Transcripts
1. Welcome to Class!: Hi everyone, welcome
to my new class. This class is going to be
all about how to paint simple and easy watercolor
Christmas cards and gift tags. If you haven't taken one
of my classes before yet, my name is Priya from petals
by Creo Watercolor Designs. I'm a watercolor artist and surface designer
based in Hawaii. You can find some of
my latest artwork on Instagram @petals by Priya or online at my
website, petals by priya.com. I don't know about you, but I
personally have always been such a big fan of handmade
cards and crafts. There's such a unique
and special gift to be able to give to
your family and friends, and also a great opportunity to be able to showcase
your beautiful artwork. Inside this class, we
will learn how to paint several different holiday
themed elements and motifs and apply them to both
the Christmas cards and the gift tags. Specifically,
you'll learn how to paint holiday berries
and greenery, including Holly and pine, mistletoe with ribbon and three different styles
of Christmas trees. We'll finish with
the class project where you'll create
a pair of cards and gift tags to make a
beautiful, cohesive looking gift. Let's go ahead and grab our
supplies and jump right in. I'll see you in
the first lesson.
2. Supplies : Starting with supplies that
we'll be using in this class, I'm going to go over some of the basic ones that I'll
be using personally. But I don't want you
to stress too much if you don't have those
exact same ones. Really all you need is
some watercolor paper, your paint brushes, and paints, and you'll be good to go. For paper, I'll be using
Legion Stonehenge, 100 percent cotton paper. For brushes, I'll be using round brushes ranging
from Size 2-10. I will be doing some light
sketching for a couple of the lessons so if you
have a pencil handy, that will be helpful as well. For paints, I'm using
a variety of brands, but the most important thing for this class is the colors. We'll be using various shades of green for the leaves
and Christmas trees. You can choose any shade of red for berries and ribbon
on the mistletoe, and any shade of brown
for the tree stumps. For the writing portion of
the gift tags and cards, you'll also need a sharpie
or a felt tip pen. Finally, for the finishing
touches on the gift tags, we'll be using a Hole punch in some ribbon to attach
the tags for the gift. You definitely don't
need to do this part, but it just adds a nice
touch in my opinion. You can also swap the ribbon for twine if you want a more
rustic look as well. That's it for the
supplies for this class. Again, don't worry
too much if you don't have those exact ones. Like I said before, paint, brushes, and paper, that's really all you need. I'll see you in the next
video lesson and we'll start painting some holiday
greenery and berries.
3. Greenery & Berries: We're going to start by
learning how to paint a variety of holiday
greenery and berries and also go over some of the
techniques I like to use to add some depth and
interests to your painting. Now I will mention
if you struggle at all with painting
leaves in watercolor, I do recommend you check
out my other class. It's all about how
to paint leaves. It goes over in depth the
proper techniques, the shapes, the pressure that you
put on your brush, color mixing, and all
of that good stuff. So I'm not going to reteach
all of that in this class, but I will go over all of
the basic techniques we need for each of the types of greenery that we'll
be painting up next. The first thing we're going to learn how to paint in this class is these beautiful loose
style holly leaves. The main distinguishing
feature of holly is these
sharp pointy edges. So you want to make sure to
include those in your sketch. This is what the final
piece will look like, except we're going to be
doing a double stem here. Now, before we get started, I want to explain a little
bit of the process for this. Basically each
section of the leaf, so I've split it into six
sections here is going to be its own section and
we're going to be using what's called the
wet on wet technique. So before we actually
start painting the leaves, just go ahead and paint
a couple of squares, and we'll practice the technique that we're going to be
using for the leaf. The wet on wet technique
is exactly how it sounds. We're going to put
down a base layer of a really light wash of green. I'm just going to
loosely fill in the square with light green. Then the main thing is to make sure that this layer
is still nice and wet. You don't want it
to be too wet to where there's a bunch
of cuddling going on, but you want a nice
thin layer of water. While that's still wet, I'm going to grab a darker
value of that green. I'm just going to load my
brush up here and just gently tap in some of
that darker green. It doesn't matter
where you put it, we're just practicing
the technique here. You can drag it along the
edges or you can tap it in, and it just creates this
nice organic blooms. I'm going to practice that one more time in
this box to the right. This is the exact
same technique we'll be using for each of
the sections here. It might look a
little complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it's really fun and easy. Put down that first layer, load up some darker
