Watercolor Bookmarks

 -Products used in this project provided by Cricut and Plaid Crafts. All ideas and opinions are my own. This post may contain affiliate links.-

My kids went back to school today, and I'm not going to lie, as much as I love my children I was so ready for them to be back in school. I am ready to get back in a good routine and to have more time to work on projects and other things I want or need to do.  I only have one kid left at home during the day which makes it so much easier to get things done.

I have been really enjoying playing with paints lately, but my kids also love to paint and with all of them home I end up having to find things for them to paint too. And part of what I have enjoyed about painting is that it is kind of relaxing to me. Whether I am painting a picture, or just playing around with colors and patterns, it is a great stress reliever for me. That is, until I am surrounded by 4 kids wanting to paint, squirting bottles of paint out in larger quantities than I would like, wanting to paint all of the things I got for specific projects, and destroying my paintbrushes. All of the sudden it goes from a stress relieving activity to super stressful. So I am kind of looking forward to a little more quiet time to work on projects without so many little helpers.

That being said, I really do enjoy crafting with my kids and seeing their creativity. I just do better when I go into a project knowing I will be doing it with kids and it may get pretty messy. And honestly this would be a great project to make with them.

I thought it would be really fun to play around with watercolors (I actually used FolkArt Watercolor Acrylics for this project) on paper and then cut it up to make something. I had a few ideas of how the painted papers could be used and I will probably try some of the other out and share them, but I decided to start with bookmarks. 

Bookmarks seemed like a good back to school time project, and I thought the watercolor designs would be kind of fun. 

To begin I just painted on some paper. I did some designs, like the stripes I used for some of these. You could do little x's or + signs, dots, or if you wanted to get fancy you could even do flowers and leaves. 

Another fun option, that actually ended up being my favorite is just a wash. Either one color or multiple, I really like the way that these ones turned out. One of the ones that I used was actually just kind of a mess up that I was going to toss and then I decided to cut it up anyway. Because you are only getting a sliver of the painting on each one it doesn't really matter if it looks good as a whole. Little splatters and drips and splotches actually end up looking really neat.

There are a couple of ways you could make these. I chose to use my Cricut because I wanted to write on them. I designed them in Design Space and then had the Cricut write the words and cut out the shapes. 

If you don't have a Cricut, I think it would still look neat to just have the watercolor bookmarks and since they are just rectangles you could use a paper trimmer  or scissors to cut them out. And if you have nice handwriting you could add the writing by hand. I knew that for me it would look a lot better if the Cricut did the writing for me. 

How to Make Watercolor Bookmarks

You will need:

• Cricut Maker or Explore
• watercolor paper (9"x12" works well)
• Folkart Watercolor Acrylics
• paintbrushes
• Cricut Pens (I used the 0.8 glitter gel pens, but any will work)
• embroidery floss (optional, for tassels)

Instructions:

Use your watercolors to paint designs or colors on the sheet of watercolor paper. The more of your paper you cover the better. Let dry completely.

Open my Design Space file, or create your own. I made 5 different designs, for the blue bookmarks I decided I didn't want the holes for tassels so I used contour to remove them. 

Use the Cricut to write the words and cut out the bookmarks. I used the watercolor paper setting, but on the default pressure I had some spots that didn't quite cut all the way through so I increased the pressure and that seemed to do the trick. 

To add tassels to the designs that have a center hole cut a length of embroidery floss about 15-18". Fold in half and then in half again. push the folded end through the hole and then pull the other end through the loop (larks head knot). Pull snug and trim ends.