Watercolor: How to Create your own Envelope Liners & Card Sets

1. Class Intro: Hi, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Rianna, and I'm so excited to share today's class with you. I've always been fascinated with on the little blinders why, you may wonder, while they just looked really pretty on the inside of an envelope, and for some reason I never thought I could make them myself. But recently I've learned how to do it. And I'm so excited to share some simple tips and tricks with you on how to create your own envelope liners and your own cards to go along with those beautiful envelopes that you've made. We're gonna use a couple simple tools such as water colors, which if you're taking this class and you're interested in watercolor, you're gonna have simple sketchbook paper and a pen of some sort rushes a few things to create beautiful envelope blinders and card matching sets like this. So let's get started 2. Supplies List: for your supplies. We're going to start off with a sketchbook. You can see this sketchbook here is a relatively large one. I use this wide sketchbook because it gives me more room to work with. But whatever sketchbook you have spine, you'll need an assortment of brushes. I have a small fine liner, a flat brush in a white round brush and then a few assortment of pens such as a white pen for details in the artwork. Also a black pen and maybe even a depend. If you are comfortable and using that next, you're gonna want tohave watercolor on hand. This is a prima, the tropicals palette from prima marketing. This colors are really nice. I really like thumb. So that's why I'm using it today. Whatever watercolors you have on hand is what you want to use. So I don't feel like you have to use what I'm using, but use what you have next. You're gonna need a on will open cart set whatever kind that you confined or if you have loose envelopes and cards at home, you go ahead and use that. I have a craft set here that I really like. Um, you can use different colors if you want as well. It's perfectly fine. Lastly, I do have ink. These are two different types of things that I have here. However, I tend to use the Chinese ink, the traditional Chinese ink, a little bit more than the Higgins. But I put them out so you can see you have options. Whatever black ink you might have, Ah, laying around is what you can use as well, or purchase onward to the liner template tools. You will need a card stock. I just have ah, purple e blue one here. Exacto knife and scissors thes are used for cutting, either, or you don't have to use both. In addition to that, you'll need a little bit of glue. I have Elmer's glue here. That's what I use a little glue stick. You don't have to get too crazy with the glue, and that's all you're going to need for your supplies. So let's get started 3. How to Create the Envelope Liner Template: Hi, guys. Welcome to the class. I'm glad you're here. We're going to start off with this first class talking about the envelope liner template and how you create that. So what I have here is the card stock paper, the Exacto knife, the scissor, these air You're cutting utensils. You can use whichever one you want. Whatever you're comfortable with, you're gonna also have your own below up, ready as well. And just a pen, some sort of time that you can see. And when we're doing this, you're gonna lay your envelope on this sheet of paper and you're just going to carefully and I say carefully because I got some ink on the on below there what? Which is funny. And you're gonna tree sit a lot better than I am. When you're finished tracing it, you'll have something like this. Then you're gonna cut this out when you cut it out. What's important about cutting here is that you do not want to cut this blue line directly on point. The reason why is because when you put an envelope liner in this envelope, you don't want to be exactly like the envelope, because it won't fit into your envelope will want insert properly, so we need to make it a little bit smaller. How do we do that? Well, the simplest way I do this is by when I cut. I follow the first line. So this is my first line, right? Oh, this is so this is my first line that I originally trace. So I'm going to actually cut probably closer, like some that that much more in. And I do that pretty much all the way around and on the other side as well. It's going to get cut about meaning. Here's the half. Here's the quarter. Here's 1/2 of 1/4. Okay, honestly, you don't have to get technical. I just want to show you, just in case any of you all were wondering what you do at this point is cut it out and this are both actually usable as templates. And I'll show you how, when we get into that a little bit more. But basically, once you trace it, cut it out and you're left with these. So that's step one of the liner. The second part to this cause we're not quite done is the fact that if you notice your envelope, you're going to see you have the sticky part. Were you put water and you or lick it and stick it. And if you have the liner, it comes all the way up. Right? So and I think you guys can understand what I'm saying. They're So what I do is I actually pull the inside piece down toe where I can see that shine Eze to keep our That makes sense. It's typically maybe about 1/2 inch to 3/4 of an inch, right? I pulled that down. I'm gonna hold it, flip it over, and I'm just going to make a mark here and cut that access off so you should be left with something like this. And then you're left with