Holiday Cards 2017

Last year, I made one holiday card for my blog to share with everyone. This year, I decided to make a few cards for friends. My cards tend to be labor intensive so, I usually make no more than 15. Each card took about 30 minutes to make.

I like Strathmore Watercolor cards because they are heavy weight. It's a bit tough to cut into the cards as I did with my holiday cards. The cards were strong enough for gluing the bleeding tissue paper.

Here is a tutorial on how I made these cards:

I planned out the message for the cards in Photoshop. I adjusted the letters so there were areas that touched and included a border on all 4 sides. This is an important step because you want the message to be attached in more than one area to keep it intact when you cut away the excess paper. I ended up printing the message out as a mirror image then traced the reversed message to the inside of the card. I initially traced the non-mirrored message on the front of the card but it was to hard to erase any pencil lines that were left after cutting. 

After the message is cut out of the card, I glued distressed bleeding tissue paper to the inside of the message. What I mean by "distressed" is that I took pieces of bleeding tissue paper and overlapped them slightly then lightly spritz water on top. The inks in the tissue paper bleed onto other papers. This technique yields a nice distressed effect on the tissue papers. I kept the colors similar in hue for each card. I'm happy with the way the cards turned out.

Thanks for stopping by!