Painting your own greeting cards makes them personal, and a lot less expensive. Certainly one can make them quite intricate, but today I want to show a super easy way. Next week will be a slightly less easy way to paint a card but still quite doable, each of which would be welcome by the recpient.

These cards just use watercolors and a marker. The cards are blank watercolor-paper stock, which come with envelopes. You can find these at most any art or craft store.

So let’s start with the easiest. I used a diluted red paint, and just did a random, loose painting, (technically it is called a wash) a bit darker at the top since there was more paint on the brush, and a bit lighter as it progressed down, I was dividing the area approximately in half and purposely not painting to the edges which gives it a framed look. You do need a wet brush for this kind of wash.

Next I used ultramarine blue to do the same on the lower half, the key is to keep it loose, The blue will mingle with the damp area of the red and that is perfect. I started at the bottom of the red area and worked down, adding a bit more paint at the end to balance the darker red at the top, but that is getting fussy and it would have worked without more paint.

So you end up with a pleasant patch of color, much like what we did when we talked about using blocks of color for a journal. Now you just let the paint COMPLETLY dry. Then I used a dark blue marker, any color will do as long as it is a contrast to the colors you painted, to write Happy Birthday. You have just made a presentable birthday card at a fraction of the price, and with a personal touch. Don’t forget the flourish below the words, it adds such an artistic flair.

Give it a try, adjust your colors to fit the mood – light greens in the spring, oranges and reds in the fall, red and green for Christmas – you get the idea.

Let me know if you try it out, and if you have problems send me a message and we will figure it out.