How to Make a Truth Card

Truth. It’s something we all need, don’t we? The need to speak truth to my own heart has been forefront in my mind lately. I shared a post last week about silencing our inner critic as well as how to make encouragement stones. While I was thinking of a project to share for this week, I glanced over to my craft cabinet and my eyes caught on a card I made years ago. It was a bit weathered around the edges and had coffee stains on the back, but the truth on it still rang out. I knew this would be the perfect project to share with you, so here it is.

You can make a truth card for a friend or make a couple for yourself to place around your home as reminders.

How to Make a Truth Card

You will need:

One watercolor card (or heavy card stock)
Pencil and eraser (I recommend kneaded erasers)
Waterproof black pen (I use a micron pen)
Watercolors (pencils or regular watercolors)

First, think of the words you will use for the card. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Authentic
Beautiful
Compassionate
Courageous
Graceful
Friend

What else could you add to the list? What do you think your friend (or yourself, depending on who you’re making the card for) needs to hear right now?

Using your pencil, sketch a heart onto the card. Draw lines as shown below and write the words on the lines. As you can see from my sketch, I made a few mistakes, but don’t worry about that. You can always erase them later. Just make sure you don’t press down with the pencil too hard.

Take out your waterproof black pen and copy the pencil lines. You can fill in the words to make them bold or keep them thin. If you’d like, you could also practice before-hand in a sketchbook to see how you want to make your letters. Once you’re finished inking the design, set it aside to let it dry for an hour or so. It would be really sad to smear all of your hard work now!

Once the piece is dry, use a kneaded eraser to carefully erase all of the pencil lines. I really like kneaded erasers because they don’t leave any eraser bits behind. Those remnants will add spots and texture to the watercolor that you didn’t necessarily want to create.

Time for the fun part! If you are using watercolor pencils, color in the heart, add water to your brush and paint the color in. If you’re using regular watercolors, carefully wet the areas of the paper that you want to color, then working fast, add water to the colors in the tray and paint the paper. Your colors will run and bleed over the lines beautifully. I love that part.

All finished! Who knows what kind of encouragement this will bring your friend when she receives it. On a side note, I used this same pattern several years ago to stitch these words onto muslin. I painted the fabric with watered down fabric paint, let it dry, then drew the heart and words onto the fabric with a transfer pen. I placed the fabric into an embroidery hoop and back-stitched the entire piece. Then I placed the finished quote in a frame and gave it as a gift. If you want to make a more tactile option, that would be a great idea for a gift as well.

If you were to make a truth card, what are some of the words you would use and why?