Today I wanted to share these Christmas cards I DIYed. I enjoy making personal cards for friends and family, but I don’t have a lot of time to spend painting them. I knew I wanted to keep the design simple, hello ornaments! Those are easy to watercolor. I also wanted these cards to say something like ‘Happy Holidays’ but my handwriting isn’t great so I opted to look for a stamp. I found the perfect ornament stamper from Michaels craft stores that combined everything I was looking for.
Materials used:
- Craft cards (Hobby Lobby)
- Gold stamp ink (Hobby Lobby)
- Ornament stamp (Michael’s stores)
- Watercolor paints and pencils
- Paint brushes
- Metallic paint
- Martha Stewart glitter craft paint (Michael’s stores)
I used the rim of a mason jar to make my circle ornaments and created a small paper template of the other ornament shape so I could make a lot of cards quickly. I made soft outlines with my graphite pencil then erased lightly and traced over my outline with watercolor pencils. I chose to erase the graphite pencil since it can peek through water color paints. You can skip this step and just outline with watercolor pencils but I find they are hard to erase. If you are more confident you could just freehand your shapes as well.
I repeated the same shapes for each of my cards, but this is where you can have fun being creative. With these watercolors I tried to keep my brush strokes loose and allow for color variation. This part was especially fun because you really cant go wrong. I left areas with white exposed for the band detail on the green ornament and white reflects on the red ornament. I made the classic red and green cards and some colorful less traditional ones as well.
I just love how that stamp looks! Hobby Lobby has gold stamping ink and a good amount of other colors too (I almost got silver). I haven’t worked with stamping much, so if you’re like me practice stamping on a blank sheet of paper. I found my first couple stamps didn’t have enough ink on my block. By getting enough ink on the stamp and applying firm even pressure I got a good transfer.
To add my finishing touches, I used gold glitter paint for the ornament tops and metallic gold paint for the hanger. You can really make these as simple or complex as you choose. I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial on how I made my Christmas cards this year.