pigment on your brush, and gently just tap it in. Feel free to keep practicing that technique if you'd like. But once you're ready to
start painting the leaf, you're going to start
with a nice light sketch of these two leaves. Now, I will include
some pictures of mine in the Resources tab. So if you want to just copy
mine, you can do that. I like to keep it simple for the purpose
of teaching this. So I just did two points
on each side of the leaf. You can definitely
make it a little more complicated if you'd like, you can draw your own leaves. It's really up to you. I'll just show you a little bit
more of my sketch. I have the two leaves,
one straight up, it's a little bigger
and then a little bit smaller on the right
that is turned sideways. Now the important part,
as I mentioned before, is, we're going to be
painting section by section. This is what it will
look like in the end. Make sure when you
sketch in the veins, that you leave
enough white space. I made mine double wide, two lines per vein. That way you can clearly paint each section and there will still be whitespace in-between. We're going to be using this exact same technique
that we just practiced here for each
section of the leaf. I'm going to do the first
few in real-time here. I'm taking a really
light wash of the green, and I'm just going to gently
fill in this bottom section. Again, make sure you're leaving that white space for
each of the veins. Gently fill it in, make sure there's no pedaling, but you want to make sure
you have enough water on there to get these
nice little blooms. Once that first layer is down, loading up the darker pigment
and gently just tapping in. Feel free to type in the
color wherever you like. There's no specific
way you need to do it. As you can see in
this Example 1, all the sections look a
little bit different, I don't think it would look
like a real organic leaf if you had every single
section the exact same, so feel free to mix it up. Since we are leaving whitespace
in between each section, you can go ahead and paint the next one while
this one is still wet. Just be careful not to run into each other because then we'll get some bleeding
which we don't want. So that white space is really important to keep
in-between each section. Again, just filling in
with those whitewash, while it's still wet. Just tapping in some darker. If you get any blooms that
you really don't like, if you had like too much
dark on your brush, then just rinse
off your brush and gently tap it on the paper towel and just lift up
some of that color. That's the nice thing
about watercolor is, you can alter it to make sure
you get it how you want. I'll just do one more in real-time here,
this top section. Again doing the base layer
with this light green, making sure to keep
the whitespace in-between each section, and then gently
tapping in the dark. Also make sure that your tips
are still nice and pointy. You don't want this to be rounded at all because
that's really what differentiates the holly
leaf is those sharp points. I'm going to speed up the
next part of the video, but just make sure you do that exact same thing
on the other side. Also make sure you're
not just keeping the whitespace in-between
these sections on this side, but also down the middle. We want a nice skinny white
band down the middle. Once you're happy with how
your first leaf looks, we're going to do the
exact same process on the second leaf. Again, I'm going to
speed this part up, but just go at your own pace, feel free to mix it up. Make sure each section
looks a little different, and once you're done, we will be adding in the brown stems and then filling in this
white space a little bit. Once you're done with
your tea leaves, the next step is to add
two brown little stems. I got a smaller-sized
round brush and just loaded up some brown. If you don't have a
really small round brush, just make sure to use the very, very tip of your other
brush so that way we get next thin stems. I'm just going to
attach those two here and then the final step. I don't really like to leave
just plain white paper here, so I'm just going to get
super light wash of green, even lighter than the first
layer of your leaves. I'm just going to gently brush in some of that in-between. It still looks nice and white, but it's not just stark paper. I'll do it for the
second leaf too. I'm also going to
just clean up some of the edges on my second one. I think I just rushed it
a little bit too much. Just going to add a little
point here and there. There you have it
the holiday leaves, I really love the
loose organic style of those and I think wet-on-wet painting
is just so much fun. I hope you enjoyed that. Next, we're going to
learn how to paint pine. They're super easy, super
simple, no sketching required. One thing I will note before
we start painting them is it will be beneficial
to have a really fine tip, small, round brush to achieve these really
thin, and wispy strokes. Now, if you don't have a really small round brush, that's fine. Just make sure to use
the pointy tip of your brush so that we can still
achieve that thin stroke. We'll be starting with
the little stems, so I'm getting some
brown on my brush, and I'm just going to
draw two little stems. One's going to be a little
