How to design Valentine cards

Today I'll take you trough my process of creating Valentine cards and I will share a place to get your custom wrapping paper printed. So lets get crackin'!

I decided to make Valentine cards on a whim to be honest.

I was planning 2021, decided I wanted to open up shop, but I also didn’t want to wait. I don't know if it's covid, the fact that my employer went bankrupt or just plain winter sadness, but everything just seemed to move soooo sloooow. Since I’m not the one to sit around and wait, I had to make a decision to move forward quick. And quick meant first special day on the calender: Valentine! It would be the perfect opportunity to try and sell something on my own AND I would be creating a new collection. And the fact I didn’t have a website yet? I figured I could sell them through instagram. Who needs a shop anyway?

Get the mood right first

Do you remember the movie Lolita?  Well maybe you don't as it’s from 1997...  

*crickets*

I was saying, the movie poster has this cool retro vibe I’m starting to dig so this was where I left off. I like to create a moodboard to get a feel for the theme and colours. Naaa, who am I kidding, I just love putting together pretty pictures.

Next thing to do was to create a colourcard.

Since I have a background in fashion and still love to watch all the shows, this is my go-to to find the latest colour combos. I noticed all the pinks  moving to the warmer side and they ranged from peach to hot pinks. From these pinks I just picked my favourites, but you could skip the whole fashion hype and pick a few colours you love. We all have a built in radar for trends, just trust your guts!

And thats when the drawing begins

I sketch with a plain HB pencil, one of those cheap ones that says 'gluten free' to sketch elements. Some of them come directly from my moodboard, some are conjured up from the depths of my brain. Again, trust your gut here, I’m sure your brain is as deep as mine and there’s plenty of stuff to find down there. Don’t try to plan too much here, the process of testing and watching things appear on the page is all part of the fun. It leaves a little room for a sudden spark of inspiration or to simply change your mind and start over. Plus, since there's so many ways to change what you've done so far, there's no need for it to be perfect.

For Instance, I drew the legs of the one of the sunglasses seperately because I knew I could paste it in whilst digitizing and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add them or not. I also wasn’t sure about the composition, so I moved these decisions to the end.

I handled the sweets a bit different, starting out with the lolliepop and drawing in the other sweets as I went along, creating a composition directly on the page. Trying to balance shapes, directions and sizes. Main take away at this stage? Just play!

Next stop: Painting

This is my favourite part. But it also scares the heck out of me. What if I mess everything up? I wish I had an answer to these questions. A way to feel better about my capabilities, but I don’t. Without a real solution there’s only one thing left to do.

Here we go!

Firsty erase the pencil lines until they're barely visible. Even though I use fairly thick paint, some colours still are a bit translucent and the pencil lines would still be visible in the end. I painted these using gouache, which is an opaque waterbased paint with a matte, chalky finish. Keep the painting stage fairly simple and only colour out the shapes. This is where I decide which colour has to go where, and I try to match my colourcard as best as I can. The better the colours the less we have to fix after scanning. When the painting is done I use coloured pencils for shading, details and textures. You top it off with a few highlights using white paint markers or a white pencil.

Lets get digital

Now that the colouring stage is done, we’re ready to digitize everything. Start with scanning the pages in high resolution, 300 DPI minimum, higher If you want to blow it up for a big wallpaper. I use Krita (but photoshop’s better) to remove the white background and seperate all the elements. I’m not getting into the details here, but I might in the future, just let me know if you’re interested. And if you want to know it right know, Google and YouTube have proven to be a great support group.

Seperating the elements allows me to easily change the background colour and to move everything around to create a card design or a repeating pattern. A repeat is basically a square of which the right side matches perfectly to the left side, and the bottom perfectly to the top. So If you'd tile a page full of these squares you'd have one ongoing big artwork. These repeating patterns can be used for fabric or wallpaper printing. I usually move everything over to Illustrator to create repeats, but you could use Photoshop (of Krita) too. Since I have a soft spot for repeats, I tend to make them just because they look so darn pleasing!

That's it guys! Nothing left to do but to send them off to the printer :)

If you want to see the whole Valentine Collection check out my Portfolio.

Wrapping paper tip!

I've also uploaded my designs to Motiflow. This is a Dutch company that allows you to sell your designs on fabric and wallpaper. But you can also use it to order your own designs and not sell it to anyone else. How freakin amazing is that? If you’re interested in some super sweet wrapping paper go check out my page on Motiflow. I couldn't wait and ordered a roll right away to check it out.

It's about €12's for a big roll (which is wider than store bought wrapping paper) but they have a smaller size too if you want it a bit cheaper or don’t need as much. The paper quality is fab. You know how wrapping paper has become this cheap stuff that rips and crinkles all the time? Well, none of that at Motiflow. Its firm, heavier paper and folds really nice. Its also matte which looks super fresh. So If you want some special paper go check them out.