How to Use a Doily to Create a Pair of Elegant Watercolor Cards

What a fun idea, right?  But wait, I haven't shown you what I'm talking about yet - all you know is that it involves a doily and watercolors, correct?  Well, you probably know a little more, because that picture up above is pretty self-explanatory.

When I saw this on Pinterest, I certainly did not need a whole blog post length tutorial!  Nevertheless, I shall provide you with one, because I'm going to show you how to use a doily in two ways, which means I will be showing you how to make two cards today!

Supplies
Doily
Watercolors
Watercolor paper
Watercolor brush
Water
Sharpie
Beads
Fabric flower
Hot glue
Cut out "thank you" (or other sentiment)(I used my die cut)

Card No. 1
First I cut out a piece of watercolor paper with about a half inch margin from the edges of the card.  Then I positioned a doily where I wanted it, sort of in the top left corner.

When watercoloring things like this, I always like to do use multiple colors that coordinate well together, so I used turquoise, light blue, and dark blue.  I started with turquoise, just dabbing the paint on with my brush, and using lots of water, and then I added the other colors, and went back and forth between the three until all the spaces (and the rest of the paper) were filled!  For now, you don't need to paint the center of the doily; we'll get to that later.

This picture shows the doily and paper after being painted.  Do not move the doily until you've finished painting!
See that big splotch at the bottom right of the circle?  I must have put too much paint in that spot, and it seeped through the doily.  But never fear; Brooklyn is here!  I can fix that with a fabric flower!

I have a box of fabric flowers and such things, and this yellow one I had is perfect for these cards.  This flower actually had six sections, so I used three for each card, and that worked well.  With a dark blue sharpie, I wrote "thank you" in the center of the doily-shaped empty space.

Here's one of my bags of beads, where I got the bead for the flower from.  That bead looks more black, but it has some blue in it, and I wanted kind of a dark bead for this card, to balance things out.

I thought the card needed something more, so I drew polka-dots over the whole card.

After that, I deemed it complete.  This is the final basic layout I came up with.  I decided to put the doily piece at an angle, since I thought it looked better that way, and I kind of wrote the sentiment crooked anyway.

I used hot glue for the flower, putting a little in between each section, and then a little on the underside to stick on the card.  Gluing everything on after I've figured out the layout is so satisfying!  Sometimes though, I think I've figured everything out, and then as I'm putting it together, I change something!  (I did not do that this time.)

Card No. 2
And now, we can paint the center of the doily!  These doilies are really neat, in that you can watercolor on them, and let it dry, and then come back later, and if there's a blossom, you can re-paint it.  There's some sort of coating.  It's not like watercolor paper, and it's not like regular paper (regular paper = copy paper).  So what I'm saying is, if you put too much paint in a section, or something, it's easy to spread it out with water.

I cut a piece of cardstock that measured 1/4 inch from each edge of the card, and outlined it in yellow sharpie, and did polka dots with the same sharpie, like I did for the other card.  I also used the other three sections of the flower.  Aaand (just one more thing!), I also used my "thank" and "you" die cuts for the sentiment, and I'm really happy with how it looks!

Since the sentiment for this card is white, not something dark, like the blue I used for the other card, I wanted to use a white bead for the center of the flower, so, from my bag of beads, I retrieved this nice, pearly white bead.  It works perfectly!  Now you can glue everything on, and that concludes both cards!

I really wanted to put the flower on the right side, like on the first card, but it just wouldn't look near as good with the tail of the "Y" hanging down like that.

What do you think of them?  I love how similar the two cards are, but at the same time, I love the differences between them.

I experimented with this back in March, but I just didn't get to posting about it until now!  This one is my favorite from back then.  Perhaps even my favorite doily card I've ever made!  (You can see more of these on my "Cards I've Made" page.)

Have you ever used a doily to create something?  What else could you make with a doily?

{P.S. Linking up here!}

The Doodle Card

Wow, it's been a while since I did a card tutorial here, hasn't it?  (We're not counting that guest post I did, since it wasn't for my own blog.)  I whipped up one of these cards Sunday before last when I needed to make a birthday card for someone in a short amount of time, and I didn't want to go to the trouble of thinking up a fancy card.

I like this card because it is so easy, and can take five minutes to complete, depending on how detailed you get!

Supplees
Three blank cards (this is the paper I use)
Three card panels the same size as the cards
Black sharpie pen
Glue

Directions
Doodle on card panel.  Glue to card.*

*The reason I say to do this on a separate piece of paper instead of right onto the card is simply that the sharpie bleeds through the paper.  If you have thicker paper (the weight of mine is 110), you certainly don't need a separate card panel to doodle on.

Sometimes a blank surface can be daunting, but just go ahead and make a mark!  The point is to doodle.

Since it can be intimidating to start on a blank surface, I'm all prepared with tips and ideas to get you started!  If you can't think of what to doodle, here are some ideas.

Circles
I like to draw circles inside circles, but you could also just draw empty circles.  You could try going from small to big, or completely random!

I also like to draw stripes inside my circles' circles..

Dots
I did dots in a swirly design, which I think looks nice.  You could also do lines with dots, or just random dots.  I think it looks good to have them in some sort of pattern.

Squares
For the original card (pictured up yonder^), I loosely drew rows of squares of varying sizes, like in the picture below.  I like to do a biggish area full of squares.

Triangles
This is something I did on only one of the cards, and don't like the look of as much as squares.  It is still nice though, and maybe your style involves more triangular things, and that is okay!

