I love making and sending a few Christmas cards each year. I confess that only selected family and friends get homemade cards, I don’t waste them on people who I don’t think will appreciate them, I think that is just good sense though, right?

This year I’ve made a couple of different styles and this watercolour Christmas tree idea was so simple I thought it would be nice to share it with you.

Even though I’m no expert I do love playing with my watercolour paints. I love the phrase “perfection is the enemy of the good”. If you wait until you have perfected a craft you may never share it with others and that would be a shame. These cards are so easy that even a beginner watercolour painter can make them, let’s get started:

To make watercolour Christmas tree cards you will need:

Blank Cards and envelopes
Watercolour paper
Watercolour paint
A watercolour paintbrush
A Christmas sentiment stamp and ink
Paper glue - I used a stick glue
Embellishments, sequins, gems, black fineliner, etc

Painting simple watercolour Christmas trees

Cut your watercolour paper into approx 11cm x 8cm (4.5” x 3.25”) rectangles. You can of course go bigger or smaller if you prefer, that’s just the size I worked with.

Paint a triangle of green stripes centrally. Vary the shades of green. You can either do this by using different greens if you have more than one, or mixing in a little white, yellow, blue or even a tiny bit of red to get different shades. You can also add more water for a paler shade.

Add a blob of yellow at the top and then a brown stem at the bottom.

Leave this to dry. You can use your watercolour Christmas trees just like this or add a little more embellishment if you want to.

I’ve got a few ideas to embellish these simple watercolour trees, let’s go through them now.

Tiny gem Christmas trees

Use dots of glue to secure tiny colourful gems randomly all over the tree. My favourite glue for this kind of thing is Art Glitter glue because it has such a tiny nossel. Here I added a small star sequin at the top too.

Paint Splatter Christmas Tree

Water down some white watercolour paint and then splatter it all over the tree for a bit of a snowy effect.

Doodled trees

Take a black fineliner pen and doodle! My best advice is to keep it simple. I think the doodle with the twirls on the left here is more successful than the one on the right where I feel maybe I tried to add too much small detail.

Colourful Watercolour Baubles

To create this colourful bauble effect just use tiny dobs of watercolour paint. If you don’t add too much water then you can get really nice vibrant colours, just use a damp brush instead of a sloosh of water!

Gold marker pen trees

I think maybe it’s because I’m a child of the 1980’s that I do love a gold paint pen! I remember how we all thought they were the best thing ever, all that shaking and dabbing to get the ink flowing and then the shiny, shiny colour :-D

For this tree card I just dotted a little gold pen over the tree then drew on a gold star. Simple.

And my last watercolour tree embellishment idea:

Stickers

I don’t throw things away that might come in useful one day. Sometimes that’s a problem, but on this occasion it was a blessing! I found this old sheet of Christmassy alphabet stickers with only a few letters remaining. It had a whole bunch of tiny stars though, which were perfect to adorn a small watercolour Christmas tree.

Adding a sentiment and assembling the cards

Once your trees are suitably embellished then all that remains is to add a sentiment. I used a stamp and ink. You could write your own sentiment if your writing is up to it or add a sticker. Is there a photo to show you this process? No, no there is not. Why? You might very well ask and the answer would have to be: I have no idea! I’m usually pretty good at documenting every stage of the process with photos whenever I’m making anything but apparently sometimes I just get carried away with the making. I can only apologise. Hopefully you know how to stamp a sentiment using a stamp and ink.

Ink the edges of the watercolour paper if you want to add a little more colour and then fix the Christmas tree watercolour paper onto a card blank. I generally use a stick glue for this but a double sided tape or even a little of a pva would work. Just don’t get your paper too wet if you use a pva, less is more. Too much wet glue will make your paper wavy.

So there you have it, quick easy watercolour Christmas cards that don’t need any special watercolour skills. An ideal card to batch make if you have a lot to send.