Watercolor-Resist Cards for Mother's Day

Mother’s Day is just around the corner… do you have your card ready? Not to fear, we’ve got you covered! Using Sakura’s awesomely vibrant Koi Water Colors and some oil pastels, you can whip up a beautiful and unique card that will make your mom, grandma, or the motherly friend in your life swoon. Better yet, it will make the fridge where it will likely be magnet-ed shine with beauty.

Watercolor-resist techniques involve putting a layer of oily pigment or tape onto your surface first, so when you apply the watercolor, it resists, or avoids, the oil or tape. It’s an awesome trick to try when you want to reveal a hidden message with color, or when you’re hitting an art-block and want to experiment with materials to spark a new idea.

Materials:

• Koi Water Colors

• Watercolor paper

• oil pastel (Sakura’s Cray-Pas pastels work great!) or china marker

Step 1: Draw your Mother’s Day message on your watercolor paper with an oil pastel or china marker. Be sure to make your letters nice and thick with lots of layer of pigment.

Your message will start off invisible… just wait ‘til we add color!

Step 2: Reveal your invisible message by painting on top of it with Sakura’s Koi Watercolors! We love the day-glo colors of this watercolor set. It even comes with a little mixing tray and refillable watercolor brush, making it portable and perfect for travel. Just fill up the bottom half of the brush with water and screw on the top. Squeeze the brush for water to fill the brush tip, and then mix it with your watercolors to create your shade!

Sakura’s Koi Watercolor set even has two side sponges for you to clean your brush. So compact!

Step 3: Once you’ve painted to your heart’s content, leave out the cards to dry. Your unique Mother’s Day card is complete! Now all it needs is a sweet message on the back. :-)

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If you loved this DIY, you won’t want to miss our special Mother’s Day giveaway of a copy of ILLUSTORIA’s Issue #8: Home and your very own Sakura Koi Watercolor set! It’s the perfect gift to self or the creative mom in your life. Check out our instagram post for entry.

Huge thanks to Sakura of America for their continued support and sponsorship of our publication. They help to bring artfulness into our magazine and into your home with every issue.

Why You Ought to Join the Write_On Challenge

This week, we're offering a special giveaway in partnership with the #Write_On challenge, taking place throughout the month of April, which is National Letter Writing Month. The challenge is lead by Egg Press, a greeting card company, design studio and letterpress print shop based in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1999, they’re pioneers in the resurgence of letterpress printing and are often noted for their sophisticated color palette, hand drawn illustrations, all-over textile inspired patterns, and sense of humor.

For our giveaway, we're setting up one lucky winner with supplies to practice their hand at calligraphy! The prize includes a copy of our Issue #6: Symbols, which features a guide to hand lettering by Michaela Yee, three collectable ILLUSTORIA pins and bookmarks, a Sakura Gelly Roll pen, very adorable Write_On stickers, and a stash of Write_On cards by Egg Press and Hello Lucky Cards. Check our Instagram post for entry guidelines! One winner will be picked at random on March 27th. 

Photo by Christa Fowles

When was the last time you took time to write a handwritten letter? In today’s fast-paced, media-saturated world, letter writing offers a path for slowing down and engaging with others in a meaningful way, expressing ourselves, and noticing and savoring the present moment.

Write_On began when Egg Press Founder Tess Darrow realized that, despite having a studio full of beautiful greeting cards, she wasn’t devoting as much time as she’d like to correspondence. In 2014, she challenged to herself to write 30 letters in 30 days, about the amount of time it takes to develop a lasting habit. Tess invited the entire Egg Press staff as well as the co-founders of Hello!Lucky, Eunice and Sabrina Moyle, to join the fun. They all agreed that connecting with loved ones through a strong letter-writing practice was a great way to affirm their founding principles. What started as a humble effort has grown into a global movement!

Are you up for the challenge?

All you have to do is write 30 letters in 30 days, or as many as you can. Keep a log of your letters, and join the movement online by sharing your progress using #Write_On. Not sure what to write about? Here are some reasons to write to help get you started:

• Write to thank a friend for seeing you for who you are
• Write to tell someone that you just heard a song that reminded you of them
• Write to ask an older relative to record a memory
• Write to send a letter from your pet to a friend's pet
• Write to a company that makes a product you like

The possibilities for your letters are endless. For more inspiration, visit the resources page of the Write_On website here.

Photo by Christa Fowles
 

Stock up before April 1st!

With the help of our Write_On partners Hello!Lucky, Sakura of America, and Mohawk papers, we’ve got a collection of writing prompts, tips, and resources available at writeoncampaign.com as well as a shop full of custom designed and printed goodies to make participation in the challenge easy and fun. We're also offering two different Party Pack variations, packed with everything you need to host a letter-writing shindig for 10 to kick off the Write_On Challenge. For every purchase of a Letter-Writing Kit, we’re able to donate a kit to someone in need, including educational and under-resourced community programs across the country. Visit the Write_On shop and stock up before we sell out!

Let’s stay in touch!

