Can you believe just how close we are to Christmas already? It's time to get those Christmas cards ready to send out! We've collected an array of handmade watercolor Christmas cards to help inspire your crafting. Whether you're looking to expand your card making style and try out some easy watercolor Christmas card ideas, or you already love watercolors and are just looking for tips and inspiration, then these cards are just what you need!
1. Shedding Light On Homemade Watercolor Christmas Cards
The lights and colors of Christmas decorations are so joyful! I love how Norine uses watercolor in this card to capture the feel of colorful glows reflecting on the Christmas tree.
Norine created this lovely card with the String of Lights stamp set and some skillful watercoloring. This card largely shows off the beautiful freehanded blending that one can accomplish with watercolors, but Norine also used embossing powder to help with some detailed work in the light bulbs. By embossing the stamped image, she was able to easily corral the watercolor in order to create a more intense color in the light bulbs themselves. She finished the card off with the sentiment from the stamp set and heat embossed it as well.
Want to read more about Norine's cards? Then check out this one and more over on Norine's Blog. And to see more from the rest of our designers, keep reading below!
I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear that for once, I'm not at all surprised that the month is over and July is nearly here. I am ready for summer and parties outdoors, trips to the beach, and other outdoorsy fun with family and friends. Our first Sneak Peek for July is the newest set in the Greenhouse Society collection - Hello Hollyhocks.
Hi everyone! This is Bev and today I get to introduce you all to Nathalie. In this blog post, Nathalie shares some ideas about how to make heat-embossed vellum butterflies. Her gorgeous layout will inspire you to make some vellum butterfly accents for your next card, scrapbook page, or decor project! (If you'd rather watch Nathalie's process video, hop on over to our website!)
Hi there! I am Nathalie, and I am so excited to have been invited to be a guest designer here at Technique Tuesday. I love stamps because they are one of the most versatile tools when memory keeping, and this month’s new releases - the Beautiful Butterflies stamp set and the matching Beautiful Butterflies Silhouettes stamps - were the inspiration for the layout that I am sharing with you all today.
This newest Technique Tuesday floral addition took my breath away when I saw it! I love roses and all the beautiful colors they come in and I just couldn’t wait to color this gorgeous image!
For today’s card I decided to color the stamped roses in classic red.
To start, I stamped two rose images on Neenah Classic Crest 80 lb. cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink.
This picture also includes a little peek of one of the cards I made using these new stamps and dies. I've been making cards for nearly 20 years. And the truth is these stamps and dies helped me make not one but 2 of my most favorite cards EVER. I can't wait to share them with you. Sign up for our newsletter and we'll let you know as soon as I have the tutorials ready!
Hi Friends! It is Dana here today sharing a card using the gorgeous Sending Roses Stamp Set from the May release.
I started my card by stamping my rose image in black ink and water coloring it with a pale blue and green watercolor. I used a lot of water, and just kept adding color until I got my desired look. Next, I used the Sending Roses dies to die cut my rose image. I set this aside and began working on my card design.
I started by die cutting the large Essential Stitched Labels Crafting Die from light gray cardstock for my center label. Next, I die cut Sending (included with the Sending Roses die set) from medium gray cardstock. I attached this to my label and stamped the rest of my sentiment (lots of love from the Sending Roses stamp set) underneath. I also added my rose image to my label at this time.
To finish my card, I used an aqua piece of patterned paper to create my card panel. I attached this to a medium gray mat before attaching it to my A2 card base. Lastly, I attached my label to my card front with foam adhesive.
Don't you just love this Sending Roses stamp set and dies? The image is gorgeous and the sentiments are definitely some of my favorites!
Dana's card is so beautiful, right? And her rose stamp tutorial using watercolors makes it so easy to replicate this card. If you aren't into watercolors, you might like my tutorial about how to color and add highlights to these stamped roses using alcohol markers. Or use the Sending Roses stamps and dies with any or all of your favorite coloring mediums. I hope Dana's card and these tutorials inspire you to make some beautiful stamped roses of your own!
