Botanical Watercolour Cards & Tags

1. Introduction & Project Overview: D. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this class using watercolor paint to create botanical shapes, which we're then going to collage into cards, bookmarks, gift tags. You could do them on gift bags. You couldn't turn them into a painting if you wanted to. And the idea about using the watercolor paint is we're using it in a very non traditional way because we're using it to paint some really lovely autumnal colored backgrounds. Hi, I'm Dawn Codra, artist designer and listic health educator, and it's lovely to be back here with you today doing something that's a nice follow on from the Stylised Botanicals that I published the last time. Using photos that you might have taken yourself or magazine images or images that you've got off the Internet, using these as inspiration, we're then going to paint background papers using the watercolor paints. And I'll take you through the process of that. It's really, really easy. And I'll show you the process of how I actually choose the colors by doing a little color chart first so that I know exactly which color palette is that I actually want to work with. We're going to be using these then to cut out and collage onto the cards, the gift tags, and the bookmarks. I'll show you how to do some mark making on top so that we take those flat leaf shapes and make them look a little bit more three D. Not that we're trying to make them look realistic because they are, as I say, stylized botanicals, but it gives them a little bit of a shimmer and it just gives them a little bit more depth. You can draw your leaves by hand or you could use the resources in the Stylised Botanicals class. I'll put the link down below to that class, and you can get these sheets of botanical leaves from there, cutting them out individually and using these as a way to get the shapes that you want. If you're confident enough using a knife with a cutting mat, then it's useful way to cut out the leaves because you can create a mask and a stencil. And the stencil is a really nice way then to be able to see which parts of the background colors you want to use to then make your leaf shapes. If you don't feel confident enough using a knife and a cutting mat, then you can just simply use scissors. I'll also show you another way to get your images onto the paper. And that's by using the downloaded cutout leaf shapes and tracing them onto the background paper. And then once you've traced that image on, you can just use scissors then to cut that out. I love going out walking at this time of year and seeing all the stunning colors that Autumn brings. You know, the golds, the oranges, the yellows. Even on a gray day, I find it so uplifting. It really, really does lift the spirits. So, you know what I'm going to say next, don't you? Get the kettle on. Make yourself a cupper and let's see what materials you need. 2. Materials: Let's take a look at the paper, first of all, so I'm using a mixed media art pad, and it's 250 GSM. That's the paperweight. Now, I'm using an A three size. You don't have to. You can use whatever size you like. It's just that I've cut down the side of it here. You'll see when I show you. Because I can get two lots of card out of this A three pad. So that's quite a useful size for me to use, because I already had these envelopes, anyway, so it made sense to cut the card down to the size of the envelopes. And this is the paper that I've also used for doing the painting on using the watercolor paints. Even though it's not watercolor paper as such, you know, it's perfectly adequate for that. Don't want paper that's too thin, otherwise it will buckle when you put quite a lot of water on. But you might find, if you go above 250 GSM, that it might be a little bit on the thick side for cutting it out and gluing it. You're going to need some watercolor paints. Now, just use whatever you've got. It could be a palette. It could be tubes. I happen to be using these little palettes here, and they're kind of dye as well as a watercolor. So they come out very strong. And the name of this is ua, hard mud. You probably can't see that there, but I'll put the link to it. Well, not the link to it. I'll put the name of it and the description underneath. So you're going to need what colors to be painting with, which means you're going to need some brushes. Now, because I'm using these big palettes here, I can get away with a really big brush. If I was using this little one, it might be a bit too big. So go with the size of brush where you can get as much water as possible, sorry, be able to load as much paint as possible. But obviously, in proportion to the size of your palettes. So you'll know that when you decide, you know, what it is that you want to use. Which ones do you want to use? I've got some frog tape here, which I've used to tape down the paint, sorry, to tape down the paper as I'm painting it so that it doesn't lift too much. Again, that's optional. You might decide you don't need to do that. You're going to need a pair of scissors, a pencil, preferably one H B or above 2b3b, one that's got quite a soft lead in it, you might need an eraser as well. You're going to need a glue stick, or you can just use PVA craft glue. I like to have a bit of kitchen roll just so that I can wipe my brushes off on that. Something to put your water in, of course, and I've got a spray bottle here. Now, if you