this, which we're gonna put a piece of tape right here. And this also you can use to locate once you create your artwork. Which what? What layout looks good to you and we'll go through that in detail. So this is how you make the envelope liner. When you cut it smaller than it's supposed to be, you'll notice it slides right into your envelope. Very ago. It has room for you to stick once you goto ahead to go ahead and close this and send this off. At some point in the next class, we're going to take a look at the artwork, knowing how we create that. And then we're gonna put it all together. See you in the next. 4. Playing with Colors: Welcome back. Let's start with reviewing a little bit about color choices when it comes to creating your artwork for your envelope liner. Um, honestly, you can play around with your loose floral design that you want to create and the colors you want to choose. I just want to show you a couple options just so you have it in mind. I just want my watercolor palette. This is the primo tropicals Palin you can see. Nice and wet and glistening. I spray it with a little spray bottle of plain water just to get some going. This is watercolor paper, but you can honestly user sketchbook paper to practice your color home. Boone. That's what I use when I actually make my envelope liners. But just so you can see, the colors here will use, um, watercolor paper. This is just a good exercise. Didn't you might want to do it. I have some water king on the side and my brushes, a flat one and the Princeton Heritage Round 16. It's relatively larger, holds a lot of water, and for loose watercolors, when you're making loose anything loosely, you want to use a large brush that has a lot of hold in its water. Have some paper towel here to dab, and we're going to begin. So I'm just going to run through quickly What I like to use. Just so you guys have an idea, you can see it on the paper, and then you can decide for yourself. I would stick with color combinations like blues and pinks and purple E tones. They're all in a similar groupings, and they look well, like they blend well, that's what I'm trying to say. They blend well when you're putting them down loosely and wet, wet on wet. And that's what mostly when you're doing loose watercolors, I feel like it's just more wet on wet than anything that technique where you have a wet area or what surface and you apply the color to it and it spreads. So that's a lot of how you create your artwork in this particular class. I'm just gonna mix uh, and what really went down a lot of these colors. You can see there's like a pink tone. They're like jewel tones, and you can see when you add some. What about the darker blue? That color is nice then it ends up being purple. E when it mixes. Here is purple and these air just thoughts and ideas that you might want to to This is like a red sort of. I think it's called like a red color. I'm not sure the actual name of it, and even if you want a toe on a little little blue to that, here gets a more move like purple. So I stick with a lot of the pinks purples, even when you add a touch of yellow. I wouldn't necessarily added to this particular blue because I might get muddy. But you can see that how a little bit watered is not bad. Even if you add it on this side, that's probably a better mix. So play around with their colors. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to say here, playing around with your colors. I like using oranges and yellows, reds and then pink. Some couple the blues. And just to show you guys how pretty, though, the blends could be with your actual artwork. Um, if you're doing, if you want to stick toe greens, you can lay down some colors there. Add a lighter colors, like lighter greens or yellow tones. Oranges Probably less orange, actually, because orange can make things a little muddy. Um, but, you know, as you're doing this, you're going to see you're gonna play with the colors and find what color combinations work for you. I would definitely I recommend you just do this playing part. What? The watercolors. I feel like it opens up your, um, mind to seeing the colors on the paper and then getting an idea of what you like. You can see when I mix that green with that pink. This color in between is like this purple color. It's really pretty. So that's actually in these combo. And that's this color on this going now, your color palettes gonna be different of course than mine. You might have the prima, but you might not. And that's okay. Whatever you have, um, I would just use and definitely was not a little Definitely try, um, your own color swatches and find color combinations that you love because that's what we're going to use the base of. This is what we're gonna use to go into the actual artwork 5. Creating Your Art: Alright, guys, we're going to start on the artwork for our liners to create some pretty cool florals to put on these envelopes. So I want to show you some examples of things I've done in the past. This is, um, a loose watercolor, and it's embellished with black ink. And that's where we will eventually get to, um, but here is just plain water color on sketchbook paper. I have a Strathmore sketch. It's premium recycled paper. The weight is £60 or 89 grams, and its regular scheduled for You can see that's why the watercolor and gets a little funny on the paper. But it gives her interesting look when you go to make it into your later. So I really like this. I love the contrast in colors, the pinks and the blues. This