P.S. If you're a member of the Greenhouse Society auto-ship program, you should already have received the Sending Roses products. Not a member? You can order these stamps and dies individually now. Or, if you'd like to save 25% off the Sending Roses, sign up to become a Greenhouse Society auto-ship member before the end of May!
Hi everyone! This is Bev and I am delighted to introduce Sheree Forcier to all of you. In today's blog post she shares some ideas about how to make gorgeous butterfly embellishments for your scrapbook pages (or handmade cards). I love the lovely, airy layout that Sheree created!
I layered some white cardstock onto two pieces of patterned paper then decided where I wanted my photo to go. I added some machine stitching around the edge of the white cardstock background and to the top right corner of the photo, then added some die cut flowers and leaves.
I cut a white label using the Essentials Stitched Labels Dies, then stamped the sentiment from the Beautiful Butterflies Stamp Set in the center using black ink. The label was placed to the left of the photo and I added a line of machine stitching across the middle. I also stamped the ‘lovely’ stamp from the Beautiful Butterflies Silhouettes Stamp set multiple times at the top right of the photo.
Next was the fun part…stamping the butterflies! To create the multi-coloured butterfly embellishments for this scrapbook page, I simply stamped the different butterflies directly onto patterned paper and cut them out. (I didn't have the matching dies but you could use them to avoid having to fussy cut out the butterflies.) This is a great, easy way to add colour to an image if you don’t have many coloured inks in your stash or if you’re not very confident working with markers.
Before adhering the butterflies to the page, I decided where I wanted them to go, then created a shadow for them using the Beautiful Butterflies Silhouettes Stamps and a lovely neutral coloured ink. I stamped directly onto the white cardstock, then added some machine stitched butterfly trails before adding the butterflies with foam dots to create extra dimension.
The journaling strips were added to the top left of the page and machine stitched, and the date was added to finish it off
If you’d like to watch my process you can see how I put it all together in the video below.
I hope I’ve given you a few ideas on how you can add dimension to your next project using the Beautiful Butterflies Stamp Set with the Beautiful Butterflies Silhouettes Stamp Set. They have been so much fun to create with!
Thanks so much for joining me today! Happy crafting!
Sheree
I love the wandering lines of stitching that indicate the butterflies' flight paths. And I adore the way Sheree used the butterfly silhouette stamps to make shadows for the detailed butterfly accents. These subtle details add a sense of movement, dimension, and bring the design together!
P.S. If you're a member of the Memory Keepers Studio auto-ship program, we shipped the Beautiful Butterflies Stamp Set to you earlier this month. Not a member? No problem! You can order these stamps now. If you'd like to save 25% off the Beautiful Butterflies stamp set, sign up to become a Memory Keepers Studio auto-ship member before the end of this month!
Or, if you'd like the Beautiful Butterflies and the Beautiful Butterflies Silhouettes Stamp Sets, as well as the Beautiful Butterflies Crafting Dies all in one bundle (saving you %10), check out the Beautiful Butterflies Bundle.
Yay... it's finally time to talk about the May release! We've been so busy celebrating National Scrapbook Day that we haven't had time to say much about the new stamps and dies we released on May 1st. But that all changes today!
Today, Bev is sharing a quick video showing you all the beautiful butterflies, the lovely roses, and the snappy alligators and crocodiles. Watch her video to learn a little bit about each of the new products. Then make sure you visit each stop on the blog hop to see tons of project ideas!
Hello, Julie here, and today I'm sharing a new tutorial showing how to color stamped roses with alcohol markers. I used the new Sending Roses stamp set from the Greenhouse Society collection, and colored it with Copic markers. I'll show you how to add highlights to your stamped images with alcohol markers such as Copics. Watch the video, or if you'd rather, you can read through my rose coloring tutorial, below.
Step by Step!
I stamped my image using alcohol safe ink on Bristol Board, which I’ve been liking a lot as an all-round paper.