don't have a spray bottle that you can spray water with, you can literally just dip your fingers into the water and sprinkle it all over your painting. That's not an issue at all. This is another optional thing a knife sharp knife with a cutting mat. If you feel confident using that, if you don't just use your scissors. And then I've got my lovely Posca pens. I've got a white and a gold for doing the extra decoration, and they're both size one M. Now, obviously, you're going to need some sort of images so that you can be inspired by the colors. So either take yourself off for a walk and your phone or a camera and start taking some photos or have a look through some gardening magazines or have look on Pinterest or the Internet and see if you can pull off some images that inspire you there. The last thing you're going to need is a little bit of ribbon or string or twine, just for your little gift tags as well. And I think that I've covered everything that we need there for materials. I'll see you in the next session. 3. Working with a Colour Chart: What I've done here is I've taken one sheet of A three paper from my mixed media pad, and I've just cut it into four pieces. You know, you don't have to be as precise as me. You can just do it with scissors. I did it with my rotary cutter, but that's absolutely fine. And I've cut them down to A five sizes so that it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming when you're putting the color on. You know, you're not able to put it on such a big space. I mean, if you wanted to, you could even cut it down into A six into half the size as well. So do whatever you feel, you know, is less overwhelming in terms of putting the color on. Then of course, I need to choose what colors I'm going to use. And this is where I just love using these little palettes, these watercolor palettes. And of course, I always like to do a color swatch when I've got palettes, when I've got new paints in because you wouldn't imagine that that one there or this one here would produce these colors. That's number three, and that's number four. You just wouldn't imagine that's what would come out of these palettes. So it's always a really good idea to give yourself a little color chart. And I have these pinned up on the wall, so it's really easy for me to see. You know, I don't have to keep having a look at them, putting them in my hand, having a faf. I can just look at them straight in front of me on the wall. So I'm going to be using a combination of colors from these palettes here that will reflect the photographs that I've taken today that really shows the beauty of what's happening in nature outside. And, of course, if you just have an ordinary palette, watercolor palette or maybe using tubes, then already you can see, even with this section here, that, you know, I could just use section these colors in this section here, and that would already mirror the gorgeous colors that I've been seeing today outside. So whatever watercolors you're working with, whether it's tubes or a palette or something similar to the ones that I've got here, then yeah, just go ahead and use whichever colors reflects the colors that you want to put basically into your leaves. 4. Painting the 1st Paper: I'm going to be using this brush here. It's called an oval wash, but, you know, you don't have to use this at all. You just really want a brush that can hold a lot of paint and that you can get onto the paper fairly quickly because we're really This isn't about precision. This is about applying color. So what I'm going to do, first of all, is I've got some water here in my spray bottle, and I'm just going to lightly spray this. I'm not going to dampen it down too much. I'm going to dampen that brush. Wow, bring a bit of tissue there so that if I make a mess, I can dab it off on it. And I'm going to go in with this palette here at number three, and I'm going to start off with this gorgeous color here, first of all. And perhaps I need a bit more on there. Just take a bit more of that paint out. Oh, you see, look. Isn't that lovely? Just get it onto this page. Now, because I'm using a thick brush, it's picking up a little bit of the paint from one of the other colors on the palette as well, and that's fine because, you know, it's really just about getting color on that I see in these leaves, and some of the leaves do have green in them. So let's pick up a bit of that and put some of that in as well. Now, because I'm not using specifically watercolor paper, this is buckling a bit. But that's perfectly fine because once it dries, it'll dry flatter again. So I'm not worrying about that at all, but I want some really deep. Well, I want a contrast, actually, of, you know, quite deep tones and slightly lighter as well. Now that's really buckling. I guess I could have what I could have done is to have taped it down, which might be a better idea, but we'll just go with it because this is what I've started doing. And without washing the brush, I'm going to go into that lovely green color as well and see what that brings up. Some nice colors there, all very reflecting what's happening in my garden, excuse me, what's happening in my garden outside. So let's just clean that a little bit. Bring in another color. Then we've got these lovely browns. We've had a bit of a wash up there. And, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of pattern you're really putting on here. You don't well, I'm