How to Make a Hand Lettered Mother's Day Print

This beautiful hand lettered Mother’s Day print only takes about 15 minutes to create.

Today I’m going to show you how easy it is to create a custom hand lettered Mother’s Day print. Even if you think you have absolutely no skill when it comes to watercolor or hand lettering, I’m here to show you that you can do it. I’ve even got a few secrets and shortcuts.

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HAND LETTERED MOTHER’S DAY PRINT

Here’s the first secret. It’s not really watercolor. WHAT? It LOOKS like watercolor but the background is actually created with Tombow dual tip brush pens. This is one of my favorite shortcuts. So first, you need to get yourself some of those.

Now that you have your brush pens, you’re going to follow this tutorial for how to create watercolor prints. All you need are your pens, a plastic ziploc bag and a spray bottle filled with water. The tutorial shows you how to do it with actual watercolors but I like to substitute the brush pens for actual watercolor because I love how they blend and I feel like I can get more vibrant colors. But you can definitely use watercolors too.

After you have your watercolor background done, you’ll want to let it dry. Here’s my second secret… Sometimes I get impatient and I dry it with a hairdryer. Just make sure that the paper doesn’t curl up from the heat. If it does, place it between some books to flatten it out.

After your background is dry, you are going to hand letter your phrase. I chose “Home is Where Mom is”. Perfect for Mother’s Day or any day really. This step may be scary to some of you but I KNOW you can do this. You’ll want to make a pencil sketch first on a separate piece of paper. I did a pencil sketch and then went over it with markers in my sketchbook just to make sure that I liked the way it looked.

After you have it the way you want it, copy it (very lightly )onto your watercolor background with pencil. Now all you need to do is go over your pencil lines with a black brush pen. The key to hand lettering is thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes. You can get a hand lettering practice sheet here if you need one. I also have some more hand lettering tips for you in this post.

Again, practice on a blank sheet of paper or the hand lettering practice sheet until you are comfortable enough with your lettering and then letter on your watercolor background. And remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect. All moms love homemade things from their children.

When you are all done, place your print in a frame and you have a perfect gift for mom.

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