I started on the leaves first, using YG23, yellow green 23. I put down a flat covering layer on all the green areas - the leaves, stems, and sepals. For the tiny spaces, I used the chisel end of the pen.
Next was YG17 in the shadowy areas to add some dimension. Once I had my little touches of the darker color in, I went back in with the YG23 and did some very light and brief blending. I try not to blend too much when I’m working in small spaces like these leaves, because the less you blend, the less likely it is that your color is going to bleed outside your lines.
Once all the green was in and blended, I started in on the flowers with R35, and covered the whole flower, trying to follow the contours of the petals. I do this because there’s a chance that the pen strokes will show up, and if they’re moving in a direction that makes sense, it isn't as jarring. So on the leaves, I mostly brushed out from the base. In these petals, on the parts that are curled, I swept from one side of the petal to the other, following the curve of the petal. Then, for the parts that are flat (or flatter) I brushed up from the base. I’m not always successful in remembering this, but fortunately, this is the first layer, and will end up being mostly covered.
Once the base color was in, I went in with R29 and start the shadow areas.
Once I had all those in, I used the R35 to blend the color out a little. The second layer smoothed the borders of the R29, and added another level of intensity to the color – sort of an intermediate between the R29 and the first layer of R35. I used this middle layer to start the hints of highlights by not covering some of the areas to be highlighted.
Now I used the colorless blender to blend the edges of my colors out. The blender mostly moves the color around, since it’s just alcohol, with no color. It thins the color and will spread it around to a degree. I used this effect to create my highlights, by moving a bit of the red out of the way for the shine. I went back and forth a touch between the R35 and the blender, until I was happy with the highlights.
Then I used Y21 to warm up those highlighted areas. Because this yellow is such a light color, it could be used by itself to add the highlights if you either didn’t have the blender pen, or just didn’t want to use still another pen color. I like the blender for softening the lines between colors without adding more color.
And I went back and forth with marker colors a touch, until I was happy and had my finished stamped rose image, like this. I used the matching Sending Roses crafting die to die cut out my flowers. To finish my rose card, I cut out two labels from the Essential Stitched Labels crafting dies and then stamped a sentiment that was included in the rose stamp set. Then I added some patterned paper in the background and assembled my card.
I really enjoyed working on this project, getting to color the Sending Roses. Of course, these alcohol maker techniques will work on all kinds of flowers like those in the Greenhouse Society Collection. The Rhododendron Flower, Happy Hydrangea, and the Sweet Succulents would all work really nicely with the techniques you learned in the alcohol marker tutorial. In fact, I just might have worked on one of those for a card for my Mom for Mother's Day. ;)
I hope you saw something you can use on your next coloring project. Thanks for stopping by, and have a great day!
PS: If you are a member of the Greenhouse Society auto-ship program, we started shipping the Sending Roses products to you on Friday, 5/10.
When I first saw this flower stamp set, I thought they would make amazing stamped poppy cards. But the leaves don't really match those on the poppy plant so we named it the Meadow Flower stamp set instead. Whether you color your stamped flowers to look like poppies, or make your flowers be some other color, the projects you make with these Meadow Flowers stamps and matching dies will be lovely!
If you google Meadow Flowers, you will find gorgeous flowers in a multitude of colors. I black heat embossed the Meadow Flowers onto Bristol Smooth cardstock and colored my images with Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers (No. 021, 230, 052, 070, 047, 041). Using a waterbrush, I pulled the color upward to do some shading. The flowers were die cut using the coordinating Meadow Flowers Crafting Die.
I used black ink to stamp two different sentiments from the Meadow Flowers stamp set. Then I used the Essential Stitched Labels Crafting Dies to cut the sentiments out. The labels were adhered in the center to white top folding notecards and the Meadow Flowers were added with foam adhesive to the right. As final touches, a few white gems were added for some sparkle and the corners were rounded on each card.
Thanks for sharing a part of your day with me here at Technique Tuesday!
Amy
Aren't Amy's cards lovely? Her orange flower really looks like a stamped poppy to me. Both of her cards are just beautifully simple!