saying it doesn't matter. If you can blend it slightly, then that's helpful. But what I'm saying is you don't really want to be doing like a stripy pattern or a spotty pattern at this stage, anyway, because, you know, you really want to keep it looking fairly blended. I mean, that's not completely blended, but fairly blended. And, of course, when we put the shapes on top of this paper to draw around, then we'll pick out, you know, areas where we think that that would be a good um what am I trying to say? You know, that would be a good patch, if you like, to want to maybe put on an oak leaf or something like that. So don't you know, don't be fretting too much about it all blending perfectly. And, you know, what you can do here at this point is just add a little bit more water, and that then gives you this absolutely gorgeous, spotty effect. And, of course, it'll blend even further. You know, these things will blend even further. Let's put a little bit more green down here. And it really is as simple as that. So what I need to do is to let that one dry completely. So whilst that one's drying, I will bring in another piece of paper and some different colours. 5. Painting the 2nd Paper: In this next one, what I've done here is I've just taped down the top and the bottom, and I'm using frog tape, basically, which is a low Tack, as it says, Low Tack painters masking tape. You don't have to use this. The other one's drying really nicely, and it's drying flat. But if you prefer to have it so that it's not moving at all, then I would suggest that you use something like this. Now, on this one, I'm going to do a combination of paint wet pin onto dry paper, which I'll then spray away afterwards. So let's see what effect we get with that as well. And I'm going to start off here with this lovely color. Now, because I've loaded quite a bit of water onto my brush, you can see that that's, you know, quite wet there. That's fine because what I want to do is I want to start that off like that and then drop other colors into it because I'd really like it to reflect yeah, some of the leaves that I'm seeing on the hydranabsh outside. So I'm actually going to drop a little bit here of very bright orange into this. Now, as I'm seeing the leaves on the bush, I'm not trying to replicate them exactly, by any means. They're just giving me an idea of colors, basically. Let's put some of that into there. And bring some of that around here. So I didn't wet the paper first on this one. I've just put, you know, a rather wet filled brush. With, you know, filled with water straight onto the actual paper. And as you can see, it's pretty effective. Just put a bit of these in here. But then I'm going to get the spray again and I'm going to spray over it just to blend these a bit more. Not too much, a little bit. Just keep going. Don't overthink it. It's really easy to overthink it, but try not to. And you can see here that that's obviously helped by taping it down. You know, so that it's not buckling as much. You don't have to hang onto it in the way that I was having to do before. Let's get a bit of that really nice pinking as well. Wow, look at that. That's a bit splendid, isn't it? Drop a bit of that up there as well. And why not some up here. So, wrong one. You can see, you know, I have no plan as such here other than to use the colors. Basically, just want to get the colors in. Now, that's not as blended as the last one was, but let's see what happens when we spray it. Lovely. You know, we could even do a little bit of dripping. I always find it's a bit easier to kind of drip it just in one direction. Otherwise, it tends to look a little bit chaotic. So I'm going to leave that drip that onto there, I think. Let that go right down to the bottom. I mean, that's creating such a lovely effect. Just tip that so that thats right down to the edge here, there we go. And of course, there's all sorts of things that you can do to add a bit more texture to it, literally just going in with things like this edge of a tissue. Because when you look at the leaves themselves, you can see that they've got so many variations of texture in them. I want to bring a little bit more of that. Actually, let's have a bit of that color up here. That up there is a bit too yellow for me. And then I'm going to give that some spots with the spray. And that's the second piece painted. Very simple. Take the tape off, put it to one side, let it dry, and then once that's drying, we'll move on to the third one. 6. Painting the 3rd Paper: So I want to get some colors here that are similar to it's called a smoke bush outside. And when you see it in springtime and summertime, its leaves are very purple. But now, as it changes color in the autumn, which is such a magical process, I know there'll be a scientific reason as to why leaves change the color, but I don't want to delve into it because I just want to enjoy it as an absolutely splendid display of magic, really. So I'm going to be using this number here, number five. And again, it's very similar colors to what you'd find in a normal palette. Now, obviously, if I was using a smaller palette like this, I'd probably have to use a slightly smaller brush. Otherwise, you know, if I used one this big, it would probably hit at least two, if not three colors altogether. So if you're using a smaller palette with smaller pans in it, then obviously reduce your brush size. But as I am, you know, using one, that's