Hello, friends!
So this is the time of of year, when I’m usually scrambling to get my Christmas thank yous in the mail. By now, I’m feeling like they’re a bit overdue, so I like to come up with some quick — yet stylish! — thank you cards. Letting your patterned papers do some of the work for you and using a large focal point, such as the new Enclosed: Butterfly die, makes it easy to create quick cards! Not only that, but watercoloring these beauties makes the task a fun one besides!
Here's a peek into my process....
If you're anything like me, maybe you like to whip out a stack of cards all at once but you DON'T like the monotony of making them all exactly the same. SO, here's what I do.....I start laying out different die cuts and papers and such, playing with different elements that I can use on each card. By keeping the butterfly as the main focal point on each card, and knowing that each one needs to incorporate a thank you of some sort, it helps to make the process fairly quick, but let's me have some fun by changing up the details. My desk looks like this, while I'm pulling together the different elements.....
To get started, I die cut the main Enclosed: Butterfly die from watercolor paper a few times. Then, I used the smooshing technique to add color to the butterflies. I rubbed several ink pads directly on a piece of acetate (like the stuff the stamps come on) and then spritzed the acetate with some water before turning it over and SMOOSHING it onto the butterfly. By using clear acetate and by turning it over to adhere onto the butterfly, you can see thru the acetate to see where your color is ending up. That way, you can drag or add a bit more color/water in different places, if some spots are looking lighter or darker than you want.
So like, for the blue/green butterfly, I smooshed four ink pads onto the acetate -- limeade ice, new leaf, hawaiian shores and tropical teal. You have to play around a bit and figure out how much water is too much. You want enough that the colors can run together a bit, but you don't want so much water that when you flip the acetate over, the color runs all over the place. Just play around a bit with your ink and water, till you figure out how much works for you.
Here's a tip.....sometimes after you add water to an ink color, it might look more washed out than you'd like. I get this comment a lot from you guys -- that your watercolor doesn't turn out as bright as mine sometimes does. The beauty of watercolor is that you can always ADD MORE! So in the case of that red butterfly on the right, the pure poppy ink got a bit too washed out for my liking, when I smooshed it on the butterfly. Zig markers to the rescue! I grabbed a darker red marker, colored it on the acetate, spritzed it with water and smooshed it on top of the pure poppy. It created a great layered red effect!
Another tip.....if you don't have a lot of time, just die cut your butterflies (or whatever) and do the smooshing/watercolor/stamping or whatever you're gonna do to color them, all at once and then walk away. In this case, I just had a bit of time the first day I started working on these, so I die cut and smooshed the watercolor and then let them dry overnight. That way, the next day when I came back, they were ready to roll.
Here's something else you can do when you don't have a lot of time. Grab some paint and a flat (not round) brush and paint a bit of color on your card front! Leave it to dry over night! (Although, I have to say that this liquid gilding dried super fast! I didn't have to leave this over night. I linked to this gold color below.)
Ok, so let's talk about patterned paper for a minute. We all have it. We fall in love with it. We buy it. We collect it. We sometimes hoard it. But we should NOT HOARD IT!!! :) Pretty papers should be loved and USED!! I speak about such things because I have BEEN THERE. lol! We buy these papers because we love them and then we don't want to use them because no project seems lofty enough or worthy enough, to use that precious piece of paper on! I mean, what if that ultimate project finally comes along and we need that paper but we've already used it?!! How would we manage? Surely no other paper would do!
But you know as well as I do, that the super worthy, perfect project never comes along. And there sits that most beautiful of all papers, sad and unused. So I say USE THAT PAPER, my friends!!! Use it and love every minute of it! Cause you know what? There's always gonna be more beautiful paper to fall in love with! And in the meantime, you'll have so much fun using those pretty papers and making gorgeous projects with them. And if it's a card you're making, you're gonna make someone else smile with that pretty paper too! :)
Ok, so the reason I gave that little paper pep talk is because using those patterned papers is such a great way to make quick cards!! You can let those papers do a lot of the work for you, when you use one as your background! Use the whole thing or just trim a bit off the edge or cut them on the diagonal....there are tons of options, but using them in larger quantities makes quick work of creating cards! Between a piece of patterned paper and a large focal point, your card will come together in no time!
I used the Enclosed: Apple die to cut out the "thanks" and just trimmed the apple frame away from the ends of the word. Easy peasy. Don't you love that you can mix and match some of those Enclosed die cuts, if you've been collecting them?!
For this one, I added a sentiment strip and a sentiment from Keep It Simple: Gift Thanks. Another patterned paper here....this one is from Ombré Stripes and I layered the butterfly on a bookmark die cut.
And now, back to that gold painted card I showed you at the top of the post! I just layered on a few strips of papers that were hanging around my desk -- gold dots and bitty dot vellum, as well as some die cut hawaiian shores card stock.
There are two die cut "Thanks" -- one from smokey shadow card stock and one from white. I layered the white one slightly off-set, so you get a shadow effect with the dark layer behind. I also didn't fuss too much over those strips of paper behind the butterfly. They're adhered a bit wonky back and forth, rather than all perfectly straight, which looks fun and light-hearted but also makes things a bit faster. (So long as you don't obsess over whether they're too straight or too crooked! Ha!)
Have you already sent out thank you notes now that the holidays are behind us? Or are you like me and still need to get them out the door?
I hope these cards have inspired you to whip up a few quick cards, whether you need some thank yous or something else! And I hope I've inspired you to pull out those stacks of patterned papers and USE them! :)
Have a great day, friends,
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{Scalloped Thanks supplies -- click on thumbnails}
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{Thank You for the Gift supplies}
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{Painted Thanks supplies}
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