Quick and Easy Ombre Watercolor Holiday Tags...

Good morning!  I'm here with a fun post today for creating quick and easy (and on-trend!) holiday tags.  This watercolor ombre technique is fun and fast, and will create some stunning tags that are so pretty on their own that they need little to no embellishing to make a statement!  I'm pretty sure you could make a big batch of these in an afternoon.

Let me show you how I did it.  

I started with a heavy-weight 140lb watercolor paper.  (I used Strathmore 300 Series - pretty inexpensive and available at your big box craft store).  I cut my watercolor paper into strips the full length of the sheets by just slightly wider than my tag die.  I pulled out my Papertrey Ink re-inkers, some scrap pieces of acetate, and a couple of wide foam brushes to make things go nice and quick.

I  put a nice little puddle of the reinkers onto a scrap of acetate (keep each color on its own sheet), then added a few spritzes of water using a spray bottle.  I used Simply Chartreuse and Pure Poppy for the red tags and Hawaiian Shores and Simply Chartreuse for the blue tags.

 

Then I started brushing on the color, starting along one long edge of my watercolor paper and brushing down towards the center, covering about half of the strip.

Then I flipped the strip around and started brushing the second color from the other edge.  Once that edge was covered I began blending the two colors together.  If you have trouble getting the colors to blend you can spritz it with a little more water and then just brush and blend in the center.  Don't worry if it's doesn't seem to be looking so great when it's wet...it will most likely blend more as it dries and look fabulous!  :-)

Now I have these beautiful ombre strips that I can diecut my tags from!  

I pulled out my favorite Tag Sale die - #3 with that great embossed dotted border and went to town diecutting my tags from the ombre watercolor paper.  I decided to keep it simple and just heat emboss a pretty sentiment with white embossing powder.  I pulled out my 'Tis the Season Sentiments set - the fonts are just perfect for this look!  The green ink turned sort of a pretty goldish color as it dried, so I decided to add just a few gold accents to my tags.  I diecut some sketched stars from gold foil paper and tied them on with some cotton twine.  I like to add a little texture to my twine by pulling one of the strands, causing it to kind of bunch and gather.

 

So what do you think?  Are you itching to try a little watercoloring for your holiday tags this year?  I hope so...it's lots of fun!

 

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