One of my favorite things about the holidays is have the litany of bills and catalogs in the mail interrupted by a cheerful envelope or three! However, I am always so terrible at sending cards out myself. I cannot seem to reconcile my DIY heart with snapping up a box of 40 lookalike greetings. So I agonize and rhapsodize over what this year's theme will be, then I pick something far too complicated to create far too close to the deadline for sending them and manage to get out a handful at best. Well not this year! I'm getting a head start! Behold! The 2020 Holiday Cards!
I love these! They are simple, yet still manage to have texture and dimension. Let me show you how I made them! If you want to craft along, you will need:
- watercolor paper
- watercolor set and brush
- fairly simple dies or craft punches
- glue
- cardstock to mount the finished card front to
As you can see, there are some pretty clear stages to the process. First, I started with trimming my cardstock down to whatever size I wanted my front to be. I decided I wanted some square so the die would be the focus and some rectangle so I would have room for a sentiment on the front. Remember, if you want a border around the watercolor paper, trim it 1/2' smaller than your cardstock base.
After that, I simply painted each watercolor piece with broad, angled strokes. To add subtle texture, I let each layer dry, then went over it again very loosely in a darker shade or with the same shade to increase opacity. There is no need to get obsessive over this step. As you can see, my backgrounds are all very loose, with imprecise edges.
Next, you want to cut your shapes so you can stack them up. I found three of the same shape cutout of white cardstock gave me just enough oomph.
That looks nice and thick, right? A couple of thoughts about picking shapes:
- make sure it is easily identifiable as just an outline. You would be surprised how often color shapes our perception of something and since these are stark white, you lose that advantage.
- if you are using a Cricut machine or similar, make sure you have a very sharp blade and keep in mind that at this size, lots of lovely detail can get rather lost and hard to stack. I have a shredded up poinsettia and deer that each prove that point.
I thought a simple word in an elegant font would make a great centerpiece for a square card. I opted to stick to shapes for the rectangles since I would be stamping a sentiment underneath. Now with a little glue, stack the die cuts on top of each other and glue to the front.
If this isn't making sense to you, maybe this little video will help!
There! See? Not so hard!
As I mentioned earlier, the rectangles were designed with the idea of a sentiment underneath (although a full rectangle watercolor front with a more ornate die cut would also be a showstopper).
This is of course created the same way, merely adding a sentiment to the bottom third of the card. I used stamps, but you can use whatever your preferred method is. Another quick note, though: If you are stamping/writing/whatever directly to the watercolor paper, try a test run first. Watercolor paper is thirsty and has a texture so you want to make sure your sentiment and ink look the way you hoped.
I can't wait to create more of these and have them ready to go for the day after Thanksgiving! This year, I'll have my act together!
I hope you love these cards too! I also hope you're enjoying this new monthly series and will come back to see the next installment (on February 25th), as well as everything else I've got going on. Don't forget: sharing is caring!