What to do with Watercolor Doodles

July is World Watercolor Month, so there are a lot of awesome watercolor-related prompts and challenges in the blogiverse and on Instagram. Which means you might very well wind up with a bunch of random ColorBurst paintings of patterns or shapes or rainclouds... or... possibly even stripes with loads of pen doodles on top, lol. You could paste them into a cool watercolor journal, or use them for backgrounds. Or you could make a fancy (but super-easy) custom monogram, like this one:

What You'll Need:

Watercolor Doodles 

(mine consist of rainbow ColorBurst stripes, painted with a flat brush about 1/16" apart on Strathmore watercolor paper, allowed to dry thoroughly, and then doodled upon with various sizes of Pitt Artist Pens by Faber-Castell)

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Monogram Template 

(instructions below)

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Scissors and possibly an Xacto Knife

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Foam Tape

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Plain Gift Bag

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Let's Go!

Type the letter of your choice into a Word document, 

size it to fit your watercolor panel (mine is 4x6")

print it out in a light color, reversed, on plain paper.

(I've used a free font called "Storybook")

Tack the printed monogram to the back of your watercolor panel

with a small amount of dry adhesive and cut it out, 

using an Xacto knife for any interior cuts 

(like the "window" at the top of the A); and scissors for the rest.

Ink or outline around all the edges in black, 

so your letter will really stand out.

Affix the monogram to a gift bag (or card, or package) 

with foam tape and embellish as desired. 

I've attached a couple of Paper Flowers to the letter 

and trimmed my plain white bag with a few strips 

of Eyelet Outlet Color Wheel Washi Tape 

framed by Pearl Bling Strips

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Put a little present into the finished bag and practice looking modest 

when your delighted recipient asks, "HOW did you do that??!"

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