I recently started watercolor painting and love painting watercolor cards!  I’ve got quite a few easy watercolor ideas for you to try so keep reading!

My daughter had to choose a project for her Day of Service at her school and it was the perfect opportunity for us to paint with watercolor together.  The best spring craft!

Painting watercolor cards is a great craft idea for kids! 

The cards we made were all super easy and each only took about 5 minutes to paint minus the drying time! These watercolor painting ideas are amazing for all occasions.

Making cards is a great way to start watercolor art for beginners. We made birthday cards and Valentine’s Day Cards!

Materials

• Watercolor Paint – CHECK PRICES ON AMAZON
• Watercolor Paint Pallete for kids – CHECK PRICES
• Watercolor Paper – CHECK PRICES
• Ink Pens – CHECK PRICES
• Paint Brush Set – CHECK PRICES
• Container for Water
• Pencil
• Eraser

We bought most of our materials from Amazon or Michaels. You really can’t beat 2-day delivery if you have Amazon Prime.

Watercolor Paint

I bought watercolor paint in tubes eons ago for making coffee filter roses.  And they work great!  I usually mix colors to get the exact color I want.  You can also get a smaller set of just primary colors and mix them for your desired color palette. 

Also, kids love mixing colors so this would be a great way for them to learn about colors! 

Watercolor Paper

You will need to use watercolor paper if you want to make cards or learn to watercolor.  I’ve used both regular and mixed media paper before and they both do not yield great results. 

Many artists and bloggers recommend Arches, but I use Canson’s from Amazon – CHECK PRICES, and I find the quality great for the price.

Paint Brush Set

For these cards, we used a size 8 brush. I bought 2 packages of brushes from Amazon, one for her and one for me!

Ink Pens

I learned about these ink pens from an artist on TikTok and they are a total game changer!!  Tracing over your artwork with these makes them so professional looking!  Especially if you are a beginner and don’t have the greatest control over your brush.

You can also use any ink pen you have in black that’s not a ballpoint.  Gel pens work too.

Watercolor Painting Ideas

Here are some watercolor ideas for you to paint either a card or just for practice and some examples of how we painted them.

• Ice Cream Cone
• Balloons
• Cupcakes
• Cake Slices
• Ombre Splatter
• Roses
• Flowers

Ice cream cones are so easy to paint, if you break them down, it’s just a circle and a triangle. They are super fun for kids to paint in watercolor.

Balloons are a great watercolor idea for birthday cards.  They are easy to paint with watercolor and are kid-friendly.  Paint a bunch of balloons or just a single one!

Cupcakes are also a wonderful idea for watercolor birthday cards and super easy especially for kids. 

A slice of birthday cake is another fabulous idea for watercolor birthday cards.  Because of the perspective, this is probably better for adults than kids.

Watercolor flowers and roses would be lovely for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s day cards.  The roses are super easy just make a bunch of c shapes in a circular fashion making the lines bigger as you get more outward.

Or you can try your hand at some easy watercolor spring flowers by dropping a blob of paint, waiting for it to try, then just drawing flowers on top with an ink pen as in the example below.

We also made some easy Valentine’s day watercolor cards using this video. 

There are 3 watercolor ideas in that video and we did them all! 

The ombre paint splatter was the easiest, the hearts took the longest, and the strips of ombre color took the longest to dry.  For that one don’t use too much water or your paper will peel with the tape.

How to Make Watercolor Cards

1. First, wet your brush in your pot of water and mix it with some paint on a palette, test the color on a paper towel or a scrap of paper. 
2. Paint just a rough shape of what you want with the colors you choose.  We did ice cream cones because it’s easy, just a circle and a triangle.
3. You can wait for the paint to dry or blot it with a paper towel to dry, then trace it over with your black ink pen.  
4. Add some details like lines for the cones, and some squiggles for the ice cream, and you are done with the painting part.
5. Next, you can write a greeting on there with a pencil and then trace it over with the black pen.  Then you just erase the pencil marks.  Make sure your eraser is new and not hardened or it will leave ugly red streaks on your art.

Watercolor Ideas, Inspiration, and Resources

I learned the method of using ink pens over my watercolor from this TikTok Artist.  She is amazing and I love how her art is so easy!

Another TikToker does something slightly similar but with FLOWERS!  She is such an inspiration and her British accent is adorable.

YouTube is also a great resource for learning to paint with watercolor, these are some of my favorite channels:

• Shelly Kim
• Shayda Campbell
• Emma Lefebvre

Looking for more fun DIYs? Check out my posts on How To Tie Dye, DIY Rose Box Arrangement, and TikTok Cloud Bread.