this size, which is a much bigger pan in each one, then I can get away with a big brush. So I think we're just going to go straight into the colors here. Not going to wet the brush first. Sorry, I'm not going to wet the paper first. I'm going to do what I did with the last one. Load my brush up with a lot of water. That looks a bit wishy washy, doesn't it? So let's instead. And, you know, you might put something on it that you're not overly keen on or you think, well, that looks a bit pale really compared to these absolutely stunning colors that are showing at this time of year. So go bold. Change it. Go bolder if you want to. You know, you don't There's no rules here. Just go with what you want to go with. Make it psychedelic, if you like. So as you can see again, I'm just getting the color on, not worrying too much about where it goes. And what I could do here as well is when this paper is as wet as this, another way of getting some nice texture into it is by actually adding salt to it, and that gives you some really lovely effects. The only thing with that is that you have to then brush it all off afterwards, which is why I'm not using it in this technique. But that's another thing that you could do to give you lovely little sprinkle effects. Which are rather sweet. But I must say, for this particular project, I'm just very happy to stick with, you know, using the water spray to create a little bit of extra texture, get a bit more brown in there there we're going to get a bit more depth of color now. And of course, you can mix the colors actually on the paper itself. I'm not using a palette to mix colors here. So, look at that now. Look what's happened there. What I could do here is to create texture like that just with the edge of the brush. It's very easy to create a little bit of texture. These are blending in here nicely. I can go back into that with those. What I could do here is actually take water off so I could really dry off the brush just by doing this on a kitchen pad by the side of it and actually then take some of that water back off look to create different kind of textures. So you can see how easy it is just to create something a little bit different. And when we put the shapes on top of these, they'll look stunning, actually, when you start seeing them as a leaf. It's so effective. So please, please, please don't overthink this. See what this color looks like on it. And now, I've got some of that lovely orange in there as well. And that's okay, too. I don't want any white showing, though, because I don't have any white on the leaves. So I really do want white showing. Now, what happens if I just go in and do some little dots? So it's not that I've got paint on the brush there, I've just got water on the tips, and you can see there that that creates its own little effect as well. So with this one, I might not even bother spraying it. We might just leave this one as it is. Sometimes the leaves do get a bit spotty as they turn towards winter. So I'm not trying to create a specifically spotty pattern, but I'm using that to create a little bit more texture there. So this is looking, again, really quite interesting. So what are we going to do over this bit here, let's have a look? I'm going to actually put the water on here first. Just spread that over. Get rid of those sharper edges a little bit and drop the color into these. I'm sort of doing a dotting effect, a continuous dotting effect with the brush sort of up and down on the page, if that makes sense. Hope it does. And I want to alternate that a little bit with the pink. So you can see it already, you know, I've used a few different techniques here up to now, with these different pages, different papers. So just experiment and have a little bit of fun with it. Don't be taking it too seriously. Whatever you do actually will look fabulous once you've got the shapes cut out. So I know I always say this in all my classes. Just allow yourself to play. That's looking a bit pale in that section there. So let's just give that a wee bit more paint, a bit more texture, and I'm going to leave that one as it is. I might just take a little bit of that excess paint off down that edge. I'm not even pressing. I'm just laying on and tacking straight off. And that in itself has created a really nice texture there, L. Just do that down the edge. Doesn't really matter so much about your edge just because you'll end up. Obviously, leaves don't have sharp edges, so you won't end up with any of the edges of your paper anyway. But you can always keep them and use them for other collage projects. And there we have the third one painted as well. So that can go to one side with the others and dry whilst I then go on to the last piece of paper and decide what colors I'm going to put in that one. 7. Painting the 4th Paper: So these are the three that I've already done, and they're all drying nicely. That was the first one that I did that wasn't taped up. And you can see it's dried, you know, quite flat. These obviously will dry flat as well because they were taped down. So I've got a lot of oranges and purples going on, and I've got a little bit of this gorgeous yellowoca and lovely sort of burnt browny color there. So I'd like to get a little bit more of this kind of coloring. So I'm going to bring in some more greens and some more browns on this one. And again, starting with I'm quite liking not using wet paper, but adding, you