shorter than the other. Once you have those, we're going to get
some lighter green on your brush, again, we're going to do this layered methods that we're going to do a lighter green first and then
some darker ones on top. That'll give it some depth, like you can see in
this reference one. Now the stroke for
this is going to be super thin and wispy. I started at the top, let's do a little stroke there and then just
work your way down. There is not too much to it. It's really simple and easy. Don't overthink
it and just start adding in some
strokes like this. It's not going to
look great at first, but we're going to add
more and more layers, and then it will look
more realistic as we go. Now I'm going to make my way
up onto the second stem. Keep the brush nice and
loose in your hand. Just work your way up and down. Now you can vary the length and the amount of pressure that you're putting
on the brush. You can see some of these are
shorter, some are longer, some are really wispy, and some are a
little bit thicker. Just make sure to give it
a little bit of variation. Once you've got a
good first layer, we will load up our brush with some darker green and
we'll add on the second layer. Now I've got some darker
green on my brush and I'm going to do
the exact same thing. Just lay that second layer down. Then finally I'm going to do one last layer of a
really dark green. I think this last layer really
helps bring it to life. Just make sure you're
not overthinking it. Just some nice thin,
wispy strokes. There you have it,
that's about it. These are really simple to do, so feel free to keep practicing that or we can move on
to the next painting. Next up we'll be painting
some festive red berries. There's a few different ways
that you can paint berries. I'm going to be teaching
two of my go-to ways. The first is a little bit
quicker, more loose style, and then the second is
more realistic looking, still loose and easy, but it does use that
same wet-on-wet technique that we learned
during the holly lesson. Starting with the first
technique is really simple. All you have to do is load up your brush with the red paint. Outline the circle
of your berry, it definitely does not have
to be a perfect circle. Don't worry too much about that. Then instead of filling in
the whole berry with color, we're going to
leave a little bit of whites-pace to create a nice little shine
or highlight on the berry and then go ahead
and fill in the rest. Just like that, it's
super quick and easy. I'm going to do one more
example right next to it. Loading up my brush
with the red, outlining a circle, making sure to leave
a little bit of white space for the
shine or the highlight, and then filling in the rest. As you can see, super
quick and easy. The second method is
also nice and easy, but it does look a
little more realistic. First, I'm loading
up a light value of the red on my brush. To get a lighter value,
all you have to do is rinse off a little
bit of that pigment, and we're going to
outline another berry, and this time go
ahead and fill in the whole thing with the color. I'm drawing my circle,
filling it in. There's a little bit of
pedaling going on there. I'm just soaking up
some of that water. Once you have your
first layer down, rinse off all the
color off your brush. Gently tap it on your
paper towel and we're just going to lift some color
to create the highlight. Instead of just
leaving a whites-pace here and having the
paper be the highlight, we're just lifting some
of that color off. Lift the nice little highlight, and then while the rest of
the berry is still wet, I'm going back in with
my darker shade of red and just adding
some shadow here. I'm going to tap it
in on the bottom and around the top but leaving that nice lifted
area to be the highlight. I'm going to do one more layer to make the shadow a
little more dramatic. I'm taking a really
dark shade of red and just tapping
in that shadow. I'm going to do one more
example right next to it. Again, taking a really
light wash with my red, outlining the circle, filling it in. I'm going to rinse off my brush, tap it on my paper towel, and lift up some color
to create the highlight. Then going back in
with a darker shade of red and tapping in
some of the shadows. Finally, I'll do one last
round at an even darker red and create a more
dramatic 3D effect. You'll notice it looks even
better as it starts to dry. You can see this one here has a nice rounded effect
and then that there is the color that we lifted
to create the highlight. Just tapping in,
finishing off this one, adding in the show, and then letting it dry
just like this one. Definitely keep practicing the different methods
of painting berries. See what works best for you, what you're most
comfortable with, and also try playing around with combinations of
berries and leaves. For example, you could try
adding a few barriers to the hallway stem that you
painted earlier in the class. Now, keep in mind, you definitely do
not have to paint these exact types of leaves. These are just some of
the most common types of holiday and winter greenery. But really as long as you have green leaves
and red berries, It's going to look like a
holiday painting to me. Once you're done practicing, I'll see you in the
next lesson and we'll paint some
mistletoe with ribbon.
