diy watercolor flowers

Well, lately my boss and her creativity has been blowing my mind. She makes these watercolor creations that she claims are simple yet they somehow look so intentional and complicated. Reminiscent of Rifle Paper Co. and the rad water color wedding invitations that are flooding Pinterest these days, my jaw just always dropped when I saw the kind of stuff she made seemingly so quickly.

This basically forced me to drive myself to Joanns and buy my first set of watercolors, some new brushes, and some more Micron pens. I was just plain determined to learn how to watercolor. Then, to my surprise, I found that the result came with a lot of people asking how I did it. It's amazing what watching The Blind Side and water coloring on a rainy day can do, it worked miracles I tell you. I may not be Rifle Paper Co., but hey, watercolors and black pens can make some pretty beautiful stuff. You could use this style on homemade birthday cards or calligraphy quotes to put in cute frames. I could see it on invitations or recipe cards. The ideas are endless. While the steps might sound too simple to produce this kind of result, it really is simple and once you get the hang of it, you can alter it and gear it to your own personal style.

Supplies you'll need
> Watercolor Paper
> Watercolor Paints
> .1 or .3 Micron Pens (or any thin art pens)
> Water cup
> A good paint brush (cheap ones will end up 
shedding all in the paint)
> A paper towel to wipe off the brush occasionally with

Step 1 (below): Create basic shapes in the form that you want. In terms of the forms, one time, I used the edge of the paper to create an L shape corner. Another time, I did a curved upward shape and a curved downward shape to frame a quote I wrote out in calligraphy. Then, as shown in this example, I created a wreath of sorts. In terms of the shapes you create to make up the form, circles are what I stuck with mainly. That, and a basic leaf shape. Add in some lines and some creative leaves. Then throw in some "x" shapes for flowers and you are set. Print out my example and copy it if you need to. Feel free to make up some as you go for fun. Also, looking at pictures of leaves online and simplifying photographs of flowers I found on Google helped me out as well.

Step 2: Once you have created some watercolor designs like these, you can move on to pen. Micron pens are my favorite. Cheap pens may bleed over the work, so be warned; art pens are definitely preferred. Also, the skinnier the tip on the pen the better (.1 or .3 Micron pens are my favorite to use). I found that using thicker Micron pens takes away the delicate look that I was going for. If you look closely at the photo at the top, you can see where I used the thicker pen at. My thin Micron pen died because I got too excited and did not wait long enough for the watercolor to dry. Oy vey.

Don't make the same mistake I did... make sure the watercolor is dry first. If not, your pen will dry out quickly. And these pens are expensive, so wait 10-20 minutes to be safe before you start using the ink on the watercolor design.

When you are ready, draw the dots in the middle of the circle flowers, trace over the lines you draw and make the leaves look like leaves by drawing some stems and veins in them. Stick with really simple lines and make sure to detail every one of the watercolor designs you draw. That will help with consistency.

Step 3: Keep at it. If you aren't happy with the look of your floral watercolor creation, try again. If you feel like there aren't enough flowers, make more. If you don't like the colors you chose, start over and try new ones. This is just the starting point, the end point is totally up to you.

The end result, scanned into Photoshop and stuck into a frame for my best friends birthday. Mission accomplished.