We welcome your correspondence and creative mail all year round. Your suggestions and feedback help inform the direction of the Write_On Challenge each April, so please, be in touch!

Write_On
℅: Egg Press
2181 NW Nicolai Street, 3rd Floor
Portland Oregon 97210
write_on@eggpress.com

For more details on the campaign, visit the Write_On website at writeoncampaign.com.

Why Making Cards Makes us Happy

Eunice and Sabrina Moyle, founders of Hello!Lukcy. Photo by Zoe Larkin Photography

Sisters Eunice and Sabrina Moyle are founders of Hello!Lucky, a San Francisco-based, award-winning purveyor of letterpress greeting cards and other doodled objects. They’re also authors of several books including their latest, Happy Mail and the forthcoming Be the Change.

This week, Eunice and Sabrina join Illustoria to share some insight into their art style and why they love to doodle, hand-letter and send snail mail!

Happy Mail just launched! Enter to win a copy, details at the end of this post. Photo by Zoe Larkin Photography

There are lots of reasons why doodling and writing snail mail cards makes us happy. For one thing, Eunice loves to draw and Sabrina loves to write, so cards are a perfect way to team up!

We also love cards because they’re fun and social.  Since cards have a clear purpose -- to say hi, thank you, happy birthday, etc. -- they can be less daunting than drawing for no reason on a blank piece of paper.   Kind of like bowling with bumpers!

When we make a card, we usually start with the occasion and person in mind. Then, we brainstorm concepts -- the combination of words and images that we think will create a good vibe, a smile, or a laugh. We love to look on Pinterest for inspiration. Sometimes a cool pattern or illustration gives us a great idea that we can apply in a new way. There’s nothing wrong with looking for artists you like and trying to learn their styles, just as long as you make it your own!

Doodling cards is simple. They don’t take a lot of time to draw.  Since they’re small, you can easily try different ideas or start over. Sometimes the simplest cards are the best!

We love cards because they combine words and pictures. We like to think of these as two different languages.  Many of us are more comfortable with words than pictures (ahem, Sabrina!), so cards give us a way to use both -- it’s not so scary to draw when you also have words to fall back on. We’ve seen great cards that are only hand-lettering or hilarious one-liners, and we’ve also seen great cards that are all picture with no words. Our favorite? A pun paired with fun illustration!  Cat puns, especially!

Our rule of thumb for card-writing is keep it short, light, and sincere. We love the fill up the page with hand-lettering and add doodle flare, like rainbows, stars, and hearts.  Writing short messages lets us try different styles without worrying too much about messing up or rambling!  That said, we also love hunkering down to write a multi-page letter to a pen pal -- it’s an amazing way to catch up when you have a lot to say, and way better than a multi-part IM! :D

You might think that in today’s tech-enabled world, handmade cards and handwritten letters aren’t important.  In our personal experience, that’s not true.  Handmade cards and letters are another form of communicating, just like texting, calling, or sending an email. Each one has its place, and a handmade card makes a great impression.  

We like to think of snail mail cards like slow food or home-cooking. They take a while to prepare, but they’re satisfying and unique to the cook or sender.  Social media has its place, too, just like fast food. Sometimes you’re in a hurry and you just need to get a message sent (we love french fries but try not to eat them for every meal ;))

Nothing beats getting a handwritten card in the mail, personally addressed to you.  These days, it’s a memorable experience. It’s something you can hold, read, re-read, and keep forever.  (Sabrina still has letters she exchanged with her BFF in high school! Amazing time capsules!).

Making cards makes us feel more connected.  We like to make cards for friends, family, and even strangers because it allows us focus our attention on relationships.  To us, relationships matter most in life, more than material things. Cards remind us of what really counts!

Sending cards or letters can be like a meditation or gratitude practice. When we sit down to draw a card or write a letter, it immediately puts us in a happy place. Why? Because we’re focusing all our imagination and energy on how we can make people happy. What hilarious idea would make them snort with laughter? What would make them feel warm fuzzies?  Thinking about these things gives us a real high, like planning a surprise party!

You can almost always find a good reason to send a card.  Birthdays, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, holidays, and or any time you receive a kind action, gift or letter.  We especially love sending cards to grandparents and people who might not be as tech-savvy. You might even keep a calendar of card-sending occasions, or a list of people you want to write to along with their snail mail addresses.

Most importantly, though, making and sending cards is just good fun.  We crack ourselves up coming up with funny, punny card ideas and we have even more fun sending them to our friends.  So the next opportunity that comes up, grab a pen and some paper, and start doodling!  Pop your creation in the mail and see what happens!

You can pick up lots of card and hand-lettering ideas and inspiration, letter-writing prompts, and even ready-to-write tear-out cards and self-mailing letters in our new book, Happy Mail.  So have fun making your own cards!  We know they’ll be totally paw-some! :D

Sabrina holding a copy of Happy Mail! Photo by Zoe Larkin Photography

To celebrate the official Happy Mail launch, we’d like to offer one of you your own copy! Follow @illustoria_mag and @helloluckycards on Instagram and tag a friend you would send handmade happy mail to and we’ll pick a winner at random!