diy thank you cards

hi everyone! kristina here. today i wantedto show you a watercolor envelope. i showed this image on instagram this last week. itwas some envelopes i was preparing for valentines day. i got quite a bit of response and manyrequests asking me to share how i made these envelopes or the one that says heidi. so ithought i would walk you through that today. the first thing you need is some really good watercolorpaper, but it has to be thin enough to make an envelope out of it. so i have a coupleof different thinner colored papers that i've tried. this is one that i've shown you inthe past. it's an okay watercolor paper, but i think i prefer this other one from cansonbetter. this is because it just seems to take the water a little bit more. for this particulartechnique that i’m going to show you it

does require a lot of water so a reallygood watercolor paper is best for this envelope. i'm just going to tear out a sheet here andi'm going to cut it down to 8"x8". i'm going to be creating an a2 envelope with my envelopepunchboard. i just wrote down the measurements on the punchboard right there you can see,because this is the envelope size i make the most. so, 8"x8" and then sliding it in and liningit up on the 3.5 mark there in the top left corner punching and then scoring and theni’m going to line up that score line with that little teal pointed piece. or you canline it up on the ruler edge to 4.5 mark. either one. so it's 3.5, then 4.5 and thenmake sure that you punch and score for each turn. i've discovered that if i actually goby the measurements instead of by matching

uptake score line i get a better envelope.i don't know why that is. maybe it's because sometimes seeing the score line maybe a littlebit off. i use the measurements more than the score lines. so now i'm going to be usingsome masking fluid. this is fineline masking fluid and i've discovered that where i openup the bottle there is a little bit of air in the tip, so i like to sort of practiceon some scratch paper before i go to my project. i'm going to write the name jennifer in thismasking fluid and i'm not going to pencil it in before hand. i just discovered thatit was easier to just go straight on there and applying the masking fluid. if you havenever done this before or you're nervous about going straight onto the envelope, you canfor sure use a pencil and kind of mark where

you want. you just want to be sure to erasethe pencil lines very carefully around the masking fluid before adding your watercolor.that's because sometimes color can trap pencil on paper and you want to make sure that pencilis most removed before you move on. so the way that i did that lettering style was afteri initially drew on those letters i went back through and thickened up those that wouldbe downward strokes. so, if you think about when you're writing the letters every timeyou have that downward motion, that's where you add more masking fluid to thicken thatline. i showed you this technique on my for calligraphy for your envelopes video. i'll put alink to that up here in the top corner, so you an see another example of how exactlyto determine which lines to thicken up. so

once again i'm adding the thicker lines to thedownward strokes and this masking fluid is pretty forgiving on this. it let's you roundout all of those lines and makes sure that you get a really smooth transition betweenthose thicks and thins. i set this aside to dry, for about 10-15 minutes. and i also madesure to close the cap on that masking fluid really really well. so after 10 or 15 minutesi was ready to start the water coloring. i'm using some distress ink mini ink pads. youcould use any type of watercolor medium that you would like. you could use regular watercolors,or peerless watercolors, whatever you'd like to use. today i'm using three colors. they are tumbledglass, peacock feather and pine needles. i’m going to be adding a little bit of water on a watercolorbrush and bringing it over to my project. so,

i first started by wetting the front of envelope with somewater and i'm just using wide watercolor brush for this. i just want to make sure that ihave this area wet down. i don't want it too wet, but i do want it wet. so i'm speedingup the video so it doesn't take quite as long. just really easily adding in some color. there'sreally no thought about this. especially if you use these kind of colors that go fromlight to dark. if you use more color that are very very different you really need tothink about how the colors are going to mix, because you don't want purple and yellow nextto each other because that would, make an ugly gray color. for the most part you canadd whatever colors you’d like and the colors will start to mix, because you've added waterto the paper before you added the color. by

doing that it encourages the color to movearound. so i took a paper towel and soaked up some of the water around the edges just tohelp it from kind of bleeding back into the center area. then i took my heat tool anddried the entire area. you don't have to use a heat tool for this you definitely can justlet it dry on your work surface here. i also wanted to mention that i didn't tape down the envelope to a board, mostly just because i knew i would be picking it up rather quickly and it didn'tmatter to me. but if you wanted to, to prevent it from warping, the paper warping, you could definitely tape it down to a board. so after the watercolor is completely dry use your fingertips to rubaway the masking fluid and it reveals the white paper underneath. i'm going to do one additionalstep and that is adding in some water droplets.

if you’re familiar with my video have seenme do this quite a bit. i think it looks fantastic with distress ink. you could do water dropletslike this is regular watercolors, but it doesn't have as dramatic of an effect as it does withdistress ink. that's because distress ink is formulated to reactivate when moistureis added. so when you add water it starts to pull away that color from the paper andthen you can pick up the color with your paper towel. it's almost like it bleaches the watercolorpaper. it's really really cool. so i would suggest doing this with distress inks, notso much with water colors, but you could definitely try and see if you like the effects. i’mgoing to dry this one more time and this is essentially the design of the envelope. i'mgoing to walk you through how to assemble

the envelope or glue it together, just becausei have discovered a way that i really like to work with it. first i fold the cornersand really press down those folds with my bone folder. then i took some express, i thinkits x-press it even, i’m not sure. i think its x-press it adhesive tape. i got this inmy bag at cha back in january, but it's very similar to score tape or any red line tapeor something like that. it's basically just a really really sticky tape. so i put it on the bottom flap and fold it up making sure not to take it all the way to the corner and then i have my envelope. so it'sa little bit warped right now, because that water color paper got warped when i was watercoloring, but as soon as you put in a card, especially one that has some thick card stockon it. it will hold the envelope in place

so that it's more flat. so you can see thatreally flattened that out. i'm also going to add some postage stamps. this is my packetof postage stamps. i've got quite the collection, because i just love putting on postage stampsthat match my envelope designs. i'm going to be using a couple of different small denominationstamps. like i've got one that's 26 cents, i think it's mainly for post cards and theni've got one that is 34 cents, i think that's for post cards as well. i've just been collectingthese for a while. i then have this vintage stamp that is 5 cents and i just love this reallypretty green color on it. so i used this particular stamp quite a bit. so normally i put the addressright below the name, but since i am going to use the enveloped i don't want to broadcastjennifer' s address all over the internet

i am going to leave it blank for now. thisis what the envelope looks like all finished. i did do similar design earlier this weekfor my friend jana and i blurred out her address so it's not on blast on the internet. hereis the jennifer envelope once again. i think this a really fun technique. you could definitelyuse some die cut letters or draw on some letters and fill in with masking fluid, it's definitelyup to you how you want to do it. you can do some really really pretty beautiful watercolortextures on your envelope. and it makes the envelope more special for the people you'resending to. thank you so much for watching and i will catch you guys next time.