enough to color with these papers.  I just used plain white cardstock.  I need to try this on watercolor paper to see how that turns out.