one also is very interesting because it's very me on yellow almost, um, with blue. So I thought this was a nice color palettes, and you can see the colors are little contrast ing, but they work, and this is a piece of one that I had used prior. But you can see the colors. They're yellows, oranges, pinks. Um, so will start. Here's my sketchbook paper. I have some water on the side here, this large and a round brush that I use prayer and even the flat brush. And, of course, my watercolor. At this point, you should have seen the other class where I asked you to mess around with color combinations, and I think that's important. So you know already in your mind what combos you like here is thesis watches that I did from the class previous to this one. So you'll see a few these combinations. They're really pretty. I really especially love the pink orangy yellow purple lee tones, blues, even if you wanted to do a set of colors on the screen tone. So I really know. I want to stick with these tones the jewel tones, and I know where those are on my water color palettes. It's pretty much in between this set right here, so I want to take my brush and begin painting. Now. Loose florals are really not that hard. It's just understanding the shape of a flower and making it in your own way by how you push down the brush and create your pedals and your strokes. So really, when you're creating this, it's a lot of fun. But I don't want you to think too hard about it. Just kind of go for it. Um, you'll find that you might get more interesting flowers that way. So I dipped into my my purple, and I'm going to use the whole brush. If you don't know anything about, watercolor would recommend you learn a little bit about watercolor. Have a class that's just the basics of watercolor you can take. But you know, if you will use your point, your strokes going to be very thin, the point of the brush. But if you press down, it's whiter, right? So I'm going to take some purple and really, what, my brush and create flower petals by pushing down and then going outside of that and adding little lines. And it's what I think. A flower in my mind kind of looks like. I like to go in back in there and just press in a little more color. See, I had some. I dipped into the pink and I had some more, and I just mix the colors a little bit, so you're gonna do that do this process of dabbing and blotting, creating different types of shape, Um, in your sketchbook. This is also a nice way to just feel free to play. But you'll at the end, you'll see, we'll take what we create and will make these liners out of them, which is really, really nice. So I'm gonna dip into a couple of those jewel tone colors. Like I said, deeper pings a lot in a little purple. See how that looks there. I'm gonna show you. If I was to use this purple color and gently make a line, have to make sure my brush has a lot of water. I'm gonna make some, um, has a pretty second album. You see how glistening it is because it's full of water showing when a dad about that color that's a deep purple gonna take this pink and red color and dip Get a lot of water on that and then I'm just going to press in. All right, person leave shapes that I think would, you know, like a pedal or a leaf. A stem with the leaves coming out of it might look right and it's just two strokes. You saw, and I'll do it again in a moment. But the purple starts to bleed into the pink and I could go back and just add a little more . It almost gives it like the end of ah flower the stem of it where the but comes out and you can see And when this dries, it looks really pretty. It's a little wet right now, but let's do it again. So we're going to do the opposite. Let's do it where we take a, um what color do I want to use when it takes him yellow? It's deep. Yeah, well, and I'm gonna make some just, uh, some really wet have a lot of water, Really went blobs Rinse my breast I'm gonna take the pink a little purple It's really saturated and want to draw a line into each one and that will dry. So it's like a it turned almost brownie like a brown and yellow combo, which actually is really nice for fall. I don't I don't mind that. And I'm gonna just grab some more in stick it in there, and you could see my strokes are very loose. So you're gonna end up doing a entire page in your choice of color. Different shapes blobs you can dio choose a different color. I'm gonna save some green. You can dio blobs of in irregular shapes to so blobs. When I say blob, just literally blob blob. That's hope. It's it literally is. It's like a blob and put some other kind of green in there blended in. And because this initial blob is wet and I'm adding wet, another color of wet onto it, it spreads. And that's what is known as the wet on wet technique. Right, so you guys should be familiar with that. But you can see there's an infinite amount of blobs and color blobs her florals you can make. This starts to get detailed when we start writing, adding the line work, which we will do after everything dries 6. Black Ink Details: Okay, guys, welcome back to the class. This class is just dedicated to the detail in part of it, where we add the whatever you have created. That's the page you have created. That's what you'll use. I. I love blacking. So I like to use straight blacking and a good black ink. Um, there's also two black ink. Earlier in the beginning, I showed you guys the Higgins Inc. And this is the traditional Chinese ink. There's a little glitter to this, but honestly, you don't