If you’re new to watercolor, this vivid thank you card is the perfect project to teach you about blending! To make it, you’ll start by drawing a series of simple shapes in pencil, fill them in with watercolor, and end with some calligraphy on the bottom. Keep reading for more detailed instructions!
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Mail art is what first inspired me to learn calligraphy. I love the concept of surprising someone with a gorgeous and unique delivery! There are some truly beautiful (and — let’s be honest — intimidating) examples of mail art online, so the goal of this post is to build up your confidence to send mail art yourself. It doesn’t have to be perfect; the whole point is to tap into your creativity and give someone else a happy surprise! Below, you’ll find some tips to get you started.
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This lace butterfly card exemplifies elegance and creativity! In today’s tutorial, we’ll depart from the traditional greeting card format to produce an interactive, lovely piece that your recipient will want to put on display. I’ll also suggest a few alternative and artistic ways to use the butterfly printable that I created for this card!
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I have long admired artist Katharine Watson‘s block prints. Her pleasing patterns and clean lines catch your attention — and invoke a tinge of whimsy and nostalgia. It’s no wonder that Katharine’s pieces are available in so many stores, even my local Two Hands Paperie!
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Three years ago, I wrote the first A Video Crash Course on Watercolor Calligraphy tutorial. While the tutorial was fairly comprehensive, I’ve been wanting to redo it for a while. Time tends to highlight flaws, and the more I went back to the first post, the more I realized that it needed a better video, inspirational examples, and clearer instructions! Today’s post is the result of that realization, and I hope that you enjoy learning watercolor calligraphy from it.
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When I was a little girl, you had one option for Valentine’s Day gift tags: go to the local grocery store and buy some. At that time, we weren’t in the age of Pinterest — we didn’t even have internet, really — so the DIY spirit hadn’t yet been ignited. I remember getting Beauty and the Beast-themed gift tags one year, and Aladdin cards another year (my brother’s choice, not mine; my mom wanted to economize). Once you got the gift tags, you taped candy to them, wrote your classmates’ names on them, and brought them to school. Everyone brought the same tags and the same candy, but no one cared because … candy!
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If you like calligraphy and/or hand-lettering, knowing how to draw a banner is bound to come in handy eventually. In this post, you’ll find some tips for drawing banners, plus you can download the free Five Banner Tutorials printable!
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This thank you card tutorial, based on a Mexican Talavera tile design, is one of my favorites on the TPK blog because of its vibrant color scheme. The card only uses two colors — brown and turquoise — but the different values of those colors add a lot of visual interest. If you feel intimidated by blending watercolors, set that fear aside for this post! I will teach you exactly how to blend the two tones, and I promise that you can do it. Here are the steps for making this card:
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2017 was a fun and artistic year for this website (and, in effect, for me)! Creative calligraphy drills came on the scene, we explored calligraphy medallions, and children’s broad-tipped markers found a new use. Don’t remember some of those posts? No worries! A vast amount of articles live here on the TPK blog, and it’s inevitable that you may have missed a few. If that’s the case, I’ve got a summary of the top 10 blog posts of 2017 for you. Let’s start at 10 and work our way down!
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I used to think that the post office would only accept commercially purchased envelopes. As it turns out, however, that assumption was blissfully incorrect. You can easily make an envelope out of almost any foldable material, and the post office will deliver it! In this tutorial, I’ll show you a quick and simple technique for transforming everyday paper (or paper-like) materials into envelopes.
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