4. Mistletoe with Ribbon: In this lesson,
we'll be painting a sweet little hanging mistletoe with a red ribbon
holding it all together. This is personally one of my favorite holiday
motifs to paint, so let's get started. I painted a few practice
examples here so we can use these as reference
while we paint the mistletoe. To give you a little
bit of preview, we'll be sketching out a
few stems with the pencil. We'll go over the stems and the leaves in our
green watercolor, add some berries in
between the leaves, and then finish by adding the
red ribbon here at the top. One more note before
we get started, you can of course use any
shade of green you like. For my example, I wanted to have a little bit more of a
natural earthy green, so I just went ahead and added
a touch of light brown to the green mixture that I had been using for the
previous lessons. As I said, we're going to start
with just a light sketch. As you can see on
these examples, I have three stems coming
out of each ribbon. To start off the sketch,
I'm just going to draw this section right here, the straight parts of the stems. I'm going to draw three lines here crisscrossing, overlapping. This point here where
they intersect, that's where the middle of
the ribbon is going to go. Once you have that,
I'm just going to drag down some lines here for the main stems and then a couple of little
stems coming off of each one. You want it to be the
longest in the middle, and then just lightly
sketching out a couple of other stems coming
off of each one. Don't worry too much about
having the perfect sketch. We're going to be going
over it with paint. If you don't like your sketch,
that's perfectly fine. Make sure also you
leave plenty of room in between where the
leaves are going to go, we don't want it to be
too cluttered at the end. You can see here in this
example I have plenty of whitespace in-between the
leaves to add the berries. I'm just going to make
a wider one out here. I'm pretty happy
with that sketch. Next, we'll load up our brushes with the
shade of green that we like and go over the
stems and the leaves. I have my green loaded
up on my brush, and I'm just going to lightly using the very tip of my brush, trace over the lines
that I sketched, starting with the longest middle one and then working
my way back up. Make sure not to make
these lines too thick. They're just going to be
dainty little stems and then we'll be drawing
the leaves off of this. Next, we'll be actually adding these cute little leaves on the edges of each of the stems. You'll notice that
the mistletoe leaves are not very pointy. They're not perfectly round, but they just have a nice
soft tip at the end. Keep that in mind as
you add your leaves. Starting with this
bottom one here, I'm just going to drag
down and drag down right next to it and there
it has that nice soft tip. I'm using two brush
strokes for each leaf. I'm just going to work
my way up the sketch, adding the leaves first
at the end of each of the stems that I drew then we'll go back in
and add some more throughout. As we learned in
the other lessons, feel free to change up the size and the
shape of each one, so makes them a little smaller, makes them longer or shorter, just keep it interesting. Once you've added
all the leaves to the stems that you
initially drew in, make sure there's no
other whitespaces or gaps that may
need a little more. I see this part of this branch, I'm going to add another one and then maybe some
here on the left side. I'm pretty happy
with how that looks. Next, we'll add our berries. To add the berries, just
go ahead and load up your brush with
the shade of red. For this example,
I'm just going to be using the quick
loose style berry. You want to find the spots in your mistletoe that have a
little bit more whitespace. You definitely don't
want to end up with a really
cluttered illustration so don't try to jam
in the barriers where there's already
a lot of leaves. Just find those open
whitespaces and go ahead and add
about 5-7 berries. For the final step of this mistletoe, I'm going to be painting the cute little red ribbon on top. If you don't want
to do red ribbon, you could also try some twine
or something like that, just make sure to use a
natural shade of brown. But for this example, I'll
be doing the red ribbon. I'm going to load up
some light wash of red, and then right where
these stems intersect, that's where I'm going to
be painting the ribbon. I'm just going to paint the loop here and then the
ribbon coming off. Same thing on the other side. The little loop
there on the left and the ribbon coming down. While it's still wet, [NOISE] I'm going to
go in and just add a couple shadows here
with darker red. There you have it. I love painting these cute little guys. I think this is the
design I'm going to use in the class project
for the gift tag. I really hope you enjoyed
painting that mistletoe. Next up, we're going
to learn how to paint our first style of Christmas
tree. See you there.