know, putting enough water onto the brush so that when I'm actually loading the paint onto it, it starts off quite pale, I guess, you would say. So let's get a bit of green onto here because as you can see, as you've seen from, you know, the other demonstrations, that even just getting some color on to start with and then dropping other color into it transforms it into a different look altogether. So let's get this green on here. And put this bit of this brown in as well. That's rather lovely. In fact, I think actually, what would be rather nice is to drop some of that looks a bit like yellow ochre from this palette here into there as well. That's lovely look. And, you know, it gives a very different feel to it, doesn't it? But I do want to make sure that I've got some nice brownie ones going on as well. Browns can be really rich. And, of course, once we end up, adding the details on top of the leaves, for example, maybe with a gold pen or something, then that transforms those leaf shapes even further. Just getting these colors in the background is the main thing to start with. That's nice. That's really nice. And then we start the next bit of this lovely process. You can see how fast I'm doing this. I'm really, really not overthinking this at all. Like a little bit. That greens I'd like some of the green to stay, but I also want a slightly duller green, as well. So I'll pop a bit of that in there. And then I'm just going to spray that with the bottle to see what effect we get. Now, you'll probably notice that as I've been going on there, I've got faster and faster. I'd like that to go into there a little bit more. I'm going to spray that over as it were to encourage it. I don't want to do a drip effect on this one, but I do want to encourage that to just merge into there a little bit. There we go. That's paper number four done. So what I will do is I will let those completely dry and then bring you back into camera when we're ready to do the next stage, which is, of course, using the little cutouts to draw around and create some leaf shapes. 8. Drawing & Cutting Out the Leaves: Here are my four finished watercolor papers, and I'm really pleased with how they've all turned out. The paints that I use leave quite a matte finish on it, so there's no glossiness to it or anything, which is really useful because then I like to add the gold pen or a combination of the gold and the white pen to give it some detail afterwards. And doing that onto a very flat matte surface is much easier, and it really makes the pen stand out. And, you know, in certain lights, it's quite shimmery, as you can see. I've done that detail just by using a white posca pen and a gold posca pen. As I said earlier, the size is one. So there's a couple of ways of getting the shapes onto the paper now. And what I've got here is one of the leaf resources from the previous class, the Stylised Botanicals class. So I've put you the link to that class underneath projects and resources, and you can download this if you want to if you'd rather work from this. And this is where I've just taken that larger sheet, and I've cut up some of the leaves into smaller pieces. Now, one of the ways in which we can do this is with a knife and a cutting mat, we can just cut around that shape quite carefully. You don't have to bother about the stem because you can add that later. But it's good to be able to get the actual shape of the leaf as cleanly as you can, as neatly as you can. And I'll show you why in just a moment when I've cut that out, so as we did in the Stylised Botanicals class, we created both a stencil and a mask. And the nice thing about using a stencil type is that you can then put it. I mean, just look at that to give already to give a beautiful leaf coming out of that. In fact, that's so nice. I'm going to draw that in already because, I mean, I just sort of did that at random there, but that's really lovely. So what I'm going to do now is draw around the inside of that shape like this. And that then gives me the shape of where I want to cut that leaf out. Now, another way of doing it is you'll you'll need at least an HB pencil for this. So I could take another leaf, for example, and what I can do here because I printed these out onto just a very thin copy paper, I can see through the back of them. So I don't even need to use tracing paper. I can just use that directly. So let's take that up there, for example. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw around the back of that, just like we did in the Stylised Botanicals class, it's exactly the same procedure. Now, I could do that. And then I'm going to turn that over. And because I've got the pencil line on the back of it, then when I then go over the top of the outline of this leaf, then it will leave me an image underneath, which I can then bring up again in pencil. Now, that actually hasn't worked very well. I can just see it. You probably can't I can just see it enough to be able to trace around that. So using a softer pencil such as a tube would probably be easier. So that way, then, I've got another leaf shape there as well. You can, of course, just go in free hand if you're quite confident about doing that and just draw some leaf shapes like this. Now, it's quite easy to draw smaller leaf shapes, you know, in a simple, you know, that kind of shape. I've got some here, some smaller ones. I've cut out some smaller ones here look so it's quite easy to just draw