Watercolor & Stamped All Occasion Cards

Today Chasity is going to show you how to take one Kelly Creates stamp and make cards for all seasons and occasions! This tutorial is amazing!

Kelly Creates Supplies: Watercolor inks set 1, Watercolor Inks Set 2, Palette, lettering brush, Floral Stamp Set, Celebration Stamp Set, Stamp Blocks (from kit), Watercolor Paper Pad, Tracing Paper pad/vellum, Black Small Brush Pen (Shopping links at end of post)

OTHER SUPPLIES: Paper Trimmer, Embossing Powder (White), Pigment Ink Pad, Adhesive, Embellishments, Scoring Tool, Heat Gun for Embossing (Vellum or Kelly Creates Tracing Paper Pad)

Hey Lettering Friends! Today I am sharing a watercolor resist technique that will take your cards to the next level! Grab some of your Kelly Creates Stamps and watercolors, and let’s make some cards.

Start with Kelly’s watercolor paper and cut down to your favorite card size. I like 6” x 4” or A2 size. The cards I am making, I cut them to 4” x 6”. Cut your paper 8” x 6” and score and fold at 4”.

Next it’s time to stamp on the Kelly Creates Tracing Paper (or vellum).  I stamped Kelly’s border Floral stamp. I love this stamp because it can be repeated, so you can make the card as long as you like. If you are a fan of the popular Slimline size, just repeat the stamp! Make sure you use a pigment ink so that the embossing powder sticks.

Sprinkle the white embossing powder on the stamped image, tap off the excess and return it to the bottle. Then using a heat gun, heat the powder until it melts. (Check my previous blog post HERE about embossing with stamps).

Heat until the entire stamp image has changed to a raised, shiny image. I used white embossing powder, but any color will work!

I repeated this 3 times on the tracing paper/vellum. It’s important to stamp about an inch from the edge because we will later score and fold this around the card. I am going to create 4 cards and choose the watercolor inks based on the season of the cards. Next, I repeated this process on the watercolor card that I cut and scored. Emboss using the same stamps.

Now I will paint with some watercolor inks on the card. We will use a ‘wet on wet’ technique. Start by using your lettering brush #4 to add clean water to the stamped and embossed image. The embossed image will remain white and resist the watercolor ink.. For this card I used Poppy, Orange, Deep Yellow, and Emerald watercolor inks, for a rainbow effect. This can be for any occasion.

It’s so easy to switch up colors for seasonal cards.  For the next card I used Poppy and Emerald Watercolor Inks for a great Christmas card!

Once the watercolor card is dry, it’s time to line up the vellum and cut it to size.

Because the tracing paper/vellum is transparent, you can easily line up the stamps and trim around the card. Make sure you leave that 1” to the left to fold behind the card and adhere.

I wanted to add some sentiments to the cards, and Kelly has designed some really great sentiment stamps that can be used as is or stamped with a light ink and traced! I used the “hello” sentiment stamp from the ‘Celebrations’ set and stamped it with black ink from the Kelly Creates Ink Pads and Stamping Blocks Kit.

Once your vellum is trimmed to size, put adhesive on the flap that goes on the back of the card. Adhere to the card.

Once you have adhered the vellum to your cards, add any additional embellishments you want. For my Christmas card I used some stickers and wrote my own sentiment with Kelly’s Small Brush Tip Black pen.

On this other all-occasion card, and I stamped the sentiment “happy” with white and embossed it on the vellum. It’s fun to add sentiments to the watercolor card or on the vellum.

I wanted the last card to have a fall vibe, so I used Poppy, Orange, Deep Yellow and Emerald Kelly Creates Watercolor Inks. I painted the vellum this time instead of the watercolor card for a different look. It took a little longer to dry, but I loved the results!

I also added a fall sentiment to the front of the vellum using the small black brush pen.

Here are the finished cards! See how each looks different, even though the technique is the same.

I hope that you give these cards a try. They are fun and easy to create and are great to have on hand for any occasion that comes up! Be sure to share what you create with us on Kelly’s social using #kellycreates. Thanks for stopping by!

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For more awesome lettering and crafty projects, follow Chasity on Instagram @chiciscre8ive