Day 1: Graffiti Holiday Cards

Welcome to the 12 Days of DIY Holidays. During this mini-series, I’ll be sharing some of my own DIY projects - as well as featuring others that I have found on the internet and in blogs. I hope that this series inspires everyone to be a little creative this holiday season.

First up is graffiti holiday cards. The wonderful things about these cards is that you can just have fun creating them – there is no being precise or perfect, you can just go with the flow. The one thing that you need to understand about this project: there are no limits or guidelines. How I create my card below isn’t how you need to create yours.

What you’ll need:

• Cardstock folded into a card or ‘pre-made’ cards on cardstock or watercolour paper.



• Various painting, drawing and craft materials
  




• What I’m using: Masking fluid, watercolour paints, watercolour iridescent medium, black markers, white paint marker



• Christmas song lyrics
  

Instructions:
1. First you need to pick a holiday song. I’m starting with “The Christmas Waltz.” It has been stuck in my head for about a week now, so it’ll be good to get it out of there! My specific lyrics that I’m working with:

“ It's that time of year when the world falls in love. Every song you hear seems to say: Merry Christmas. May your New Year dreams come true.

2. Next place those lyrics on your card in pencil in a way that you like them.

3. I then use masking paint to ‘reserve’ the areas where the words are. I’m not too careful about it, I just apply it quickly and a little bit messy. Let dry.

4. I apply my first background layer. Let dry.

5. I add some messy paint details. Let dry.

6. Remove masking fluid, and begin to accent the letters with the black marker.

7. Some more details and shimmer.

And then we have our card!

You’ll have to excuse the picture quality. I did this project at night, so my camera didn’t take the colours well. The colours are truest to the final image, the scan.