5. Modern Christmas Trees: Switching gears a
little bit here, we are going to be
learning how to paint a super simple modern-style Christmas tree in this lesson. Here's a little pic at
one of my recent holiday designs where I used this
exact same technique. I love how it turned out, and I ended up using that
design to create holiday cards, tags, and wrapping
paper as well. We're going to start with a
light sketch of the tree. All it is basically
is a triangle for the top part of the
tree and then a rectangle, or square for the tree trunk. This is the fun part
of these trees as you can really mix and
match, switch it up. You can have a really tall, skinny tree with a short and
wide trunk, or vice versa. Just play around with it and
see what you can create. I'm going to start
by just lightly outlining a triangle for
the top part of the tree. We'll be filling
this in with paint, so don't worry too much if
you don't love your sketch. Then we'll be adding a
tall and skinny trunk. One thing that I really like to do when I'm painting these is to leave a little bit of white pace in-between
the trunk and the tree, just gives it even
more of a modern vibe. There's a tall and skinny one, and then right next to it, I'll do a shorter, wider one just for fun. Play around with your
different sketches and once you're happy with your sketches, we'll start filling
it in with paint. Similarly to the other
lessons in this class, we'll be using that same
wet-on-wet technique to create a nice blended effect. I'm going to get a
really light wash, load up your brush of green, and fill in the whole
layer of your first tree. You want to make
sure you have enough water on your brush so that your first layer will
still be wet when it's time to drop in
the second layer. While you're working
on that first layer, once you're ready to
add the second layer and have that
wet-on-wet technique. If any of the first
layer has dried, you can just gently wet
your brush and then do a thin layer of water on
top just to reactivate it. Once that's ready to go, I'm going to grab some
darker value of that green onto my brush, and then I'm just
going to create a nice blended ombre effect. Choose any corner. I'm going to do this top area and just drop in some
of the darker green. Then I'm going to
rinse off my brush, dab it on the paper towel
and just blend it out. I'm just lightly
feathering it out here, and do a little darker. I'm liking how that's
looking so far. I like using this
technique because it just gives the tree a little
bit more interest rather than having one solid
triangle of one solid color. Blended effect does cause a
little bit more interest. We're going to do the same
exact thing with the trunk, but just with brown
instead of green. I'm grabbing a light
wash of brown, gently filling in the trunk, and then dropping in some
darker brown at the bottom. Moving on to the second tree, I'll be doing the same thing, but I just am using
a little bit more of a blue shade of green. Again, do a light
wash base layer. Make sure you have
plenty of water on your brush that doesn't
dry out too much. Once you have your
base layer down, go ahead and start dropping
in the darker layer. You can choose a different
corner if you'd like. I'm going to do my bottom left. Then when it's ready to blend, just rinse off your brush, gently dab it on
your paper towel, and just feather it out. I'm going to do the same
process on the trunk. Light washer brown. Then add in some darker
brown there at the bottom. There you have it.
We just painted our first modern-style
Christmas tree. These ones are just so
fun and easy to paint. Definitely keep practicing. Feel free to paint a few more. Change up the size of your tree, change up the colors
that you use, and I'll meet you in
the next lesson to start working on another
style of Christmas tree.
6. Zig Zag Christmas Trees: Moving on to another style
of modern Christmas trees. This one is another
really simple technique, but it has more of a
doodle style feel to it, but I still think
you'll enjoy it. One thing I have
noticed when painting this exact style of tree, is that it's a bit easier to do with a bigger size round brush. For my demonstration, I'll be using a size 10 round brush. I loaded up my brush really well with lots of water and pigment, this is one thing
that's going be really important
when we paint this. The whole tree is going to
be done in one loose motion. You want to make sure that your brush is really
loaded up well so that you don't run
out of paint and water as you work your way down. I'll just show you a quick
little demonstration of what these trees
will look like. There is the top and
then we'll be adding a brown little chunky
trunk here at the bottom. There's not really
a science to it, there's not a super
technical technique, just make sure your brushes
nice and loaded up, hold it loosely in your hand, and we'll do a sharper, finer tip about the top. Then as you work your way down, make three to four zigzags and just put more pressure
on your brush as you go down so it gets fatter and
thicker down at the bottom. Let's give it a try. Start at the top with
the tip of your brush, do a little zigzag motion and push harder and harder as
you work your way down. Let's try that again. Make sure you have lots of pigment and water in your brush, start at the top and
loosely work your way down. If you're happy with
how it looks just after that one breaststroke, that's totally fine, or if you want to go in and add some blooms using that
wet on wet technique, that's totally fine
too, it's up to you. Here's what that would look
like if you wanted to add some more contrast there, I'm just dropping in
some darker color. Finally, we'll add
the tree stump. To match that loose
freestyle of the tree, make sure you don't
overthink this stump at all, we're just going to give it a nice little chunky
push down on your brush. You want to make sure that
this belly of your brush, so the thickest part
of your bristles, you're just pushing down
and pulling back up. There you have it, I
told you that one was going to be a super
fun and simple. Definitely keep practicing, play around with different
shades of green, and I'll see you in the third and final
Christmas tree style in the next video and
this is going to be the most realistic
style of tree.
