Hello everyone! I'm Kati from Houseful of Handmade and I am so excited to be sharing with everyone here at Melrose Family. Today I am crafting with two of my favorite things: watercolors and Adobe Illustrator to make some beautiful watercolor thank you cards.

The Importance of Handmade Greeting Cards

Why don't people send greeting cards anymore? It is so easy to send a beautiful note, and postage for a card really isn't that much. I personally love getting holiday cards, birthday cards and thank you cards in the mail.

Recently I received a thank you card in the mail from someone that stayed with me, and I was so touched by the simple note I received that I am pledging to bring back thank you cards! And what better way to say "Thank you" then your own beautiful DIY card!

Watercolor Cards Tutorial

I love watercolors; I actually considered myself a watercolor artist way back when I was in high school and even won an award for it. Then life happened and I hadn't done any painting in a long time, but I keep seeing all the beautiful watercolor decor and designs across the web and it has inspired me to get my paints out again.

I used a couple of simple techniques to make some printable watercolor thank you cards. But I wanted to show you how I did it, so you can make some yourself! (Don't worry, I am going to include a free printable PDF of the ones I made in case you don't want to make your own.)

Supplies Needed

• 90lb mixed media paper
• Foam board
• Watercolor paint- I like this one in particular

Stretching Your Paper

Before starting to watercolor, it is a good idea to stretch your paper. The reason you stretch your paper is so that it doesn't buckle up when it gets wet, or at least it dries nice and flat instead of staying buckled. For these cards, I used a 90lb mixed media paper from a sketch book. It works nice for simple watercolor painting and the entire sketch book of 40 sheets only cost me $6. Win!

I stretch my paper for little projects like this on a piece of foam board. It is cheap, can be reused, and I always have a piece in my stash. It also means I can stretch my paper with a stapler instead of buying special tape. The foam board may curl up a little bit but the paper will be straight and stretched. All you need to do to stretch you paper is to wet both sides with a spray bottle (I like the ones that have a fine mist spray), use a sponge or large paint brush to remove the excess water and make sure it's evenly wet. Then staple it down on the foam board on all sides.

Let the paper dry overnight and then it will be nice and flat. Time to paint! I used 3 different techniques for 3 different looks for my cards.

How To Paint Your Cards With Watercolor

For the first card I used a color wash. Start by using a large flat brush and get a lot of water and paint, I chose a royal blue color. Then paint a square with it. It doesn't have to be perfect, that is the beauty of great watercolor paint. Then add in some purple in a couple spots, do it randomly for a not-to-planned out look. You can stop here, but I love the look a sprinkle of salt gives it, so sprinkle a little salt over the top of the wet watercolors and set it aside to dry. When fully dry, brush the salt off with your fingers.

For the second card I chose yellow and orange paint and used circular strokes with the watercolor. Start with a large round brush and get it full of water and paint. Paint a few circles. Then switch colors, paint more circular strokes. Make sure you keep a wet brush and switch back and forth making circles of paint till you have a cloud of paint. I had a couple drips so I went with it and added more for a really fun look.

The third one I decided to use a drier brush to see the brush strokes on the edges. So instead of using a lot of water like in the first two, use just enough water to get paint on your brush. Then quickly swipe it back and forth leaving the brushy look at the edges. I had to fill up my brush a second time to finish the second half of the paper. It looked a little flat so I added some more paint and added some darker strokes to a few places in the middle.

These three simple watercolor swatches took me about 10 minutes total to paint. Make sure to let them dry fully, overnight is perfect.

Scanning And Printing Your Watercolor Cards

Once your greeting cards are dry, it's time to scan your images into the computer to add as artwork to your printable thank you cards!

To scan them in, open your scanning program on your computer and scan each watercolor swatch in as a photo at 300 dpi. My scanner allows me to adjust the brightness, tint, temperature and saturations so you can play with that a little if you want.

Then scan it in and save it to a place you can find it later (this is always a step I seem to forget, I save it, but can never find where).

I am using Adobe Illustrator to put together my cards, but we are doing simple stuff that can be done in any photo editing software.

Open a letter sized document. I use a letter size document so that I can create a card to print on a sheet of paper, then I cut it to size. Since I am making 3 cards, I opened a new file in Illustrator with 3 art boards (which is basically 3 document in one). Make sure your document is letter size, portrait orientation, and 300 ppi or dpi.

How To Make Your Greeting Card Template

Now we are going to create a template for your card. I like to make 5x7 cards. They are a standard size for envelopes. To make my template, I make a square that is 7 inches wide by 5 inches tall. I like to make this rectangle so it has no fill and a very light gray outline so that it is just visible enough for me to cut out my card. Then I make a second rectangle just like the first and line them up so that they are touching along the long edge.

Next open your scanned picture of your watercolor painting in Illustrator and drag it into your document. If you need to, rotate and resize so it fits in the bottom rectangle. This will be the front of your card.

Now is the fun part, adding text. I want to keep these simple so the watercolor pictures I made are the focus of the card. I made my sayings "Thank You!" and "thanks" in white using fonts I liked. Rotate the text if you like, resize how you want and position it over the top of the watercolor image.

Printing Your Cards

Once you have the cards how you like you can print from Illustrator, or even better, save them as PDFs so you can easily pull it up to print out whenever you need to say "Thank You". To save as a PDF select File-Save As then when the box opens, type in what you want it saved as, change the format to Adobe PDF, and select the artboards you want saved. I selected all since I wanted to save all three.

Then when the PDF dialog box opens, I like to select High Quality print for the best print quality. Now you have a PDF of some cute, handmade, printable watercolor Thank You cards. Whenever you need to show your appreciation, a beautiful card is only a print and fold away!

A Free Watercolor Card Template For You!

If you would like to download the cards that I made, you can download the file of 3 cards here. Please only use these cards for personal use. You can share them with others, just send them here to download the file! If you make your own cards, you can do whatever you want with them 🙂

I just love how the texture of the watercolor really shows through in all the cards. It looks like a hand painted card every time I hit print! Enjoy!

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