Watercoloring on Cards

Ever admire those watercolored cards - and you think to yourself, I wonder how that do that? OR you think, I can't do that. --- Well, YOU CAN! And, actually - after this litte tutorial, you'll try it out and be pleasantly surprised with your results! 

First, you'll need some watercolors - not the pencils. We mean to use the good ol' fashioned watercolor palettes! You're kids probably have a set you can borrow - or you can just grab some the next time you're at the craft store. You can see (the above photo), mine were $4.99 at Michaels. I also have the tubes of watercolor medium left over from art school - but, those are kinda intimidating if you haven't watercolored before. So, let's stick with the palette - of course, you can get *really* nice palettes from Dick Blicks or an art store - but, I don't think you really need that quite yet. So, save that extra money and buy yourself another stamp set :) 

Ok - so I'm assuming that you've not watercolored ever - or in a really long time - and that you've never taken a class... if you have, just scroll on through all this :) 

First thing is first - trust me, you can watercolor. Maybe not that cityscape or the sunflower in the sun - not yet at least..... BUT, you can watercolor this card that I made! AND, it's a great way to start! I think a lot of people get intimidated by watercoloring (or any art medium really) because the expect to sit down in the first moment and create a Van Gogh. -- then proceed to give it up when the results aren't 'Starry Night'. lol (you totally know what I mean, right! - I'm soooo this person!) But, the first thing I learned in school was that if we start small - and get amazing results, we're encouraged to learn more and get better! So, take this card as your first small watercolor step. 

Play around with the colors and the water - just start mixing and painting --- create a 'background' by sticking with ONE family of colors. (you don't want to end up with brown on your first attempt - and trust me, watercolor goes brown FAST) 

Take a little punch you love and make a pattern - you can do the whole sheet, or just a section like I did. I also watercolored around the punched pieces so they'd stick out a bit more. 

You can play with splattering with your brush for another fun effect. Just fill up your brush with water - swirl it in the color - put your brush over your paper and 'flick' it. You can get lots of different splatter effects by doing big flicks rather than small ... or how filled your brush is with water. Etc. 

I hope that you're inspired 

Pin It