really see it much. Actually, this I got on sale at Hobby Lobby. You know, whatever black ink you have you can use If you do not have black ink, you can use a black Penn of Micron. Any black pen. Really? Um, it doesn't really have to be waterproof. It can be. But if you don't even have a waterproof black pen or something like that, just don't worry about it. Use what you have, even in your watercolor palette, there's usually a black. You can use that as well. It's really up to you. I don't want you to feel limited and use what you have. Definitely use what you have If you are using ink or watercolor, you also have options. You can use a depend, or you can use a very fine brush. This is a fine liner from Windsor Newton or Rigger Brush. Um, there's also another thin a round brush from Windsor Newton number two. So whatever you have, I'm going to use the depend because that's what I normally use. And when I I can change it up sometimes and I'm going to show you. The difference is, let's start with a brush. If you're using watercolors, just make sure your black water color is really saturated with water so you can get a lot of color and pigment on the brush. What we're gonna do is you're just gonna play with outlining these shapes. Um, not exactly outlining them, leaving some white spaces so it gives it the effect of like a like a doodle like is if you're doodling around the actual, um, watercolor, someone is human a little. Here, start with the green, and I'm just going to take this lightly. Go around that you see, I didn't follow it exactly, and that's the whole point of this. That's very freeze. Very playful. Even if you didn't want to make a liner and you just wanted to do this, I would say Just do it. And then from there you just add lines. If you want again, it's This is something I dio. If you felt uncomfortable, honestly, I would say You have to do it. It gets your mind free and not thinking too much. And, um, less control. Loose watercolors air so uncontrolled and adding the lines to it are is the same way. So I would say it's a great exercise. I'm gonna have a black lying down the middle of these and then I'm gonna come in after with some more detail with maybe my white ink pen, these darker colors a little bit. Doolittle colors would look really good with a white pen for detail. After I don't we'll go over that after I'm finished with the black hair. So the whole point of this is to just I felt wine with no rhyme or reason, really. So you saw me use the brush. Let's try the depend next. So with my depend, if you've never used a depend before what keep quiet because it is quite fun when we just want the top of that. Um, yeah, it's great for drawing and doing detail instead of all you know instead of calligraphy. And the more you press, the thicker the lines are, and this gives you a slightly federal line, you can see how much more send the line could be. And if I pressed down, gets a little thicker. So like that. And I wanted to add a few lines, my son lines and am Bynes as you see fit. I like lines coming from the bottom or the base of where the stem is, Let's say or you can do it from the top. We're going to come in on one side here, and all I'm doing is pressing down and pulling the pen. You can see the shape it leaves is really interesting, brother. If by the way this nib I'm using is in its religion, it's an old neighbor had, and I believe it's a hunt. H u N t. And you can find these on Amazon or maybe an art supply store. I also love that noise that the sound that it makes you might not like that scratchy sound , but I love the sound about. Okay, So not outlining this one. I just added a few lines to one side and look how already interesting about books. So I love that for these. I'm just going Teoh out a few lines in the middle and maybe some like circles to represent the inside of the flower. And they're loosely kind of just. And you can see I'm not really giving too much thought with how I'm outlining. And really, it's just very loose going a little faster So you guys can see how I normally do this. This is the speed at which I I do it. You can go slower. I don't feel preferred. Go at your own face. I find sometimes of fat. Like when I go faster, I get more interesting results because I it gives me less time to think. That's probably why I do it so fast. In my mind. Also, I already know how I want. T took somewhat look visually. So to me, it looks Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. Make sure you make sure you rinse off your nips and everything. Well, because this type of ink does stick and you don't want your brush to get ruined if you're using ink where you're in it. So no says aside. All right, So when this is John, you can also I love the splashing of the ink. So I'm going to actually take my rigger brush. And what the dab Now, honestly, whatever you cree and say, you didn't want to do the black, you don't have to even just skipped the step all together. I don't feel like you have to. Okay, We're gonna let this dry, and then we're gonna come back and put a little bit of detail ing with the white. I'm going to show you how so You have an idea. 7. White Ink Details: So we're going to start with outing in the details now. I like circles and lines and ashes. That's how I add my details. You can add Igor's with whatever shapes you want, but and again, it also it's your option to do this. Okay, I'm just gonna start by giving you some example. So circles are a nice way to Teoh. Add some details and I like adding dots