Watercolor Gift Tags and tagged

I put together a simple DIY project with beautiful results. I've always been a big fan of watercolors.

They're so versatile and easy to use. They give this project the dreamy, soft quality I was looking for.

I painted in 3 different color schemes; rainbow colors for one set, some warm colors and then then some cool colors. Choose colors that go with the gift wrap you have on hand or suit them to a particular holiday. Shades of red and green for Christmas, or lovely pastels for Easter.







Supplies you'll need:

watercolor paper, any size

small watercolor paint brush

set of watercolor paints

glass of water

lots of paper towels

Step 1 Get your paper, paints, paint brush, water and paper towels all ready in front of you. It doesn't matter what size of watercolor paper you use since you'll be cutting it into gift tag sizes anyways. My paper was 9" by 12" so my gift tags ended up being 3" wide and 1.5" tall. It also doesn't matter what kind of watercolor paints you use. I have the cheapest little palette I could find, I think it's actually meant for kids! As long as you have the primary colors, black and brown, it will be more than enough for most projects.

Step 2 Cut your paper into long strips. The size of these strips will depend on the size of the paper you chose. Like I said, my paper was 9" wide so I cut it into thirds that were 3". This will be the width of your tag.

Step 3 Now the fun part! I wanted rainbow tags, so I went with a classic ROY G. BIV color scheme. Grab a little of your first color and start mixing it with a bit of water in your lid or on a plate. Being light and watery is what watercolors do best, so don't just use the paint straight out of the palette. You can always add more color, but you can't take it away.

Step 4 Start painting onto the paper towel underneath your paper so the paint doesn't pool at the top of the page. Paint in one long, continuous motion all the way down the paper ending on the paper towel again. If the color is too light for you, carefully go over the stripe again before the paint dries. Do this again for all your colors.

Step 5 Once the paint dries completely (shouldn't take long), cut the strip of paper into gift tag sizes. Since my paper was 12" long, I made 8 tags per strip by cutting at 1.5".

And there you have it! Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts in the comments section. Thanks for stopping by!

Bonus! Here's a little stop-motion video I made while I was painting my tags. Hope you like it!

Watercolor Gift Tags Stop Motion from Sara Funduk on Vimeo.