Watercolor and Salt Card

This card is very simple and uses common household supplies to make beautiful patterns. My mom first suggested this project a few weeks ago after seeing some similar artwork that she enjoyed. This project is not only fun to do it is an easy project to do with kids and with simple steps it is impossible to mess up. Hope you enjoy!

For this project you will only need a few household supplies.

Supplies:

• Water
• Scissors
• Paintbrush
• Ruler
• Watercolors
• Glue
• Wet Medium Paper (like watercolor paper)
• Card Base
• Salt
• Masking Tape *optional*

Using the ruler measure the wet medium paper to 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches. Then cut it out. When put against the card base it should be near exact to the front.

Before you can start painting you might want to tape down the paper so that it does not wrinkle. I wanted to maximize the color on my card so I covered the paper as little as possible. Then, with your paint brush and water, "paint" water across the paper. You will want to put a fair amount of water on. Not so little so that the watercolors don't flow, but not so much that they "clump" together. If you don't get it perfect the first time it's okay, you can still continue on just fine.

Now take a few drops of watercolor and put them around the card. They should start spreading and moving in a matter of seconds, but if they don't (due to a lack of water) just add a drop of water to the paint. Add another color just like you did the first. When you chose your colors chose either warm or cold colors, warm being red, orange, and yellow, and cold colors being blue, green, and purple.

Quickly move onto the next step.

Quickly, before the water has a change to dry up, sprinkle some salt around. It will suck up some of the water and watercolor pigment surrounding it. This will leave you with the patterns seen in the second picture.

Once the watercolors has dried take off the salt. You can either do this by brushing it off or picking each one off.

In this step you will glue the salt design onto the card base. If your design paper is really wrinkly put it under something heavy for 30 min or so, or until it has flattened out a little bit. Then apply glue to the back and match it up with the card base. You might want to put this under something heavy as well so that it glues as flat and strong as possible.

With the background done all that's left is the foreground. This is where you get to write your quick message, like "Thank You" or "Congratulations." You can skip this step, though, and leave the front of your card blank with just the salt designs. Once you are satisfied with the card give it to a friend and show off your creativity with household items.