open circles. I can see how it gives. Um, an interesting look to the flower makes a little kind of four and space like strange, but it just looks really cool. So I like what that looks like. I think it looks really cool. Let's shift to this one. I'm gonna do some lines in between these, uh, black lines here. I'm gonna come out from the bottom instead of the tall and you can see you guys there's no rhyme or reason to. This is just this is just fun to these. I'm gonna add in the center the, um, like pollen stems stamens. Gonna have some dots there. I really actually like this yellow with the detail on the one side and the brownish color dispersed throughout. Instead of using the white. I can tell you right now that the white would look really cool as well, but I think I'm gonna leave it because I actually quite like it. This Juan just gonna draw a little Circles here have circles kind of hands, maybe maybe a double line so you can see all I'm adding his lines, dots and dashes to these, and it just gives it a little something extra again, that's not necessary. But if you want to, you can look how interesting. It just adds a little texture and it makes it more interesting. But again, you can make this a simple as you want or is funky and detailed as you want. So here is my detail. You can see, looks pretty neat. And now we're going to get to the fun part of making the on the looks 8. Liner and Card Making Process: I have the template that we did in the very beginning and you can see already just by. I mean, I don't have a lot of, um, flowers on this page, but I think you get the idea of wherever you shift, you see where the liner, the inside piece, where it's gonna be and how it's gonna look. Now when you're looking at your liner typically, even though it inserts so inserts what you're really just seeing, depending on your envelope is going to be the top. Maybe with that, like a diamond shape here or even just the top portion with a little piece showing here or not at all. So bear in mind that it's the top half, really, that you're looking to show some interesting, uh, artwork. So you're just gonna shipped it about, find something that looks good to you and trace that. So I'm going to move this to the side, so I'm gonna show you about our example. You can see I'd probably maybe do something like that, and then the excess I would have all these to work with for the actual all these to work with for the actual cart. So you have to pick and choose what peace you want in the inside. And then what you want on the outside, It's really being creative in your own mind and choosing what works for you. This is your window. And this is your gazing through this window and finding the most perfect, um, layout for yourself. That's basically the just of how you deal with this liner part. So because actually, I was working on this with you guys. Wanna continue on? I know it's it doesn't give me much room, but I'll show you how I'm gonna utilize this. I'm going to turn this upside down a little bit. We're gonna do all over the place and I'm going to probably use this portion. I like the white space that enough white space, the blobs of color. And when I shifted a little this way, actually, this part I'm not going to see so much. So again, I'm just trying to find the rate position. And I think I really like this on the top here. By do you like this is where I'm gonna stay and this portion I'm going to use for the front , even though they're different colors. I still think this will be interesting. Also, I have excess. And when you do this, you will have a lot of excess and anything that you have spare parts you can utilize as well. You can see this goes really well with this color tone on the yellow here, So we can really utilize this piece is well, but on your page use what you have because you're gonna have half the page with flowers and half the other page for your liner. So it's gonna be more I'm gonna trace us and cut it out. I'm just going to start cutting now. The cutting part of it is scary at first because you feel so bad that you're cutting through this beautiful work you Justin. But it's fun, I promise. And if you don't like cutting, then, um, this might not be fun for you. Okay, so we're gonna take our envelope on, and just so that's what it's gonna look like now I have my actual inside piece. Remember, we had cut the bottom off, so I'm going to just utilize this template and trim the excess so you can see who would stick that on there and line it up to the Tom. I think you could get a bone folder and pulled us over when you're finished. But that's basically what you've ended up with, and it looks really cool. I just love the fact that that's a beautiful liner that you've made, and it's can made a lot of times. This excess pieces usually a really nice, um, color. So now is the play play part the time were you just playing? You have some fun. So as I do this, you just you can watch and see what I come up with and then do your your own. I usually just stick the top portion of the liner, and I don't typically blue the inside inside port. But I do the top and then I stick this portion down. So where it goes and impressive in place, then I have also my card. So I like to put them side by side. So I see how it matches and balance it because I like making the sets. Now. If you just wanted to make your liner there you have it. You have your liner, you can take the excess pieces and embellish the outside a little bit and I'm gonna show you what I mean by that. Um