them by hand because it's quite a simple shape to do. And having a few of these, you know, smaller leaves, make them a bit fatter, a bit wider if you want to. Having a few of these smaller leaves just helps to fill in any kind of gaps or spaces that you might want to fill in. And as you can see with this card here, I've also done it with berries as well. So again, you can free hand draw those if you want to. So I would probably, you know, do that maybe in the purple. Maybe some in the pinks, different sizes, slightly different sizes. And then, obviously, cut those out with a pair of scissors. So it's entirely up to you how you want to get your leaf shapes. If you're quite happy to do it freehand, then just go straight onto your paper that you've painted. If you want to you know, download the resource of the leaf shapes on here and then cut them out, then do that as well. I would avoid shapes like this because they're a bit complex to then cut out. So, stick to kind of slightly more solid looking shapes leaves. And of course, within those resources of the last class as well, there are also flower seeds, flower heads, seed heads, that kind of thing. But because I wanted to really get the effective autumn, I just wanted to create something that was like, you know, falling leaves. So I've stuck to leaves, but obviously you can use whatever I'm going to use a combination of both stencils and tracing method for doing mine. So I'll cut three stencils out here. There's another one. I'm going to cut a fourth one out. Excuse me. Now, these two leaves are very similar. That one's slightly more complex, as you can see. So I'm going to go with a simpler one for cutting out with the knife, and I'm going to start it here and just if you're not that used to working with a knife, take it to each corner as it were, and then twist it around so you're moving the paper rather than the knife. I'm going around a little bit of a curve there. Taking that up to that corner there. Well, not corner of the point, I should say. Let to move out a bit further over there. You know, if you're not confident with doing this, don't do it. Just either use the tracing method, or you could even cut it out with a pair of scissors, or, as I said earlier, just have a doing it freehand. It's not about being perfect. We're not trying to recreate the exact thing. We're just, you know, again, it's a stylized version of lovely autumn leaves, and maybe some seed heads, if that's the way you want to go with it as well. I like creating my own little stencils like this because, you know, I can use them time and time again, which is really useful. And I can also use the masks for other pieces, you know, other works as well. So there we've got that one as well, look. So if I take so that's, you know, reminiscent of a maple leaf. So if I look at that there, that's just so nice. And, you know, you've got this little bit here, which you often get in leaves. So that's perfect. I've swapped over my pencil now, in fact, for a five B pencil, which is much, much softer. So I'll be able to trace a lot easier with this and see the outline. On the back of it with this softer pencil than I did with that HB pencil. Now, again, you know, don't try to be too perfect if it doesn't quite go to exactly the same shape as it does. You know, in your stencil, it's fine. That's perfectly adequate, and I shall cut that out, obviously. So let's do another one with this method now. So again, using the five B pencil, I'm going to draw around the edge of it. All the way around. Do you remember doing this as a kid? Did you ever get to do this as a kid? I used to love doing this as a child tracing things like this. And then again, sort of have a look at where you might want to put that. I'm going to put that just there. And then I'm going to get the other pencil, which was a harder pencil because that'll give me a harder point. And let's just see if that works better. I'm going over the back of it again now. As you can see, I've already used this leaf shape. It's already got pencil lines on it because I've used it on the other things that I did, on the other card that I did. Keep it firmly in place. And that is better. It's still quite faint, but actually it's enough for me to see it and be able to draw around the outline there and know where I'm cutting out my shapes. So it's useful for you with each piece of your paper to, you know, do a few shapes on each in different, you know, as in different styles of leaf. And then you've got a choice then as to what you want to put on your card, your bookmark, your gift tags, or maybe you'd like to do a little picture with it instead. You can do whatever you like with it. So I'm going to cut a few of these out or get a few of them on ready to cut out. And then we'll start to look at how we're going to arrange our little composition on things. O. 9. Composition : Here now are my pieces that I've cut out. I've used something from every piece of paper that I did. Some of them, as you can see, I cut out with the sharp knife. Other bits, I just cut round the edges of it with a pair of scissors and then went into it with more detail with the scissors. So whichever way you feel comfortable in getting your shapes cut out, you go with that. I've got paper here, which is exactly the same paper as I've been painting on, and all I did here was to cut out the edge of one of the sheets in my pad. It's the same size as this card