This Mother’s Day bookmark and card set is such a lovely handmade gift idea for kids to make! I love the beautiful bright colors of the watercolors and the way they mix together on the paper to create unique and interesting patterns.
Using a resist technique is always an easy and fun art activity for kids of all ages that really creates a wow factor at the end. Kids love to see their designs appear and the colors mix together as they paint over their paper. Check out our watercolor resist citrus painting for another fun idea!
There are so many fun watercolor techniques for kids to try! Take a look at my collection of watercolor painting for kids for more fun and creative ideas kids will love!
For another Mother’s Day card idea check out this pretty paper dandelion craft!
Create your own Mother’s Day bookmark & card set
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Supplies
- Watercolor paints
- Watercolor paper
- Paintbrushes
- Paint palette
- White oil pastels
- Painters tape
- Wooden board or somewhere to tape down your paper
Instructions for your watercolor project
1. First, you want to prepare your watercolor paper. You can use a pencil and ruler to draw the dimensions of the card and bookmark.
The paper that we used was 11 x 15 inches, cut in half so each piece was 11 x 7.5 inches. One piece of watercolor paper can make 2 sets of cards and bookmarks.
Measure 2 inches for the bookmark and draw a pencil line like in the photo above. So this will make your card 9 inches wide, mark the fold line for your card at 4.5 inches.
Related: 3D Flower Mother’s Day Card Craft
2. Tape down your watercolor paper, if you don’t have a board to tape it to or are doing this as a classroom project, you can try taping the paper down to the desks. You can just use 1 piece of tape where you marked out your fold line.
If you are using a wooden board to tape your paper to, you can also tape around all the edges like in the picture above. You do not need to put a piece of tape where the bookmark is.
Related: Mother’s Day Painted Rock Craft with Fingerprint Art
3. Using a white oil pastel, have kids draw in their design. There are two parts to this painting, the card, and the bookmark, so remind kids to treat each part separately and not to write words over both parts.
Kids can draw flowers, hearts, line designs, and doodles. They can write the word “mom”, “I love you”, their name and date, or whatever they like! You want to remind kids to press hard with their oil pastel and draw thick lines so their drawing shows up when they paint over it.
4. Once kids have finished drawing out their designs with oil pastels, it’s time to paint! We used 3 colors for each of our sets.
You can mix the colors on a palette with some water or use the colors straight from the paint set, depending on how dark you want the colors to be. It’s always a good idea to have some scrap paper handy to test out your colors.
First, paint the paper with clean water. If the paper gets too wet, simply use a paper towel to dab off the extra water. While the paper is still wet, have kids start to paint with their watercolors and watch their beautiful designs show through!
Remind kids to rinse their brush in between colors so the colors don’t get muddy.
5. Once the painting is done, let the paper dry completely. If you want to speed up the process a bit, you can use a hairdryer on a low setting to help.
6. Once everything is dry, carefully take off the tape. Cut out your bookmark, trimming off the white edges if you like. Fold your card in half to finish it off.
This Mother’s Day bookmark & card set is so pretty and makes such a great kid-made gift idea. Kids can create their own special designs and words for this project to make it truly unique for mom or grandma to treasure for years to come!
We love creating and exploring with different art supplies and techniques. If you are looking for more art projects to try, take a look at our ultimate collection of amazing art projects for kids!
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