again, this is cut and paste. So what I typically will start doing now is putting out closely Lee other leaves and other shapes that I free did. And I like to leave a little white peace and there from the white space in the background because it adds something to the peace. A tip for cutting is moving. The actual thing you're cutting versus moving your scissors. So keeping your scissors in one place and kind of shifting the piece of paper or whatever it is that you're cutting in this case, the paper. So you're not shifting the scissor too much. So because this had a sharp cut edge, I would find a place on an edge to stick portions of this down if not the whole thing. So I can stick this piece here like so if I really wanted to, I'm also going to probably utilize some of the older one cited that I had along with this yellow and use it for the card. Be pretty. So I think I'm going to probably chop this in half when you're probably saying no, why air you topping this? And have that's the whole point guys, to kind of just do something different and have fun in the process of making your card, um, an envelope. Poinar. It's just it's a lot of fun, and it's really a form of play and artsy here like that. And also guys, you can add pieces to your liner. I like toe overlap as well and add extra. So if you had white space and you didn't like that, you can add a piece. It would be perfectly fine. Nobody would have to know, and you're really it's your creating your image is just really, very visually, um pretty. So that's really there's no right or wrong way. It's just a base, and then you fill in the rest and that is the whole point, because I probably I'm going to put some yellow in the card liner envelope area. I'm going to also mimic that. That's why I cut it in half and to my card. I'm gonna cut this as well so I can see where I want to place that, and I think I'm gonna bring in one of these flowers from my other pieces that I did. You can see that my cutting job is not great, and that's okay. I don't have a lot of patients for cutting, like I said earlier, but again, it doesn't bother me that I'm not cutting this perfectly, because none of this is perfect. If you'll if you notice none of it's perfect. And I think because I have a lot off purple in this area, I'm going Teoh, leave some for the card instead, actually, because I feel like I don't want too much. So at this point, once you cut out all your pieces that you want to use, you could do your laying out of the pieces on how you want some toe Look. During this time, I cut and paste well, really, I cut out a lot of the pieces I wanted to utilise. I wanted to use every piece that we actually created somehow. So I'm scrambling here, and this takes time to figure out what I want to do in layout. Once I have my pieces laid out, how I feel they should look and where I want them to be placed, someone I'll use my omers glue, Um, and stick the pieces down so I use almost glue because it's easy to work with. It's a glue stick in it doesn't, um, cause any problems. Really. If you had paste glue where it was more using a brush with a paste and pacing on there, that's fine. Um, any other glue also would work a glue that you just had. If you don't have Elmer's glue or any sort of you know, glue stick a paste, glue, woodwork, justice, fine as well, so you're not limited also to your gluing methods. Since this is very much paper crafting and scrapbooking, you can use different types of double sided tapes as well. If you wanted to create more dimension, may be in the card and have it sticking out. So again, there are a lot of options here. This is just my method, and I am using the glue stick. In this case, don't be afraid to play around with your design, move it about, choose different pieces and invent and create a style that works for you on. So don't be afraid to experiment. This is really all about play. Yeah, it's almost like being a paper florist and creating uh, floral arrangements for a card and envelope. So have fun with it. 9. Final Thoughts: Well, I hope you see how easy it is to create your own on the low, plainer. It's really like scrapbooking or cutting pasting. You can make this as plain as you want or as detailed as you want. I hope you also saw, uh, and learned a few tips you can take away with you and create your own. And I just wanted to show you they do match because I've added elements in each piece can just whose nicely into your occurred? Twofold. In the front of this Justus, an ad ish added embellishment. If you had extra, you can actually put a piece of, you know, floral piece right on the side. Something like that with this speaking out underneath so you can be is embellished as you hunt, really, or is simple. So it's really your, um, your option. Don't feel like you have to, but, um, it's a lot of fun, so I hope you enjoyed creating your own card. Time to recap. So I hope you guys saw how easy it is to create your own envelope and card set and creating a beautiful Langner for yourself in order to send it off for someone I had so much fun sharing my tips and tricks with you guys. I hope that they do help. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Be sure to follow me on Instagram when you do share your work and posted in and tagged me I love to share my students art work on the instagram stories and to get your name out there as well. So definitely reach out to me that way. I hope you enjoy this classes. I enjoyed teaching it and join me next time. And until then Fine now.