DIY Heart Valentine Card

Hello friends,

Today I am sharing a DIY Heart Valentine card that was made with a minimum of supplies. The card was inspired by a painting that I saw in my travels. Art I like sticks in my mind, but unfortunately, my mind is like a sieve and I have forgotten where or when I saw it. I wished I had written down where I saw it so that I could share the painting with you too.

Making this card was as simple as first starting out with a scratch piece of paper and lightly sketching a heart and planning out the sections. I am not really good at planning out every section or line but getting a rough idea was good.

After I had an idea of what it might look like, I started with a watercolor paper panel where I lightly traced with a pencil a shape of a heart. I can never draw a heart as symmetrical as I would like, so I used a heart die for a guide.

After I had an outline of the heart. I lightly sketched a faint line of the sections. I can never seem to follow a strict pattern, so I let my mind relax and just started drawing lines, letting the design take me where it wanted to go.  I used a Micron permanent pen for all the lines.

You can see that I never actually trace the outside outline with my pen.  I let the design define the heart.

After the heart was complete and any pencil lines were erased,  I brushed on a layer of clean, clear water over the whole panel, then started dabbing diluted red watercolor paint over the panel. I really like using the wet on wet method for watercolor.  The watercolor paints are so magical. They will so willingly spread and blend where ever you have water and paint.

When all the pink watercolor wash was bone dry,  using a flat brush, I added a heavy concentration of red watercolor paint across the panel to create that dramatic red streak stretching from left to right across the heart. I added very little water to the paint to do this. I wanted to make sure it kept its deep, concentrated color and also show some of the brush strokes. To add a bit of dimension in this area, I added tiny brush stokes of purple to deepen the color in areas.

When all the watercolor was dry, the watercolor panel was mounted onto a red piece of card stock, then added to a white card stock card base. For the sentiment, I cut a simple flag banner from white card stock and lettered the “Be My Valentine” sentiment, then attached with foam tape.

Supply List: