In today’s tutorial, I’ll be making a vintage-inspired mother’s day card. We’ll create a DIY 3-d paper forget-me-not floral composition on a faux-aged card using watercolors.
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Materials
+ Watercolor Paper: Canson 300g
+ St. Petersburg Watercolors or any other
+ Watercolor brushes – 1 inch and size #6-4 synthetic bristles (similar, similar)
+ Masking tape (similar)
+ Hot glue gun (similar)
+ Gold calligraphy pen (similar)
+ 1 hole punch
+ 1 inch floral punch (similar)
+ Pencil with an eraser
+ Burlap/jute twine string (similar, similar)
+ Scissors, I’m using my favorite pink gold scissors
Video decor elements: my favorite gold metal black ink pens and pink gold clips
Watch the Video Below
Video Transcript
Hi everyone! In today’s tutorial, we’ll be making a vintage-inspired Mother’s Day card. We’ll make a 3D forget-me-not floral composition out of watercolor paper. For this project, you need a reasonably good quality watercolor paper. I’m using Canson paper 300 grams.
Cut the paper to be five by seven inches and tape the paper sides with masking tape, so it doesn’t warp too much when painting. Before painting, soak the paper with water. I’m using my 2-inch brush for that.
For the watercolors, you can use any watercolors you have. If you’re using student grade watercolors, you’ll probably need to add more layers of paint because they are not as pigmented as the professional ones.
To paint the light yellow background, I’m mixing different yellows I have in my palette, but mostly cadmium yellow and yellow ochre.
I’m also going to add a little bit of cobalt blue in the center of the card.
Take your green (I’m using mostly sap green) and paint the stems and the bottom leaves. I’m applying paint to dry surface (also known as wet-on-dry) with a round synthetic brush size #4. I think a bigger brush would have worked even better for this technique. The leaves are not supposed to be perfect, so don’t worry too much about them, paint them as you can. I’m outlining the leaves and then filling them in with color.
As for the other leaves, I’m using a light green wash to sketch them lightly. After that, I’m introducing a darker pigment to fill them with paint. Again, I’m using mostly sap green. I’m dropping cadmium yellow to the center of each leaf and letting the color spread and mix with the green. To create variety and interest in the composition, I’m drawing little lines and circles to mimic foliage, as well as ribs, veins, and shadows with dark green.
While the card is drying, let’s create the flowers. Take another piece of watercolor paper and soak it with water. I’m mixing ultramarine and cobalt blue, and I’m going to paint about half of the sheet. And, I’m doing two layers of paint.
I’m also painting a block of yellow ochre color and thinning it out to a lighter shade.
To create the flowers, we’ll need a one-hole punch. Also, 1-inch flower punch, hot glue gun, and an eraser on a 2hb pencil, preferably a used one, so the eraser has a rounded tip. You’ll also need some soft surface to form the flowers. I’m going to use my foam board that I usually use for needle felting, but you can use any foam that you have in your possession.
Punch as many flowers as you would like, I’m going to create 15 shapes. To create the flower centers, use the one-hole punch. Doesn’t it look like confetti?
Forming the flowers is a pretty simple process. My flowers are still somewhat moist from the watercolor, but if yours are not, I would suggest to spray them lightly with water, this will make the paper moldable.
To form the flower, place it face up on the foam board, take your pencil’s eraser, press it firmly on each petal and then in the center of the flower. That’s it. Now, repeat 15 times.
Here, I’m gluing each yellow center to the flower with my hot glue gun. I’m using my fingers to pick up the centers, but I think using tweezers would simplify that process.
I’m going to arrange the flowers on the card before glueing them. Play around with them, see which position you like the best. It’s even okay to use just some of the flowers not all of them. In my case, I had extra flowers that I didn’t use in the composition. Once I liked the position of the flowers, I glued them to the card.
To create the little note card, cut out a rectangle from the light yellow paper and a triangle on one side.
I’m using my gold pen to write the message on the card to fancy it up a bit. And yes, don’t forget to glue the note to the card, so it doesn’t fall off.
I also decided to add a bow made of burlap string to complete my flowers arrangement. And that’s it. Our card is done!
I enjoyed making this Mother’s day card and hope you’ll enjoy making yours. Do let me know if you’ll make one. Thank you so much for watching and see you next time. Bye!
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