Card Making Ideas - Add Flower Stems to Your Printable Cards



Adding flower stems to your greeting cards is one of the quickest and easiest of my card making ideas. Don't be concerned that it's a watercolor technique, you'll be surprised at how easy and effective it is.  Also unlike the fabric paint which takes a day to dry, the watercolor dries very quickly.  When I'm in a hurry, I use a dryer to speed the process, your hair dryer will work just fine.

Let's see how it's done.....

Click on any image to make it larger.

Click again to return to this page.


1. I find it easiest to paint my flower stems upside down.  This is a watercolor enhancement.  I use my favorite Loew Cornell Miracle Wedge brush and load it with a rich mixture of Hooker's Green paint.  The stroke is made smoothly "down" to where the stem touches the edge of the paper.

flower stem image, handmade cards, embellishing images
card making ideas, handmade greeting cards


2.  Because the print shows a shadow on one side of the stem, I paint the extension the same way. This is done by loading the brush with a yellower green and painting alongside the still wet dark green so the colors blend and suggest a round stem.In the palette, you can see that I've put some yellow a little distance from the Hooker's Green that I used for the first part of the stem. Then I mix a little of each together to get a lighter green.

Don't be concerned about a perfect color match, it's the effect that's important.

make greeting cards, instructions for handmade greeting cards
handmade card making, handmade cards online
card making ideas, free printable cards

3.  Practice this a few times on a scrap piece of paper so that you feel confident when you paint on the card.

Experiment with turning the paper until you feel comfortable with the direction of the stroke. You may find it easier to work away from the flower rather than towards it.



Click lower right corner of video for full screen view





Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.