Easy Hand Lettered Watercolor Canvas

Friends, I am SO excited about today’s post because I learned an awesome new trick to share with you! If you’ve ever wanted to create a pretty, colorful watercolor background for your lettering, this is the easiest way I’ve ever seen to do it…and you don’t even need paint. You can get this effect using the Tombow markers I love so much; here’s how!

You Need:
A blank canvas {mine is 6×6″}
A plastic sandwich bag
Tombow Dual Brush Pens, your choice of colors
Sharpie Brush Tip black marker
Water
Paper Towels

Step 1: Use the brush tips of your markers to scribble on one side of the plastic bag.
Don’t worry about creating a complicated design, just get the areas filled with color.

Step 2: Place small drops of water all over your canvas.
I used an aqua pen for this step, but if you don’t have one, simply dip your fingertip or a paintbrush into a cup of water, then touch it to your canvas.

Step 3: Turn your bag over so that the colored side is facing down and press it onto your canvas.
You’ll see the places where the water droplets are start to form pools of color. Continue to press the bag down, rubbing it around a little to transfer the color from the bag to the canvas surface. If you feel there are areas that need more color, you can repeat this step as often as you like until you’re satisfied with the end result.

Allow your canvas to dry completely. How fun is that?! It’s so simple and you don’t even need paint, just markers to get this fabulous effect!

Step 4: Use the Sharpie brush tip marker to write “shine” on an angle across your canvas.
If you want yours to have a different word, write that instead. I wanted to create the illusion that my word continued on either side of the canvas so I made my lines go all the way to the edge.

Step 5: Draw a second line on each down stroke.
If you’re brand new to hand lettering, check out my Basic Hand Lettering post for more info on this step.

Step 6: Go back and color in the double lines to create the illusion of thickened down strokes.
If you’re loving the look of your canvas as is, you can absolutely stop at this point and let your one word be the focus of the piece. I really wanted to illustrate a larger quote for mine, though, so I kept going.

Step 7: Letter the rest of your quote {optional}.

This took me less than 15 minutes to create, and I absolutely love the way it turned out! What do you think? What word or quote would you illustrate using this technique?