One of the best parts about creating greeting cards is being able to make them for my coworkers; until I’m asked to make a card for someone who is leaving. Sadly that seems to be the case more often than not. This beautiful card was made for a beautiful friend who will be missed by all of us.
The majority of my water coloring is done on Strathmore Bristol Smooth watercolor paper. I heat embossed both tulip images from the Waffle Flower Tulips stamp set with detail gold embossing powder from Ranger. I then used my new Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor pencils to color the image.
For the blossoms, I colored in a combination of wild honey and crackling campfire. Using the water brush I blended the two colors together. To help the petals glow, I picked up color with the brush from the tip of the wild honey pencil. For the center of the flowers I used a bit of mustard seed.
The leaves and stems were colored with a combination of crushed olive and peeled paint. After using the water brush to blend the color I used the detail Royal & Langnickel 20/0 Zen brush. The darker peeled paint added to the shadows and darkened the stems.
The front sentiment was from my heart and printed off the computer with the Fairwater Script font. The same font is used inside with another sentiment found online. Finding sentiments to express our feelings is probably the most difficult part of card making.
The mat layer is a piece of Recollections cardstock from Michaels. Finding the right mat color is sometimes really frustrating. I don’t always want to use black, although it typically works perfectly. About 80% of the time I find two or three color options that I like. When that happens I ask my husband and son which they like best. Sometimes we agree, and sometimes we don’t.
The majority of the cards I make are A2 size (4 1/4 x 5 1/2). However when I make cards for work I always enlarge them to 5″ x 7″. That way there is plenty of room for all of us to sign them.
What is your favorite card size? Drop me a line in the comments!