7. Layered Christmas Trees: For our third and final
style of Christmas tree, we'll be painting
a layered tree. Out of the three versions
taught in this class, this is the most
realistic looking, but it's still very
simple and loose. Just to give you a
little sneak peek of what these trees
will look like, here are some of
the practice ones that I did before the class, so we'll be using
these as a reference. We won't be sketching
out the whole tree, but we will just start with a little sketch just to align
basically of the trunk, just to help us keep
the tree centered. I'm just going to lightly
draw a thin line, and that's what I'll be using to keep the rest of
my tree centered. Next up, I want to just work
on some practice strokes, so don't do it on top
of your line yet, I'm just going to do
this off to the side. I loaded up some green, it doesn't matter right
now because this is just practice, but basically, how we're going to
be putting down these strokes to create
this layered effect, is you're just going
to hold your brush like this sideways and then just press it down lightly so it creates
this nice oval shape. Just go ahead and
practice some of those. You can try holding it
at different angles, you can make thinner ones
by holding it more upright, or you can push down harder
and make big fat ones. Just play around with it and see what different motions
create different strokes. One more thing to
note before we start putting the paint to the
paper for the actual tree, is that the very top
of the tree will have more dainty thinner marks, and then as you
work your way down, they're going to be a
bit thicker and fatter. The final thing is that this
will be a layered tree, so we're going to start
with a lighter shade, a lighter value of the green and do work our way
all the way down, and then we'll do a second
round with the medium green and then a third round
with the darkest green. I have a very light value
of green on my brush, starting with just the
tip here at the top and just dabbing my
brush on the paper. As you can see here, I'm going to do three
layers to the tree, and each one goes a
little bit further out. Let's do our first one. Start working your way up, keep your strokes nice
and loose in your hand, and keep in mind
we're going to do two more layers on top of this. The first layer always
looks a bit strange, but it will start to fill in as we add our second
and third layers. A couple of things
also to keep in mind as you're working your way down, is to leave some white
space in between. We will be filling a
lot of that whitespace up as we add our second
and third layers, but also trying to
leave some of it white so that our
tree doesn't just turn it into one big blob. We always want to
avoid making a blob. There is our first layer. Now let's grab a bit
darker of a shade of green and we'll do the same exact thing on
top of that first layer. It's completely fine if some
of your strokes overlap, but as I said before, just make sure it doesn't
turn into one big blob. I'm going to do my
final layer with a very dark shade of green. All three layers are done, I'm really liking
how this is looking. Now we're going to do
the finishing touches, which is adding the tree stump. I'm loading up my brush
with a little bit of brown. Starting at the bottom, I'm
just going to retrace where my pencil trunk was with
a thin little stem, and then work your
way up just filling in any whitespace where
the trunk would be. That's it for the
layered Christmas tree. Really, the key here is to not overthink it and to
make sure that you always leave enough
white space so that your tree doesn't turn
into just a blob of paint. Keep playing around with it, keep practicing, and
when you're ready, I'll see you in the
next video and we'll be able to start Part 1
of our class project, which is the
Christmas gift topic.