here. And then I had a couple of spare pieces of paper from the same pad. So that one's going to be the gift tag, slightly different size and shape to that one, but that's okay. And that one's going to be the bookmark. And you can see here that I've rounded the corners off a little bit, because I always think it looks a bit better. So I've had a play with a kind of composition, and I really like that one there. I really like this one here. I've put a little hole in the top with, you know, a simple hole punch ready to thread a little bit of ribbon through. And I think I quite like that composition just as it is. I don't think I want to add anything else, but you just don't know until you have a little play around that also looks nice. Or I could have just maybe put a little leaf in there, just something tiny, a couple of leaves, perhaps. Let's have a look. You know, that also looks quite sweet as well. And I like that. I've kept that a bit simpler than this one. I've just used similar shape leaves in there, mainly because everything that I cut out I've used apart from these pieces here. So I just thought I'd do that slightly different to this one, you know, less choice of shapes. So I'm going to get those glued onto the card, the gift tag and the bookmark. And then we'll start looking at what kind of mark making. Now, I prefer to do my mark making once it's glued down. But if you would prefer to do, your decorative additions, if you would prefer to do those before you glue them down, that's absolutely fine. The advantage of doing it that way is that if you make a mistake, it's not glued down and you haven't spilt it all. But I like to do it because, well, maybe you can see with this one here. For example, you know, I've drawn a line down here and then I've carried it through to make it the stork. And obviously, I'm quite confident about doing things, you know, directly onto it. So, again, it's entirely your choice as to what you prefer. So I'll get these glued on and then see you in the next session where we look at what kind of decorations I'm going to do. 10. Decorating the Bookmark: That's all three of them now glued down. I just used a Pritt stick. What sometimes happens when you use a Pritt stick is, you know, you put the glue all the way around the edge, and then the glue goes over the edge a little bit. So what I like to do is to just get a tissue and just wipe around the edge of it so that it doesn't then spread out onto your piece that you're working on. But obviously, you can use any glue, you can use mod podge or PVA glue, whatever you like, really. I just find it convenient to have a glue stick, basically. So I've taken a photograph of these, as well, now that they're all glued on, just to remind myself, actually, of what it looked like before I put the decorations on. I mean, when I look at this leaf here, you know, that really could be a real leaf. It's so gorgeous, the way that's just come into it there, and that was the first one, of course, that I cut out. You know, I just think they're so lovely, which is why I love this technique of just getting the paint onto the paper, not worrying too much about what kind of pattern it's creating, you know, allowing it to have texture in it. And then, as you can see, once you've cut them out, they just look really, really lovely. I'm going to put those to one side for a minute and start with the bookmark. And here I'm bringing in my trusty gold posca pen and my white posca pen. And I'm going to start off with actually, I'm going to start off with the white Now, if we just have a look for a moment at what I've done there in comparison, you know, I've kept it pretty simple really. And I think because we don't want to lose all the lovely textures and different tonal qualities that are going on with the paint, you don't want to be putting too much decoration over it. Otherwise, yeah, you just lose it. So I'm going to keep it quite simple. But I'm going to start off with the white. Now, this is a new pen. There we go. That's okay. Just get rid of that bit. And basically, I'm just going to flow up with a bit of a curve. Now, I might have to go over that white again, which is fine. Yet, you can see that it's not just quite coming through properly. So you might need to do it a couple of times once it's dried, let's try that again. This is the challenge with these paint pens that you don't want them to end up blobbing. So if you're not that confident about doing it actually on your bookmark, then decorate your leaves before you glue them down. I'm going to do them all with white to start with. And then I will follow through with the gold pen and give a little bit more detail with the gold pen. Now, do make sure that each mark that you make is dry before you then put another mark on top of it. Let's give that one. A line down there as well. And with the little ferries, what works really well, actually, is to just give them a little little dot of white which makes them look a little bit more three d. I'll leave those two for the minute because I might do some kind of spiral or something on them. I'm just going to go back over that with the white again. And back over that one with the white again. Leave that to one side. Now, what I've also tried to do when I've glued these down is to make sure that I've got a little bit of space around the edge because I like to just decorate the edge and it kind of gives it that little bit of a border. So