I started out by watercoloring a sheet of Canson Watercolor paper. I taped it down to my desk to minimize warping so I could get it good and wet. I used a few distress inks that I had on hand. Then once it dried, (I was impatient and heat set it with my heat tool) I stamped out a few Dragons from one of my favorite sets from Sweet Stamp Shop. I used Memento Ink in Tuxedo Black, because I wasn't sure if I was going to water color the dragons, and Memento doesn't bleed.
Once I had them all stamped out I used a T-Square Ruler and a fine tipped Sharpie to draw in the shape of my bookmarks. I liked how it looked right under the wings best, but when I do this again, I'll bring the lines out to the tips of the wings. I think that will make cutting and popping the image to clip in the books easier, and more attractive.
Next, I tried to be all fancy and cut the whole thing out with my Gyro-Cut tool. Don't do this. It takes forever with this paper. Cut it all out with scissors and then you can use the gyro for the detail cutting later on.
I chose to color them after they were cut out, you can color before or after, it doesn't make any difference. Isn't he so cute? I colored him in with a couple of Tombow markers, but you could use any coloring medium. I also outlined the whole thing with black markers just to give a clean edge. *Note, the backside looks pretty gnarly, but by adding the long rectangle on the bottom it makes these easy to line up, so you could have the dragon dude on the front and the back. I'm going to play around with it a bit, and I might update this later if I come up with an idea I like.
Here is the hard part. To make the little dragon hold your page like this, you have to cut in pretty close. I used my gyro for this, and then cut all the way up to his shoulder and his neck to give him as much room as possible to hook on the page.
I used the tip of the gyro tool to push the arms out after cutting them, and then bent them back a bit so that they would stay popped out and I wouldn't have to do it again every time I wanted to mark a page.
His arms are very tiny and he doesn't hold the page well when he was cut like this, so I experimented really quick and decided to cut out his body. This works well, but the tail was so close to the edge of the frame that I nearly cut through it, and it's still very fragile. I mentioned above that it might be a good idea to have the frame for the bookmark start at the tips of the dragon's wings. This is why. It would give room to cut around the tail without risking the integrity of the bookmark.
Both look adorable, and I'll definitely use both. Just play around a bit and see what you like best. They will also work well as regular bookmarks.
If you liked these let me know in the comments. We're also taking requests for projects. If you have something you'd like to learn to do, let us know in the comment section and we'll do our very best to post a tutorial soon. Also, don't forget to follow us on IG: @teachplancraft and @jes_planning. Drop us a comment and let us know you're coming from the blog! Thanks for reading!