8. Project One: Gift Tags: Okay, so part 1 of
our class project, we will be creating
the Christmas gift tag with either the red ribbon
or twine attachment. These are really simple
and easy to make, but they really add a lot to the overall presentation
of the gift. So let's jump right in. I wanted to start this
project by just showing you some of the gift tags that I designed as part of my
online shop this year. I have this merry and bright with the modern
Christmas trees. Tis the season and
happy holidays. Those are just some examples to get your creativity flowing. But to start, I have
cut my watercolor paper down into the size
of a gift tag. I just did two inches by
about three-and-a-half. That's a standard
business card size. Go ahead and do that first and once your paper is
the correct size, I always start with
the hole punch. That way, you can
know exactly where that's going to be and
then design around that. I made the mistake in the past of designing the whole card, and then I have to either
make the hole punch over some artwork or try to
squeeze it in somewhere. It's always best
to just start with the hole punch. Just like that. Now, you can definitely
choose to do either a horizontal
tag or a vertical tag. These are some examples
of the horizontal ones. This is the vertical
one that I did. As I said before, I'm
going to be painting the mistletoe that we learned
earlier in the class. I'm going to have the
hole at the top and then paint my mistletoe here, and then have the to and from
down here at the bottom. That's one thing you also
want to keep in mind is where you're going to
write to and from. You can do a few things. You can either paint
the whole front side of the design and then have
the names on the back. Or you can do like these
and have your design and the to and from all
integrated on the same side. I'm going to go ahead and just sketch out where I'm
going to do to and from. I'm going to do that
right here at the bottom. That way I have plenty
of room to paint. I like where that is now, so I'm going to just
trace over it with my fine tip Sharpie. Next up will be time to actually start painting
the mistletoe. But again, feel free to paint whatever motif you
want from the class. So you can do some of the
trees that we learned, you can do some mistletoe
like I'm doing, or the pine branches and
or holly and berries. It's really up to you. Use whatever you liked best. Once I'm ready to
go, I'm going to start by just lightly sketching it out where I want the
mistletoe to be hanging from, and then I'll start painting. I'll speed this part
up while you work on whichever motif it is
that you're working on and then once you're done, we'll be adding
the final touches which will be the red
ribbon or the twine. Once you're done
painting your motif, it'll be time to add the
ribbon or the twine. For my example, I'll
be using ribbon. I cut this down to probably
about eight inches, and I'm going to just
fold it in half. I'm going to pinch
the folded end, feed it through the
top of the hole punch, pull it through
just a little bit. Then I'm feeding through the two loose ends and then
pulling on the top gently. And there you have it. There's the beautiful gift tag. Great job creating your
Christmas gift tag. These, like I said, are
so fun and easy to make. Now I will mention, if you do want to
make quantities of them or get them
professionally printed, or start selling gift
tags on your own, I would recommend checking
out my other class. It's all about how to
digitize your artwork. So it takes you step-by-step how to scan
and edit your artwork in Photoshop so that you can
reproduce your paintings for not only gift tags but cards and prints and
really anything you'd like. Definitely feel
free to check out that class as well
and otherwise, I'll see you in the
next lesson for part 2 of the class project, which is the Christmas cards.
9. Project Two: Holiday Cards: For the second and final
part of our class project, we will be creating
our Christmas cards. Before we get started, I just want to
quickly remind you to please feel free
to share your work. Share the result of
your final project, I'd love to see it and if you do also upload it to Instagram, please be sure to tag
me @petals.by.priya, and I will re-post your
work on my stories as well. You'll want to start
by first trimming down your watercolor paper to
whatever size card you'd like. I've estimated mine
to be about 5.5 by 8.5 inches so that
when it's folded, it's pretty much a
standard A2 size card. Now, watercolor
paper is very thick, so it could sometimes be
a little hard to fold so I've used a scoring
board for mine. If you're having
trouble folding it, you can also just make a
one-sided card if you'd like. Now, the next step
really just depends on what elements you've decided to incorporate into your card. For mine, I think I've decided to write merry and
bright in the middle, and then I'm going to
surround it with some of the zigzag style Christmas
trees that we learned earlier. I'm going to speed
this next part of the video up while
I work on that, and I'll give you
some time to work on whichever elements
you've decided on. As I said before,
feel free to keep making as many handmade
cards as you'd like or if you do want to get
a big batch of cards printed or you want to start
selling your own cards, just a reminder to check
out my other class, it'll walk you step-by-step through the process of
turning your painting into a digital piece
of work so that you can put them on things like holiday cards and
get them printed. Definitely check
that out if that's something that interests
you, otherwise, I'll see you in the
next video to go over some final thoughts
about the class and off it up so see you soon.
10. Final Video Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You made it to the
end of the class. Thank you so much
for joining me. I truly hope you enjoy
learning how to paint all of these beautiful holiday
elements and turn them into gift tags
and holiday cards. I'm super excited to see all
of your wonderful creations, so please be sure to
share your projects. Tag me on Instagram
at petals by Priya. Thank you so much
for joining me. Happy holidays and happy
painting from me to you.
Petals by Priya Watercolor, Watercolor Artist & Teacher
