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How to Make Watercolor Florals for Mother's Day

How to Make Watercolor Florals for Mother's Day

Mother’s Day is coming up, so make sure you get Mom some flowers—flower cookies, that is!  Wilmalyn hand-painted these beautiful watercolor florals, and it’s a lot easier than you think!  All you need is airbrush color, water, paintbrushes, a palette, and some flooded cookies to make some really gorgeous designs.

Making Your Paints

First, add the airbrush colors of your choice to a paint palette, leaving empty cavities in between each color.  In those empty spaces, add water.  Airbrush color is dark and heavily pigmented on its own, so mixing with water will give you that perfect watercolor paint you’re going for.  Simply pick up some of the airbrush color with your paintbrush and dab into the adjacent water—you’ll see that satisfying bloom of color immediately.  Add more color to achieve darker shades, and dab off excess liquid on the palette itself. 

Painting Flowers

For a large rosette, use a wide, flat brush. Dip the brush in your color (Wil used Countess Pink here) and make large, vaguely petal-shaped swoops across the cookie. Work your way inwards towards the center of the rose. Go back for more color when you need it, and pick up more of the concentrated color to achieve some darker shading and dimension. The beauty of this technique is that it doesn’t have to be perfect to have really stunning results! 


To add a “Happy Mother’s Day” stencil on top of your floral, you want to first make sure that the flower you paint will be big enough to be the full background of the stencil. Put your stencil in place over the cookie and just mark the outer points of the text, so you know how far you need to paint.  Remove the stencil, and make the same swooping petals, again working your way towards the center of the flower.  If you find that you have picked up a little too much color, simply dab off a little of the excess onto your palette and adjust as needed. Let those large rosettes dry completely so that when you add the next color, they don’t immediately bleed together.

To make a bunch of roses, use a smaller, pointed brush to draw small circles onto the flooded cookie. For lighter shades, add more water to the mix, and for darker shades, add a little more airbrush color.  Use these varying colors to add more circular lines to each rose. Unlike with the larger florals, you may want to leave some white space within each flower to show that petal dimension. Using a different color of watered-down airbrush liquid (Wil used Positively Purple here), paint some small, vaguely flower-shaped designs in the empty spacing between the pink rosettes. Then using Gourmet Green, add some leafy greenery in those spaces as well, and then make some quick vertical lines to add stems. Adding more/less water to your airbrush color will give varying tones of green so that your stems can really stand out and not all blend together.

Once your larger rosettes are dry, go back with a small brush and your watered-down Gourmet Green and paint on some leaves. Use the same more/less water technique to outline, draw leaf veins, and add texture and dimension. Once your flowers and leaves are completely dry, you can place your “Happy Mother’s Day stencil on top and add your stencil design in a darker coordinating color using royal icing.

Wil did such a beautiful job with these florals, and who knew it could be that easy?! After all, what’s better than receiving beautiful flowers on Mother’s Day? Receiving beautiful flowers that you can eat! Happy painting!

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Comments

Jane - May 3, 2023

I wish you sold the octagon cookie cutter.
———
The Cookie Countess replied:
Hi Jane, we sell the hexagon cutter as part of our Greatest Hits set, but we do also carry an Ann Clark hexagon cutter. I hope this helps! ________________________________

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