- [Kristina] Hi everyone, Kristina here.

Welcome to Day 18 of the Holiday Card series for 2016.

Today I'm going to be making a card completely from scratch.

I'm not using any stamps or dies.

I'll be watercoloring the entire card.

You see my sketch up there on the top corner.

I had a little idea for what I wanted my card to look like.

So I'm sketching it out onto some Arches watercolor paper,

and just with a really light pencil.

Now, I'm taking some Drawing Gum, or masking fluid,

and I'm going to mask off the two mittens

as well as all of the words.

And I'm doing this because I want those areas to be white

so that I can paint on top.

The words in particular, I'm going to keep white completely.

I want them to be nice and bright compared to the outside color that I'll be adding later.

So, I needed to make sure that I masked that on.

If you were to do something like this,

and you don't have masking fluid,

you could go around the mittens,

and then use a white acrylic paint, or gouache,

something opaque to paint on the lettering afterward

instead of having to mask off the lettering.

So while that masking fluid was drying,

I taped my watercolor piece down to a board,

and I also tested out some different colors of watercolors

just to get the colors of watercolors exactly where I wanted them.

After it was dry, all of the masking fluid,

I started to go in with my background color.

And I'm using sort of like a muted aqua teal.

It's kind of a really, kind of dusty kind of color once it's dry.

I want to have this as the background color.

It's going to be creating kind of a shape around the entire picture around the mittens and also the words.

I wanted to do this because

I didn't want it to have just a plain white background.

I wanted it to have a little bit of color

so it would give it some tone.

I'm just using this shade all over the entire area.

I'm watering down some areas using a little bit less paint,

so that I have some different interest.

I'm also going to do a second coat,

dropping in some darker areas of that paint.

Just so that it spreads around,

and I get a little bit of variation in color.

I'm using the same shade for this.

I'm just watering it down a little bit.

So I'm not gonna get a huge difference in color,

and you'll be able to see that once I have it dry.

You can see there are a couple dry patches,

but it's not really a big difference in color.

So, I decided to go over it with a second coat of paint.

In some areas, I'm just adding water,

and in others I'll be adding a little bit of a darker paint color.

Just less water, more pigment.

This is going to give it a little bit of interest.

I also wanted to soften those edges around the shape a little bit,

and that second coat of paint did that.

So after it was completely dry,

I'm gonna go ahead and remove the masking fluid.

The thing with masking fluid that you have to remember is

you never go on to the next step unless everything is dry.

So after you apply it, you have to let it completely dry.

And then after you paint it,

you have to let it completely dry.

And then you can remove the masking fluid.

I'm using a Xyron adhesive eraser

to help me remove all that masking fluid.

So now I'm going to start painting on the red areas on the mittens.

I'm going to do this in a variety of different ways.

I'm going to do it in flat washes,

as well as adding some more masking fluid,

and just doing some simple designs.

So I've dropped in some plain colors of red.

Now, I'm going to do kind of a little zigzag shape.

And I'm going to have the zigzag be white.

So I'm going to start by painting the top of the zigzag,

and then I'll go ahead and paint the bottom.

I don't think this design is particularly difficult,

I think most people,

if they break it down into steps,

could probably create a card similar to this.

It's all just a matter of slowing down,

being patient with yourself,

and giving yourself plenty of time to work on this card.

I think most people could do it,

especially if you simplify the mitten even more.

So I'm adding some masking fluid details,

some snowflakes, or stars, and then also some dots.

I let that dry.

And I'm going to add in a very light wash of red,

kind of a more muted tone of red,

over the top of the snowflakes.

And this one on the left was dry before the one on the right.

So I'm going to move on to adding some darker details on the wristbands of the mittens.

Then I went around the mittens,

and I added a little bit of a shadow.

I wanted to give these a little bit more character,

make them look like they're standing up off of that page.

So, just adding a little bit of a darker area.

I did the same with the lettering down below,

just adding some shading.

And I tried to make it look like,

or I thought in my mind to help me do this,

that the light was coming from the upper left corner.

So, as long as I had the light beam down from the upper left corner,

I knew where I needed to place my shadows.

So I painted in some additional dark areas of red.

And then made sure everything was completely dry,

before I removed those dots and snowflakes that I drew with masking fluid.

Used my heat tool to speed up the drying process.

You could definitely just let this air dry if you want.

But I wanted to make sure everything was bone dry before I removed the masking fluid.

So I'm removing that masking fluid once again with a Xyron adhesive eraser.

This just helps me grab all of the masking fluid, and makes sure I get it

all off my watercolor piece.

I'm almost done here.

I'm just going to add a few more details onto the mittens.

I've realized that that large area at the top of the mittens was

a little bit too flat for me,

so I thought I would add just a couple stripes in the darker red shade.

So, I removed it from my board.

I took off all that blue tape.

And I trimmed it down to 4 1/4 wide

by 6 1/4 tall.

And this is basically 3/4 of an inch short from each direction of a 5x7 card.

I then created a 5x7 card base out of some

Simon Says Stamp schoolhouse red card stock.

I just scored that at five inches

to create a side-folding 5x7 card.

And then I adhered my watercolor piece

down onto the card base using some foam tape.

I decided to add a little bit of shimmer using a clear Wink of Stella glitter brush pen.

I just went over a few of those red areas,

and it's hard to see in photos,

but in real life there's a little bit of shimmer.

So, that's the card for today.

Hope you guys enjoyed.

I will see you very soon for Day 19 of the Holiday Card series.

Until then, thanks so much for watching,

and I'll catch you guys next time.

(festive music)