Happy 1st day of March everyone! Carolyn Peeler here. I'm happy to be with you again to share a fast and easy card tutorial. For today's blog project I decided to challenge myself to create a card with a masculine feel. This is always a bit of a stretch for me as I am naturally drawn to design soft, pastel, feminine projects. It was only as I began to apply the second layer of paint onto my watercolor paper that I realized that due to the colors I chose, the background began to mimic the colors of Army camouflage. So, in addition to being masculine, this card would also be the perfect choice for anyone making an appreciation card to send to a service member.
To get started you want to gather watercolor paper, your favorite watercolor paintbrush, and 2 PrimaTek watercolors from Daniel Smith: Green Apatite Genuine and Bronzite Genuine.
Using your favorite paintbrush, apply a light wash of the 2 watercolors onto your watercolor paper.
You will want to have some areas where you use less water - therefore your color is more saturated - and other areas where you use more water to dilute the pigments so that the color is more sheer and less concentrated. Apply the 2 colors randomly, with patches of green and other patches of the bronze. At this point, the only places that the colors mix are in the areas where the two colors meet. I didn't overlap the colors until the next step.
Allow the paint to air dry, or dry it with a heat tool. Once it is dry, apply a second layer of paint, overlapping the first layer. As you do this step, you add depth to the background. After you are happy with how it looks, once again, allow the paint to dry. I repeated this process one more time in order to get even more depth. But, the amount of layers you decide to add is based on personal taste, and you may prefer to only repeat the step once.
Next, using the "Many Thanks" die, by Ellen Hutson Essentials, cut 2 pieces. One from white cardstock, and one from black cardstock. Once they are cut, glue the white on top of the black die cut, slightly off-setting them so that black ends up looking like a shadow behind the white cardstock.
You are now ready to assemble the card. You will want to cut your marbled background 4-7/8" wide x 3.5" high. Glue that to a piece of black cardstock that you cut to 5-1/8" wide x 3-7/8" high. I then sewed around the border of the marbled paper with my sewing machine using white thread. (If you are going to do the sewing step, be sure that the glue you use to adhere the watercolor paper to your black cardstock is not applied under the edges where you are planning to sew so that you don't gum up your sewing machine.) Cut a piece of white cardstock 5-1/8" wide x 7-6/8" high. Fold in half to make your card base. Then, glue the black cardstock with marbled paper onto the front of this card base. Finally, glue the "many thanks" die cut to the center front of the card. You can glue it straight across, or, if you'd like the die cut to be on a curve (like mine is on the sample), you can gently curve it while you glue it down.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you have a great week!
Here are the direct links to the products used in today's project:
