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.

DIT (Do-It-Together) Collaborative Paint Chip Banner

Looking for a fun and simple art project to do with your kiddos or friends? Look no further! With just a few simple materials you can make upcycled paint chip banners (or individual bookmarks) and fill an afternoon with art-making, collaboration, and silly antics around the table. Here at Illustoria we believe in inspiring creativity every day with the simplest of materials and the best of friends and loved ones. Enjoy!

MATERIALS

Paint chip cards
Collage paper (old magazines, tissue paper, construction paper, etc.)
Pens or Crayons
Scissors
Glue

STEPS

For 3 or more people

1. Each person is given a paint chip, box of collages papers, pen, scissors, glue.

2. Set time for 2 minutes! Personalize the paint chip as much as you can, snip it/ glue stuff on it, doodle! 

3. When the timer goes off, pass it left for your partner to continue for another 2 mins.

4. Keep going ‘round and add paint chips when you feel like one is complete. 

5. Hole punch your paint chips at the top and use twine to string through.

Ta da! A collaborative paint chip banner made by you and your friends :-)

Who We Are: Joanne Chan

Name: Joanne Chan

Location: Berkeley, CA / hometown: Oakland, CA

Profession: Mom of Sonia & Marcas and publisher of ILLUSTORIA

Happy Together: Marcas, Mark, me, Sonia

Favorite artist/illustrator: Pina Bausch and Hayao Miyazaki

Best book you’ve read in the past year: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Kids’ book you could read every night: Spider & the Fly by Tony DiTerlizzi (because we really do), Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing by Judi Barrett & Ron Barrett, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown.

Best memory of being a kid: shaking the blossoms off our plum tree and pretending it was snowing in Oakland; generally being out in the backyard and helping my dad water the garden, picking and eating apples, plums, mandarins, loquats and the sweetest cherry tomatoes on earth…catching butterflies and, sad to admit, putting them in jars to admire.

Favorite weekend activity: making granola and watching the kids play pirate-Harry Potter in the yard (a trip to the art museum at some point is a plus)

Marcas as pirate-Harry Potter with Dumbledore's staff

Song currently on repeat: Three White Horses by Andrew Bird (at home) and Piggies by The Beatles (in the car)

Favorite meal: any pasta dish made by Mark shared with family and friends, darkest chocolate and mint tisane for dessert

Last time you made something with your hands: lavender satchel necklace + denim tote bag + pencil case for Sonia’s 10th birthday

Birthday lunch note

Fun fact about you: I once choreographed and danced in a duet (with my dearest friend) in an abandoned subway tunnel in Brooklyn.