PS: Are you a member of the Greenhouse Society auto-ship program? If so, we shipped the Meadow Flowers to you in April. Not a member? You can order these stamps and dies individually now. Or you can order them together as a stamp and die bundle!
Hey there! It's Julie. Today Yasmin is sharing some beautiful, stamped friendship card ideas. She used the Garden Sentiments Stamp Set and matching Garden Sentiments Crafting Dies to make these friendship cards. Yasmin is also sharing her step-by-step tutorial so it will be easy to to make your own friendship cards like these!
Hi everyone, Yasmin here for Technique Tuesday. Today I’ll be sharing with you these three quick and easy Friendship/Encouragement cards featuring the Garden Sentiments Stamp Set and Garden Sentiments Crafting Dies. So, without further ado, keep on reading the step-by step tutorial.
To begin with I started by scoring all thee A2 standard size cards bases that I was going to need for these cards, and I set them aside. In the meantime, I stamped all 3 floral images from the stamp set on a piece of white card stock with Versafine Onyx Black, as I was planning to use one for each card. Once the images were stamped, I set them aside while I started working on the card panels.
For the first card, I ran the card panel through a paper crimper, as I wanted to add a little bit of texture. Once it was textured, I added a touch of color by swiping the edge of the Spun Sugar Distress Oxide ink for a distressed look, as you can see in the picture above. By the time that I was done with the card panel, the stamped images were ready to color. To keep it simple I used blue, green, and brown tones to color them all at once. Soon after the coloring was done I ran all the images through the die cutting machine with their coordinated dies to create all the die cuttings.
Then, I adhered the plant a little bit off from the center of the textured card panel as I wanted to add the sentiment right below it. As for the sentiment, I heat embossed one of the sentiments included in the stamp set which I then adhered, soon after I was done with the heat embossing, with foam mounting tape. Finally, I adhered the textured card panel to a smaller size Kraft card stock, and then I adhered it to one of the white card bases that I had pre- scored. To finish it off I adhered a few blue jewels to the center of each flower, and tied a bow to the plant trunk using metallic embroidery thread for a sparkly touch.
For the second card, I inked up the card panel with spun sugar Distress Oxide, creating a light pink oval shadow as you can see in the picture above. Once the background was blended I added a few water splatters to activate the Distress effect of the ink, and I dried it with a paper towel. Soon after the card panel was dry, I heat embossed another sentiment included in the same stamp set on a piece of white card stock, and I adhered it to the card panel with foam mounting tape on one side of the oval, as I was planning to adhere the flower pot on the other side. But before I adhered the plant to it, I decided to use the coordinating die once again. This time I cut the plant shape out of fun foam as I wanted to add a little bit of dimension.
Next, I adhered the plant to the fun foam, and then adhered that to the card panel. To finish this card off I adhered the card panel to another of my pre-scored Kraft card bases, then added a glossy accent to the flowers and a tiny blue enamel heart.
For the last card I used skinny washi tape in light pink color to create the stripes for the card panel. At first I thought about just leaving it as it was, but I ended up running the card panel though the die cutting machine using the largest tag from the Essential Stitched Labels Dies to die cut the center of it as you can see in the picture above. After the card panel was die cut out I adhered the negative piece to the last Kraft card base. However, I decided to heat emboss another sentiment from the stamp set on the positive piece. Once the heat embossing was done, I laid the label back into the negative space to create an inlaid look.
Last but not least, I adhered the plant next to the sentiment. I decided to add a little flower, which I made by stamping, coloring, and die cutting the single flower from the stamp set, for a little extra touch on the flower pot. To finish it off I added glossy accent to each flower, and as you can see, I adhered a little blue jewel to the center of the flower that I adhered to the pot.
Yay you made it to the end, thank you so very much for stopping by. Have a fabulous crafty day!
What a great set of handmade cards for friends. Plus a very nice friendship card tutorial. I may need to make some cards like these to remind my friends how much they mean to me!