6 Ways To Make Waves For Handmade Cards

Handmade summer cards call for waves and we have 6 easy ways to create them! Check out Brandi Kincaid’s 6 ways to make waves tutorial!

Here’s a place I can always get behind making waves – cards! I love fun backgrounds for cards, but as a beginner with a small stash of supplies, I often find myself using the same techniques over and over. With the new Subbing In stamp set, I knew I wanted to branch out and give myself more options to play with while creating cards.

To get started, I grabbed a stack of some old favorite supplies as well as some new pieces to try out and get crafty with, and before I knew it, I had six fun ways to make waves on the page.

First up was a sheet of printer friendly transparency paper, printed with two blocks of blue color to fill the sheet. I love transparency for stamping, so printing out a block of color was a fun way to get translucent watery blues.

Next is a piece inspired by the day’s mail: tissue paper! I found this lovely aqua tissue paper wrapped around a purchase in the mail, and knew it was just the thing. I’ve got a scrap of a deeper blue in my wrapping stash that’s destined to be deep water later.

Just because I love branching out, it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about good old fashioned cardstock!

Okay, so this happened on a whim, but I kind of love it, and pan to do a little more experimenting later. For this watery look, I opened up a recycled (clean) sandwich bag, coloring the inside with Copic markers until lots of color was scribbled around, and then closing the bag and “smooshing” the sides together to make a wavy, watery look. I cut the bag open, and once it dried, adhered it with clear double stick tape to cardstock.

Watercolor is hands down one of my favorite ways to create water, but instead of painting directly on the card, I love played down swooshes of color on paper that I can cut apart and build with later.

If you’ve seen me play with watercolors before, then you know that last, but not least, I have to use the paper towel I wipe my watery brush on between colors. I love that saturated, colorful paper.

Okay, now it’s time to give these papers some shape! I used the wave die set for both the water color paper and the transparency sheet. Creating these clean cut strips gives you a big pool (get it, pool – ha!) of water hued papers to pull from as you work.

Most of us have a circle punch (or die cut) somewhere, and they’re perfect for those scalloped, mod waves. Just move the punch along the edge of the paper, varying how much of the paper is being punched each time, and overlapping the edges slightly.

I hand cut the plastic bag paper, using small, sharp scissors to create the wavy edge. Don’t underestimate how quick and easy this way of making waves can be!

For the tissue paper and paper towel, both more delicate, I like to carefully hand tear across their edges, creating a more organic look.

One note about the paper towel, I like to keep it as one piece to tear it, for ease, but then pull apart the layers before I use it. If there’s a pattern pressed into your paper towel, like the dot design in mine, it will be less visible on different layers, so pulling them apart, rearranging them, and layering them back together can add dimension and change the style a bit.

Plus, seeing all those colors in layers of vibrancy makes for a very watery, colorful look.

For any more delicate papers like the towel or tissue, I like to use a metal die to cut them out after the fact. This ensure for a nice clean edge without unintended tearing. I used a circle die here, but you could use a square, or just a fun edge like the waves or other design.

Now that we have LOTS of wavy supplies, it’s time to play! Look how different and fun the stamp set pieces are against each background. Layering those waves of transparency blues builds even more colors than you even begin with – how fun is that?

I love the overlapping waves so much, it makes me want to make a trip to the ocean.

Watercolor waves are so packed with dimension when they’re cut apart and rebuilt. I love how varying the direction of the waves gives the illusion of movement.

The full saturation of the cardstock ocean is one of my favorites, in all its simplicity. That bold, clean, scalloped edge just makes me happy.

For my first trial run and play, I’m already loving the plastic bag trick, and I can’t wait to perfect this method, especially with more colors, and new ways to attach it to the paper (hint: next up, stitching!). We’ve been phasing out plastic in our home for environmental reasons, but these little bags come our way now and then, from the mail, etc., so this is a fun way to at least recycle them and give them new life instead of adding more to the trash).

Isn’t it amazing what a little paper towel can turn into? The texture on this circular background is so much fun, and looks great played against the clean white cardstock, and with the little images.

I’m almost a little sad to come to the end, playing with all of those backgrounds makes me want to look for new ways to make waves. From transparency to this gorgeous blue green tissue paper, I’m always amazed by what incredible pieces we often have lurking around the house that can become part of our adventures in card making.

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