Lines
Lines!  Possibly the easiest pattern to do, and so pretty if you do it right!  HA.  What does "right" even mean?  Maggie knows not.  You can also criss-cross them and make a checkered pattern or plaid.

Sentiment
This is of course optional.  Not every card needs words, but if you need/want words, go for it!  Since these cards are a little wonky, I recommend writing it in wonky handwriting!

And there are some ideas for you to implement on your own cards!  There are so many more possibilities than what I listed.  Go where your mind takes you!  Or, as I put it in the first picture, let out the creative kid inside you!  I'm all about being a kid.

I gave you ideas for what to doodle, and now I'll give you tips as to how to doodle too.

Balance your lights and darks.
If your pattern at one end of the card is light, try to maintain that light throughout.  If you start out dark, keep it dark. In the first card (pictured below), I had more darks on the bottom half of the card, so I added in stripes to a row of squares at the top to even it out a little bit.

Repeat patterns.
For instance, take my squares.  I had squares in the top of the design and then again down at the bottom in the first card, and throughout on the last.  For the second card, I drew triangles on the bottom and top, as well as down the left and right edges.

Try not to get too busy.
It's my humble opinion that I got a little too busy on the second card.  You may think differently on what's busy and what's pleasing to the eye.  Of the three, I think the first is my favorite because I like the swirly-ness, and the last is almost too open for me.

Play around.
This is about doodling, right?  Play with patterns.  Trace your hand (now that's a good idea!)  Draw circles or lines over and over again, if that's all you can think of. Just don't overthink it.

Lately I've started calling people Honey Bun, in addition to Honey, Hun, Darlin', and the like.  So that's the explanation for the "What's up, Honey-bun?" card.  :)

I love that these can be all occasion cards, and could totally be for a girl or a boy, depending on the patterns you employ!

There SO many possibilities with this card.  It'd be fun to play around with a bunch and see how many different designs you can come up with.

Will you give it a try?  What is your favorite pattern to doodle?  Do you even like doodling?  I think it's great fun.

I Discovered Something I Love!

I've been messing around with watercolors lately.  They are so versatile and fun!  As I was looking through one of my Cardmaker magazines to find more ideas for watercolors, I came across this card that used acrylics together with watercolors!  I had seen that page before (and loved it), but this time, I was determined to actually give it a try, and I'm so glad I did!

The card tutorial in my magazine used white acrylic paint, and so that's what I'm using here.  There are so many possibilities with just white, so imagine how many more there are with all the other colors!

I also want to point out that the lizard paper on these cards is from a project I did in art class in 2013 I think?  I copied it onto watercolor paper, and viola, interesting patterned paper to watercolor on!  You could to this with any pattern.  I think it'd be fun to doodle with just a black sharpie all over a piece of paper, and then I could copy it onto watercolor paper as many times as I want in the future!

I decided to put together a tutorial (no surprise there) with two separate cards I made.  Here's the first card (my favoritest).

This was sort of funny.  When watercoloring some other card, I accidentally splattered a spot on this card in my wild gusto for watercolor painting, so I decided to just go with the flow, and do a bunch of those spots all over, so it looks intentional!  Genius!

Then I lightly painted over the whole thing (excluding lizards) with light blue, turquoise, and light green.  The picture below is not very flattering.  I think that was because it hadn't dried all the way at the time of the taking of the picture.

*melodic singing*  A-cry-lic paint!  SING IT!

These are clear rubber stamps, which I love using, because it's so much easier to see exactly where you're placing it on the paper.  I got these specific stamps from Scrap Exchange in Durham, which is a store for exactly what the name implies!  Scrap exchange!  Everything is donated ( I think), and there's a bunch of really cool stuff.  I've only been once, but I'd love to go again.  I thought it was weird at first (it's an art store full of stuff donated by artists - of course it's going to be weird), but by the time  left, I was in love.  Anywho, enough ranting.

This is the last flower I stamped, and by this time, the paint had dried some, so it was thicker, and gave more texture when I pulled the stamp up, which I really like.  You can see it looks less flat than the other two flowers.

*melodic sounds of triumph*

Here is the second!  Same size, same technique, different colors.

I've been doing this splotchy looking effect mucho lately.  It's achieved by wetting the paper one area at a time, and putting down a different color in each spot, making sure to blend them together subtly.  And make sure you blend colors that are next to each other on the color wheel.  As my art teacher says, don't mess with it too much, or it will get muddy.

The white is light, sort of hard to read, but nice and subtle.

*more melodic sounds of triumph*  *higher pitched, by the way*

Here are assorted other cards I made with watercolors + acrylics.

They go together!  Like a puzzle!  A very easy puzzle, but still a puzzle.  Maybe someone is having a hard day and needs a little confidence booster with a puzzle that they're guaranteed to have success with!

In the magazine tutorial that first inspired me for this project, the lady did this really cool thing with watercolor where she let it drip down the page.  I thought it looked pretty amazing, so I tried it (though no the same way she did it), and although it didn't work as well, and didn't look as good as in the magazine tutorial (because I did it a different way), it did work, and I ended up making it look perty great.  So I'm happy with how it turned out.

This is the second attempt at dripping paint down the paper.  I like this even better.  For this, I blew the drips around all over the place so they went to unexpected places in cool formations!

I like this corner detail.  It makes me think, "Splish, splash!"  And then I think of The Thinking Closet's slogan, and I also think of red rain boots and yellow rain jackets and little kids splashing around in puddles.  Specifically puddles in our driveway.  That's just what I think of.  What do you think of when you see this corner?

What will you make?  Have I inspired you to experiment with watercolors and acrylics?  I'd love to see your own creations!