whilst those bits are drying, I'm going to use the gold pen. And I'm just carefully going to go around the edge of the bookmark with a little sort of dot and a dash on this one. No this one here, I'm going to give it a little spiral, but not all the way around, just so that we get keep some of that lovely rich brown showing as well. And with this leaf here, what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw next to the white line, not on top of it, but next to it, which sort of gives it a little bit of a shadow. And then I'm going to give it some veins, make it look more leaf shape, and the same on the other side. Let's bring that white pen back in. And I'm going to go underneath those veins with the white and that just highlights it nicely. So you can see it starting to, you know, transform from a very flat looking leaf shape into slightly more Rudy. Now I see this bit here, I'm going to add some little dots around there. Because I can. There we go. And on this here, I'm just going to add one or two little lines, marks coming out of that one there. And so it is that you, you know, just decide what marks you want to make really. We'll do a couple of lines on there. And then I might do some dots going down the middle in the gold pen. So it's not even as if you have to, you know, make the leaves with veins in them all. You can just add pattern to decorate it basically. So let's see what that's going to look like with some little dots down the middle. Yeah, that's probably enough on that one. I do that one more time across there just to make that gold a bit stronger. It stands out a little bit more. And that's one of the tricks with the paint pens. Go over it a second time if you need to. I'm going to give this one a little tail on it. I bring that down actually on top of the white in this case. So I'm just really making this up as I'm going along, deciding how I want to decorate them. Let's give that a little tail now. Calling it a tail. It's a stem, really. Now, as I didn't finish that one in gold there, I won't bother giving that one. Well, actually, maybe I will. Let's just bring that gold down there and make it look a bit more intentional. There we go. Maybe I change those dots into Dashers instead. I'll finish doing this, and then I'll also have a go at decorating the gift tag as well and bring you back in when I've done those so that you can see the kind of marks that I've made. 11. Finished Designs: Here's the bookmark and the gift tag finished. I've just done the same kind of mark making on both. I've given the gift tag a little decoration around the edge, and I've also done it around the back edge as well, because obviously that's where you would write, who the gift was for. So that needs to look nice, as well. And to attach the actual ribbon, basically, I've just folded it in half. Made a loop at the top, and then fed that loop through the upper portion of the gift tag, put the two ends through, and that creates quite a nice neat little knot there. So I'm going to do exactly the same on the card. I'm just going to treat it exactly the same with the same kind of marks. If I look at this one here, then, again, you can see that I've treated it really quite simply. This is quite hard for me, you know, because those of you that know me and have done, quite a few of them classes now, you'll know how much I love to put pattern on things, particularly dots. So this has been quite a lesson in minimal pattern making for me, really, which is quite interesting and, you know, a lot of fun. It's great. Here's the second card complete now. Now, it's interesting for me because as I mentioned earlier, you know, I do love color, I do love pattern. And I do love dots. But I've really tried to keep this one more minimal. In fact, I've hardly used any white really on this one. And what I've tried to do instead is just vary the thickness of the lines so that that's how it adds a bit of contrast. On this card here, I've actually got 23 elements to it. On this one, I've only got 12, and yet, I think it looks really pretty. I think they both look great and just, you know, very different. At the same time, which sounds a bit of a contradiction in terms, but I'm sure you understand what I mean. I do love the way that I've managed to keep these different colors within the leaves without overwhelming them with too much marks, with too many marks, but still being able to add some decoration on top just to lift it. And you can see the color play and how that all works together. So I also decorated the envelope that this card will then go in so that's, you know, all in all, a really nice little gift set there. Send somebody a card. If you're giving them a book, there's the bookmark to go in it, and there's the little gift tag to go in it once you've wrapped it. And you can see how the whole thing just links together really nicely. 12. Bye for Now: I really hope you've enjoyed this class. It's a lovely way to bring nature indoors. And of course, you can change the colors and the shapes of the leaves and, you know, use the same techniques for any season throughout the year. I'd love to see what you've created. So if you'd like to leave me a project and upload it, that would be lovely. And then I can see all your lovely work. And if you'd like to also leave a review, if you've really enjoyed the class, that would be really useful, as well. Until I see you again, do take care of everyone. Lots of love.