You actually cannot paint watercolors on dark backgrounds but with the Cricut, you can create the illusion of watercolors on opaque colored cardstock.
I’ve been really into watercolors lately and love the look of that translucent feel of watercolor on cardstock.
The only problem is because it is so translucent, you really can’t paint it on anything but white paper.
I then realized with the help of my printer and the Cricut, I can create the illusion of painting on darker backgrounds by printing on white and then sticking that on the darker background.
This happy birthday transparent watercolor swatch is available for free in my resource library for you to give it a try.
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Materials for Watercolor Cricut Cards
Cardstock – Cardstock is necessary for the card base. Here are some of my favorite brands that I frequently use for all my paper crafts.
- Assorted Starter Pack – Basic assorted colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
- Cricut Joy Insert Card Packs – You don’t have to use these with the Cricut Joy, they are nice material kids for cardmaking.
- Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte-colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
- Poptone Assorted Variety Pack – This is the perfect peppy assortment of colors of heavy cardstock. It’s a heavy cardstock assortment with colors I actually use frequently for cardmaking.
- Seasonal Assorted Variety Pack – This is a slight variation on the Poptone assortment and has a quite few neutrals that complement almost any accent color.
- Stardream Metallics Line – For paper crafts, the Stardream line is the go-to for a metallic shimmer finish. It is the perfect sheen to make any project pop. The core is also colored is which hard to find for metallic paper.
Sticker Sheets – I used sticker sheets I got from Amazon but you can always print on normal copy paper or white cardstock.
Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.
Transparent PNG – These are graphics elements that have the background removed. I have my full set of watercolor swatches available in my online shop if you are interested in creating your own designs.
Tutorial for how to make watercolor Cricut Cards
Upload the Transparent PNG
When uploading the transparent png, be sure to select complex to preserve the details of the design.
On the following page, there is no need to Select and Erase anything. The watercolor swatch has background already removed. Cricut Design Space has limited capabilities at doing this so I have done this already for all my watercolor swatches.
Select “Save as a Print Then Cut Image”.
Adding Text to the Graphic Shape in Cricut Design Space
Text can be done in several ways over the watercolor swatch. My top two favorite ways to overlay text is to just add color text or to do a cut out.
To add colored text, write your text out using the Text Tool. Be sure to weld all the letters together and Fill with a “Print” color.
Then position the text over the graphic. With both elements selected, click “Flatten”.
To create a cut out, simply position the welded text over the graphic and click “Slice” with both elements selected.
Why is the Cricut printing this weird line?
I see so much confusion on this one. The Cricut defaults to add bleed lines when sending graphics to your printer. This is why you see that extra color line outlining your graphic.
They do this because they can’t cut it exactly where the color meets the white sometimes.
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