Today I’m excited to introduce you to Maggie, the blogger behind Maggie’s Butterfly Kisses. Her blog is packed with card-making tutorials, and I’m so glad she agreed to writing a tutorial for our #30DayMailboxLove challenge. Enjoy! ~Jennie
I didn’t purposely plan to do a card involving watercolors just because I know Jennie loves them as much as I do, but you know, I think it’s fitting! The first time I “ran into” Jennie, I knew I loved her style, and it has become more and more evident as we get to know each other that we have so much in common! From our love of letter writing, to our love of watercolors – two things I’m combining today. I don’t know about y’all, but that gets me really excited! (Not to mention the fact that Jennie is having me guest post on her blog. How cool is that?) Let’s dive in!
Say Hello! With This Fun Watercolor Card
Supplies
White cardstock
Molotow art masking liquid pump marker (what I have) or liquid frisket
Watercolor paper
Watercolors
Tissue paper
Sticker maker (if you have one)
Extra-fine light pink marker (I prefer sharpies)
Liquid glue (I specify liquid, because that’s what I use and prefer, but really you could use whatever type of glue you want that actually works; I don’t think glue sticks work well.)
If I was making this card in the most efficient manner, I would do the masking liquid part first, so that it could dry while I cut out circles, but that is not actually the order I did it in, so I won’t organize this tutorial in that way.
The first thing I did was cut out three circles from white cardstock. The circles should be of varying sizes. They need not be exactly the size of mine, but to give you an idea of how big each should be, my biggest circle has about a 2-3/4 inch diameter, the middle about a 1-3/4 inch diameter, and the smallest a 1-1/8 diameter. That being said, I think it might look a little better if the biggest circle was a bit smaller, and it probably wouldn’t hurt if the middle circle was a little smaller too. To get the circle shapes, I traced around various circular objects I found in my room, which you could do, or you could use a compass. Either would work.
I set the circles aside, and got out my trusty art masking liquid. Liquid frisket was on my Christmas list, but instead I got this stuff, which seems to work just fine!
Before drawing with the pump marker onto watercolor paper, we need to cut out the watercolor paper first, of course! I cut mine to 2 inches by 4-1/2 inches. After that’s cut to size, we can start on the fun stuff! The first time I made this card (nope, this isn’t the first time), I wrote the words, “HEY, YOU,” in the same font as I did here. In other words, all caps, and with the scallop border too. Wait for that to dry before heading on to watercoloring.
This is one of my favorite parts because it’s fun, easy, and beeyoooootiful. For the watercoloring, I usually, without wetting the paper first, start with pink (not sure why – you certainly don’t have to!), dab it in the top left corner and then dab on the orange, and then light orange, and just go back and forth between those three, until it’s all covered!
My art teacher has talked about this thing that happens with watercolors, called a blossom. It just means that when you paint an area and it dries and then you go back and continue painting, it will be obvious where you left off, because there will be a sort of mark. A lot of times when painting a picture, that’s bad, but with things like this, I think blossoms are a good thing, and I love the way they look!
After that’s all dry, you can rub off the masking liquid to reveal the white of the paper. Because of this, feel free to go kind of dark with the watercolors so when you rub off the stuff, there will be an obvious difference.
Note: When I used this masking liquid for the first time, I thought you were supposed to peel it off when it was dry (because that’s what the directions say to do), so I got quite frustrated when it wasn’t working. After a while I just started rubbing it out of frustration, and was overjoyed to find it came off! So if you get this stuff for the first time and it doesn’t work to peel, rub.
I have a mesh drawer under my desk full of tissue paper that I’ve collected over the years. I don’t use it that often (maybe once a month-ish), but it certainly comes in handy! To stay with the color scheme of pink and orange, I used orange, light pink, and hot pink. These will be used to cover the circles we cut out earlier. Hot pink for the biggest, light pink for the middle, and orange for the smallest.
Cut out a square from each color, that is each a little bigger than the circle it will cover. Carefully insert each square of tissue paper into your sticker maker and roll until they emerge out the other side! Individually peel each piece from the backing, and stick the circle on. I like to leave part of the tissue paper still on the backing while I stick on the circle, because it curls up really easily, and is difficult to uncurl because of the stickiness.
Note: Of course it is not hard or time consuming to erase the pencil lines around the circles, but if you want to eliminate that step, be sure to lay the circle down on the tissue paper with the marked side facing you, not the tissue paper, so it doesn’t show through. Especially do that if you used a pen!
Once the circle is safely on the tissue paper, pull the leftover down on the back. I like to do it a nice orderly fashion, but who cares – no one’s going to see it!
If you don’t have a sticker maker, perhaps you could squirt some liquid glue on your finger (or the circles) and rub it all over the circles and then stick on the tissue paper squares.
I had my blank card set aside this whole time. It’s a regular A2 size (4-1/4 inches by 5-1/2 inches), horizontal card with the fold on the left.
Once all the previous steps are done, you can go around the edge of the card with a light pink marker and roughly draw a border with scallops. Don’t try to make it perfect. In fact, try not to make it perfect!
I always like to put together all the parts of my card before gluing everything in place, so I know exactly what it’ll look like, and can do any last minute touches.
When you have your circles in place as shown above, you can go around them with the scallop border like you did around the edge of the card.
Glue everything in place, and it’s done! If you do have a sticker maker, you could use that again here for the circles and sentiment, and it would make everything even more secure than liquid glue would. I didn’t because I don’t like to use up my sticker maker cartridge if liquid glue works fine.
Since this is such a Spring-y watercolor card, I love the way it looks with the pretty flowers in the background. 🙂 Now go make one of your own, and knock your pen-pal’s socks off!
Born into a family of creatives, Maggie has been taught from a young age to foster and grow in her love of creating. While card making is her specialty, she also enjoys other sorts of artistic projects. Besides art as a whole, Maggie enjoys singing, kids, and her Savior Jesus Christ. Maggie blogs at maggiesbutterflykisses.blogspot.com and you can also follow her on Pinterest and Google+.
Thanks so much, Maggie, for this great tutorial. Have any of you tried liquid frisket before? It’s definitely on my to-buy list now. For more card-making tutorials, click here. And check back on Friday for the easiest butterfly card tutorial ever!
